The People Across the River

For many non-residents, “Anacostia” refers to all of DC across the Anacostia River. In reality, Anacostia is just the neighborhood on the eastern end of the 11^th Street Bridge. Despite the area’s current issues with poverty and crime, it is one of the most historic neighborhoods in the whole city. While most DC students make the trip to the Frederick Douglass House at one point for school, they, and their parents, rarely ever know the true history of the neighborhood. Buried underneath the highways and housing projects sits what remains of 19^th Century Washington’s most prosperous black community, Hillsdale. Through education and building for the future, the ex-slaves of Hillsdale and their descendants thrived for three generations before they were forced out by the “development” of the area. With Washington swiftly gentrifying, the story of Hillsdale may be more relevant than ever.

Prior to 1850, Washington east of the Anacostia was largely unpopulated, save for some small settlements. However, much of the land was owned by speculators who knew that it would eventually become valuable due to its proximity to the Washington Navy Yard, one of the largest employers in the city. In 1854, three developers purchased the 240-acre area, known as Anacostia, at the eastern end of the 11^th Street Bridge. They named their new whites-only subdivision Uniontown, and divided the land into 700 lots. The lots sold quickly to speculators looking for cheap land, but failed to attract Navy Yard workers and their families. In fact, 17 years after the establishment of Uniontown, only 80 families lived there; this lack of residents led to a lack of community development. Opportunities for growth came too late, and John Van Hook (one of the founders of Uniontown) declared bankruptcy in 1877.

After the Civil War ended in 1865, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was created to help the four million freedmen adjust and settle into their new lives. The bureau purchased Barry’s Farm, a 375-acre area southwest of Uniontown, which was renamed to Anacostia by this time. They hired freedmen to help develop the area and allowed them to save some of their wages to go towards buying one-acre lots. Barry’s Farm was seen as a wonderful opportunity by many freedmen. According to historian Louise Hutchinson, “In order to purchase property, entire families worked in the city all day and walked at night to Barry’s Farm to develop their land and construct their homes by lantern and candlelight. As one man described it, ‘the hills and valleys were dotted with lights. The sound of hoe, pick, rake, shovel, saw and hammer rang through the late hours of the night.’” By 1871, 500 black families had settled in Barry’s Farm, and the area’s first public school was opened.

The success of Uniontown and Barry’s Farm, renamed Hillsdale in 1874, led to the creation of other settlements, both black and white. By 1880, Hillsdale was home to blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, bricklayers, painters, government clerks, teachers, midwives, dressmakers, grocers, and carriage makers. Hillsdale had also become a feeder community for Howard University, creating a well-educated populace. According to Jane Freundel Levy, the Chief Historian and Managing Editor of Washington History, “…Hillsdale was more accomplished than [Uniontown and Congress Heights, both whites-only settlements bordering Hillsdale] put together.”

In 1877, Anacostia’s most famous resident arrived. Frederick Douglass, born a slave, educated himself by reading anything he could. After escaping slavery, he became a renowned writer and abolitionist, eventually serving as an advisor to multiple U.S. presidents. Douglass’ reputation was so great that he defied Anacostia’s whites-only restriction and purchased the estate of John Van Hook, the bankrupt founder of Uniontown. He renamed his home Cedar Hill because of the hill it sat on, which gave Douglass sweeping views of downtown Washington. Douglass became very active in community matters; he regularly spoke at churches and schools, and his three sons were some of the earliest residents of the area. Douglass eventually gained the nickname “The Sage of Anacostia”. Today, Cedar Hill is a National Historic Site and Douglass’ house holds a museum dedicated to his life and the abolitionist movement. Other famous Anacostia residents have included Solomon G. Brown, the Smithsonian’s first black employee and a member of the District’s House of Delegates, and Frederick Douglass Patterson, the founder of the Tuskegee Airmen Program and the United Negro College Fund.

The idyllic, semi-rural setting of Anacostia quickly changed with the start of World War II. This included Hillsdale, which had joined with Anacostia to form a single community. Thousands of workers and veterans moved to the area, including a large number of African-Americans. The government used eminent domain and condemnation proceedings to take land from residents. On this land, they built a series of low-income housing projects; the first two, Barry Farms and Douglass Dwellings, were ironically named after the community they were destroying. Even more devastating was the 1943 construction of the Suitland Parkway, which connected Washington to several military facilities in southeast Maryland. According to the president of the Anacostia Historical Society, Dianne Dale, “Neighbors could no longer talk to each other over the backward fence. Businesses, homes, and property were lost.” Over the next twenty years, the dual 11^th Street bridges, the Frederick Douglass Bridge, and I-295 (the Anacostia Parkway) were constructed. While they connected Anacostia to the rest of the city, they also disrupted the neighborhood and displaced more people.

Change only came faster in the 1950s, with the city pursuing a campaign of urban renewal. Using eminent domain, the city forced out thousands of low-income residents of the Southwest Waterfront neighborhood, many of whom came to Anacostia. The influx of the disadvantaged required more housing projects, which led to many wealthier residents, especially the white ones, fleeing to the suburbs. Anacostia, formerly the all-white Uniontown, was below 13% white by 1970. Washington as a whole began to decline after the riots of 1968 over the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. The city was hit hard by the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, and in the early 1990s, the city was known as the “murder capital” of the country. While Washington D.C. has improved significantly in modern times, Anacostia has largely been left out of that development.

Washington has made efforts to preserve Anacostia’s unique history, including establishing the Anacostia Historic District in 1978. This, along with the city giving tax credits to community members renovating and refurbishing their homes, has helped save some of the historical architecture of the area. Unfortunately, Hillsdale was not included in the Historic District because much of the original architecture is no longer there. According to Dale, “this fragility of infrastructure is often the fate of early African American sites… [however,] today, historic preservation reaches beyond architecture to incorporate a broader cultural approach in an attempt to achieve a comprehensive understanding of American life and events. The history of Anacostia presents a nationally significant microcosm of the full range and vitality of African American experience.”

Moving forward, the Anacostia area has two main problems. The first is that young residents of Anacostia don’t know about the rich history of the area. A vibrant, self-sufficient community of freedmen and their descendants thrived in Hillsdale despite living in an era of prejudice and persecution. According to Dale, however, many young residents believe the neighborhood “went from slavery to slums.” Another concern is how Anacostia will change moving forward. Washington is going through a period of growth unlike anything since the 1950s. The city is gentrifying at a rapid pace, and neighborhoods that were considered unsafe ten years ago now are now the some of the hottest areas. While development brings money, many residents fear that they will be forced out. The city recently proposed a development to would replace Barry Farms low-income housing complex; however, the DC Court of Appeals sided with tenants this April, as the proposal did not have enough affordable housing units to accommodate all current residents. While this was a win for the tenants, the community still has a long journey ahead. If history has taught us one thing, it is that powerful people have no issue with ousting communities that do not fit their image of the future.

Michael Avery ‘20 studies in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. He can be reached at mbavery97@gmail.com.