Roosevelt High School was founded in 1890 as Business High School, then DC’s only institution devoted to instruction in business. The co-educational and segregated school had an itinerant early history until it moved into its first purpose-built…

Construction of the Petworth Library (historically known as Petworth Branch Library) was long in the making. The first expressed desire for a library in the community came in 1927 when the Petworth Women’s Club library committee, with support from…

The rapid development of Petworth in the three decades after 1900 meant that it needed new schools. Until the early 1920s, there was only a single elementary school in the neighborhood. Addressing what has been characterized as a crisis in school…

Twin Oaks Playground was established in 1920 to serve the rapidly growing rowhouse community of Petworth. Originally, Twin Oaks was little more than fenced lawns, with a clay tennis court on the northern section. It was not until 1933 that a…

As the first fully motorized fire company in Washington, DC, Engine Company No. 24 demonstrates the technological advancements of firehouses in the early-twentieth century. Built originally to house horses and horse-drawn equipment in 1911, the…

With heavy influences from England’s Garden City movement in the early 20th century, Petworth Gardens was constructed as D.C.’s first garden-style apartment buildings, as well as one of the earliest in the United States. Its two sets of four…