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
James Roosevelt II
James Roosevelt II, the son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, was an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, Secretary to the President under his father, and a U.S. Congressman (D-CA) from 1955 to 1965. He also worked in business, co-founding an insurance agency, and worked in Hollywood, as an administrator for Samuel Goldwyn.
Roosevelt is the author of the nonfiction books Affectionately, FDR (1959, co-written with Sidney Shalett), and My Parents, a Differing View (1976, co-written with Bill Libby). The latter was written to repudiate his brother Elliott Roosevelt’s biography An Untold Story, which detailed family secrets, including his father’s affairs. Roosevelt also wrote a novel, A Family Matter (1979, co-written with Sam Toperoff).
Just some of our many homes...
Richard Bruce Nugent
1231 T St. NW, Washington DC
Emma V. Brown
3044 P St. NW, Washington DC
Thomas Law
1252 6th St. SW
William Meredith
6300 Bradley Blvd.
John Hay
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
R.W. Apple
1509 28th St. NW, Washington DC
Carl Bode
7008 Partridge Place
Horatio King
707 H St NW, Washington DC
Robert Sargent
815 A St. NE, Washington, DC
Sterling A. Brown
1222 Kearney St. NE
Una Marson
1921 S St. NW, Washington DC
Hilary Tham
2600 N. Upshur St.
Blanca Varela
1928 35th Pl. NW
Emily Lee Sherwood
125 C St. SE, Washington DC
Helen Hayes
1909 8th St NW
Helen Hayes
1418 W St NW,, Washington DC
Helen Hayes
1436 W St., NW, Washington DC
Elinor Wylie
1707 N St. NW, Washington, DC
Elinor Wylie
2153 Florida Ave. NW
Carlos Peña Rómulo
2253 R Street, NW, washington, DC
Carlos Peña Rómulo
3422 Garfield St NW
Lucille Fletcher
3435 8th St S
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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)