As dust from the Civil War settled, the nation's capital entered a new phase of growth. The expanding government needed more workers, who in turn needed more housing. An entrepreneur named Samuel Brown bought a large tract of land outside Washington, named it Mount Pleasant, and began building. Other government workers bought land nearby, and soon Mount Pleasant developed into a small community, separated from downtown Washington by a wide belt of farm and forest. Horse-drawn transport linked Mount Pleasant to jobs downtown, and by the mid-1870s the neighborhood featured a church and a school, where neighbors gathered to discuss the day's pressing issues.

A few of the original Victorian houses from this time still stand on and north of Park Road. The oldest surviving example, built by Samuel Brown in 1871, is located at 3423 Oakwood Terrace.

Art on Call is a program of Cultural Tourism DC with support from:
DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities
Office of the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development
District Department of Transportation

This call box is also supported by:
Historic Mount Pleasant
National Endowment for the Arts
Mount Pleasant Advisory Neighborhood Commission 1-D
Jeff and Linn

Michael K. Ross, Sculptor
www.historicmountpleasant.org

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Show me all markers in:  Washington, DC  |  20010  |  District Of Columbia  |  United States of America

Harvest at Pleasant Plains, ca. 1750
At Home and Abroad
Mount Pleasant Street, ca. 2004
Changing Fashions
The First Bodega
Streetcar Suburb
Defying the Restrictive Covenants
Main Street
War and Peace
Casualties Arriving at Mount Pleasant General Hospital, May 1864

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