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

Emma V. Brown

Emma V. Brown lived her whole life in DC, other than a few years at college in Ohio. She was a teacher and a poet.

Brown first opened a private school for African American children in her home, until DC authorized public funds to educate African Americans in segregated schools in 1864, at which time she became the first African American teacher to be hired by the DC Public School System. Her first DCPS assignment was a small public school held in the Ebenezer Methodist Church on Capitol Hill. She subsequently served as Principal of the John F. Cook School and the Sumner School, until her retirement in 1875.

Her poems were never collected into book form.

(Read more)

Just some of our many homes...

Herman Taube

10500 Rockville Pike

Robert Ruark

2700 Wisconsin Ave NW

Robert Ruark

2022 16th St. NW

Robert Ruark

1447 Q St. NW, Washington, DC

Siv Cedering Fox

11008 Picasso Lane, Potomac MD

Clare Booth Luce

2660 Woodley Rd. NW

Clare Booth Luce

2639 I St. NW, Washington DC

Benjamin Ogle Tayloe

21 Madison Place NW

Benjamin Ogle Tayloe

1799 New York Ave. NW

Eliza Woodworth

100 8th St NE, Washington, DC, USA

Alain Locke

1326 R St. NW, Washington, DC

Alain Locke

1309 R St. NW, Washington DC

Don Marquis

1224 13th St. NW

Robert Peary

2940 Newark Street, NW

Zora Neale Hurston

3017 Sherman Ave. NW

Zora Neale Hurston

901 Rhode Island Ave. NW

Mary Zurhorst Gray

301 East Capitol, SE, Washington, DC

Henry Berenger

2460 16th St. NW

Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

8 Logan Circle NW

Jean Kerr

1003 Varnum St. NE

Elizabeth Bishop

1312 30th Street NW

Octave S. Stevenson

730 24th St. NW

Ellen Blackmar Maxwell

1716 N St. NW, Washington DC

Carter G. Woodson

1538 9th St., NW

Anne Truitt

3506 35th St. NW

Julia Child

1677 Wisconsin Ave. NW

Julia Child

2706 Olive St. NW

Julia Child

1745 N St. NW, Washington DC

Julia Child

1311 35th Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA

Eli Flam

11 Pinecrest Court, Greenbelt, MD, USA

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Author Birthdays
in February

Emma Willard (February 23, 1787)
Henry Lytton Bulwer (February 13, 1801)
Harriet Ann Jacobs (February 11, 1813)
Frederick Douglass (February 1818)
Ellen Tarr O’Connor Calder (February 21, 1830)
Margaret Louisa Sullivan Burke (February 1836)
Henry Adams (February 16, 1838)
Jean Jules Jusserand (February 18, 1855)
Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice (February 27, 1859)
Philander Chase Johnson (February 6, 1866)
Zitkala-Sa (February 22, 1876)
Millicent Todd Bingham (February 5, 1880)
Alice Roosevelt Longworth (February 13, 1884)
Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885)
Mariano Brull (February 24, 1891)
Lillian Rogers Parks (February 1, 1897)
Luis Muñoz Marín (February 18, 1898)
Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902)
Una Marson (February 6, 1905)
St. Clair McKelway (February 13, 1905)
Dee Brown (February 28, 1908)
Selden Rodman (February 19, 1909)
Stephen Spender (February 28, 1909)
Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911)
Herman Taube (February 2, 1918)
Howard Nemerov (February 29, 1920)
Betty Friedan (February 4, 1921)
Margaret Truman (February 17, 1924)
Roger Mudd (February 9, 1928)
Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931)
Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy (February 22, 1932)
Roland Flint (February 27, 1934)
Martin Galvin (February 21, 1937)
Siv Cedering Fox (February 5, 1939)
Donald Britton (February 16, 1951)