This project documents the homes of literary authors who once lived in the greater Washington, DC region. We wanted to honor the widest range of literary authors possible, including authors of different backgrounds, writing styles, and influences. We include novelists, poets, playwrights, and memoirists. We do not include writers who were solely journalists, and, with few exceptions, authors of genre literature. We have tried hard to include authors from a range of time periods, from the city’s founding in 1800 through the present.
Recent Additions
What’s New?
We got a great review in the Washington City Paper in August 2020, calling our project “an online database of more than 300 writers and their D.C. homes [that] offers a glittering who’s who of Washington literary history.”
Our official relaunch celebration took place on November 29, 2018. After a decade of implementing this project independently, co-editors Kim Roberts and Dan Vera were pleased to celebrate the project’s new permanent home. Sponsored by HumanitiesDC, this updated version of the website features a responsive design easily navigable by desktop or smartphone users. They have promised to continue and preserve our research on writers’ homes in perpetuity.
HumanitiesDC is one of 56 state humanities councils and the capital’s local affiliate for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
With our latest additions, we are now documenting the homes of 405 writers who lived and wrote in the greater Washington, DC region!
Featured Author
Judith Farr
Farr was the author of three critical studies: The Passion of Emily Dickinson (1992), The Gardens of Emily Dickinson (co-written with Louise Carter, 2004), and The Art and Life of Elinor Wylie (1983); she also edited two essay collections, Emily Dickinson: New Century Views (1995) and Twentieth Century Interpretations of D.H. Lawrence’s “Sons and Lovers” (1970). Farr wrote the preface to Emily Dickinson’s Herbarium (2007). She also wrote an epistolary novel, I Never Came to You in White (1996), and a book of poems, What Lies Beyond (2019).
Farr earned a PhD in English Literature from Marymount Manhattan College, and taught at Georgetown University. Her short fiction appeared in The Minnesota Review, and her essays and reviews appeared in the Emily Dickinson Journal, The Wilson Quarterly, and Belles Lettres. Among other awards, she received a Morgan Porter Fellowship from Yale University, and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, and the New York State Research Foundation.
Just some of our many homes...
Maxine Combs
2216 King Place NW, washington DC
Henri Bonnet
2221 Kalorama Road, NW
Molly Elliot Seawell
1767 P St. NW, Washington, DC
David Brinkley
111 E. Melrose St.
Walter H. Mazyck
1229 Park Rd. NW, Washington DC
May Miller
1632 S St. NW, Washington, DC
May Miller
1813 16th St. NW, Washington DC
Augustus Thomas
310 A Street NE, Washington, DC
J. Saunders Redding
7935 Orchid St. NW
John F. Kennedy
1400 34th St. NW
John F. Kennedy
1528 31st St. NW
John F. Kennedy
3321 Dent Place NW
John F. Kennedy
2808 P St. NW, Washington, DC
John F. Kennedy
3307 N Street NW, Washington DC
John F. Kennedy
2480 16th St. NW
John F. Kennedy
1147 Chain Bridge Road
John F. Kennedy
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Julia Thompson Von Stosch Schayer
1318 30th St NW
Richard Eberhart
1664 34th St. NW
Sigmund Skard
3704 33rd Place NW
Maryhelen Snyder
9672 Old Farmhouse Court, Herndon, VA, USA
Whittaker Chambers
2831 28th St NW
John Elsberg
422 Cleveland St., Arlington, VA
Ulysses S. Grant
3238 R St. NW, Washington DC
Ulysses S. Grant
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Lee Lally
4110 Emery Pl. NW
Hervé Alphand
2221 Kalorama Road, NW
Latest from Twitter
A Twitter List by TwitterDevAuthor Birthdays
in March
Emily Lee Sherwood (March 28, 1839)
Emily Hawthorn (March 21, 1845)
Ella Dorsey (March 2, 1855)
John Hays Hammond (March 31, 1855)
Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson (March 3, 1876)
Margaret Fishback (March 10, 1900)
Alba de Céspedes (March 11, 1911)
L. Ron Hubbard (March 13, 1911)
Lucille Fletcher (March 28, 1912)
Francis Coleman Rosenberger (March 22, 1915)
Henry Brandon (March 9, 1916)
Eugene McCarthy (March 29, 1916)
Robert Lowell (March 1, 1917)
Pearl Bailey (March 29, 1918)
Douglass Wallop (March 8, 1920)
Anne Truitt (March 16, 1921)
Shirley Graves Cochrane (March 5, 1925)
Stacy Johnson Tuthill (March 10, 1925)
Rafael Squirru (March 23, 1925)
Sandra Day O’Connor (March 26, 1930)
Judith Farr (March 13, 1936)
Jane Flanders (March 26, 1940)
James Oliver Horton (March 28, 1943)
Askia Muhammad (March 28, 1945)
Mark Wayne Craver (March 3, 1956)
Venus Thrash (March 30, 1959)