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
Henry Adams
Henry Adams lived here with his parents during the winter of 1860-61. Aware that he was witnessing an historic time, he kept a journal, wrote dispatches for a Boston newspaper, and later published an essay, “The Great Secession Winter,” which historian Gary Wills describes as “full of inside information” and still “repeatedly cited in treatments of the Civil War’s onset.”
Adams left DC after this time, serving as his father’s personal secretary when Charles Francis Adams was appointed ambassador to the United Kingdom, then working as a professor of history at Harvard University. He returned to DC after that, living on Lafayette Square from age 39 until his death at age 80. Neither of his later two houses still stand.
Adams is best remembered as the author of two novels, Democracy (1880) and Esther (1884), and his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams (1918). He also wrote biographies of Albert Gallatin and George Cabot Lodge, a critical study of Mont Sant Michel and Chartres, and the multi-volume History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (1889–1891). His homes in Lafayette Square became celebrated salons for a small elite group of intellectuals, the Five of Hearts, and their friends.
The Arts Club of Washington preserves this elegant historic home (and the attached one next door) as a private club with public art galleries. In addition to being rented by the Adamses, it was at one time the home of President James Monroe. Open Tuesdays through Saturdays during regular business hours. No appointment necessary.
Just some of our many homes...
Helen Herron Taft
2215 Wyoming Ave. NW
Helen Herron Taft
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC, USA
Anthony Hecht
4256 Nebraska Ave. NW
Myrna Loy
3522 P St. NW, Washington, DC
John Hays Hammond
2221 Kalorama Road NW
John Hays Hammond
1500 Rhode Island Ave. NW
Wendell Phillips Stafford
1725 Lamont St. NW, washington, DC
Wendell Phillips Stafford
1661 Crescent Pl. NW, Washington, DC
Carter G. Woodson
1538 9th St., NW
Ann B. Knox
2711 Ordway St. NW
Art Buchwald
2650 Virginia Ave. NW
Art Buchwald
4327 Hawthorne Place Northwest, Washington, DC, USA
Jean Jules Jusserand
2460 16th St. NW
Emma Willard
1305-1315 30th St. NW
Henry Morgenthau III
3050 Military Rd NW, Washington, DC, USA
Victor R. Daly
1614 T Street NW, Washington, DC
Victor R. Daly
1612 Manchester Lane NW
Triloki Nath Kaul
2700 Macomb St NW
Margaret Landon
2910 Brandywine Street NW
Margaret Landon
4711 Fulton St NW
Andrei Gromyko
1125 16th Street, NW
Gideon Ferebee, Jr.
71 N Street NW
Adam Francis Plummer
4811 Riverdale Rd.
Cissy Patterson
15 Dupont Circle NW
Jean C. Bower
2500 Q St. NW, Washington DC
Carl Bode
7008 Partridge Place
Latest from Twitter
A Twitter List by TwitterDevAuthor 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)