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
J. Goldsborough Bruff
J. Goldsborough Bruff was born in DC and worked for the U.S. Bureau of Topographical Engineers as a cartographer. In 1849, he joined the California Gold Rush, and was captain of the Washington City and California Mining and Wagon Company. The extensive journals and sketchbooks he kept during the 1840s and 1850s, as he travelled through mining camps, were published posthumously in two volumes, called Gold Rush (1944), considered by many historians to be the best source of information on the subject.
He returned to DC in 1853, working as supervising architect of the U.S. Treasury Department. He is buried in Congressional Cemetery.
Just some of our many homes...
Joseph Story
1801 F St. NW, Washington, DC
Carter G. Woodson
1538 9th St., NW
Liam Rector
1824 Belmont Rd., Washington DC
Liam Rector
1613 Harvard St. NW
Margaret Fishback
1461 S Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA
Ruth Moore
3031 Sedgwick St. NW
Larry L. King
3025 Woodland Dr NW, Washington DC
Zahara Heckscher
1214 Irving St NW, Washington, DC, USA
Ambrose Bierce
1368 Euclid St. NW
Ambrose Bierce
18 Logan Circle NW
Ambrose Bierce
1825 19th St. NW
Ambrose Bierce
1321 Fairmont St. NW
Jeane L. Dixon
1312 19th St. NW, Washington DC
Archibald MacLeish
1520 33rd St. NW
Archibald MacLeish
607 Oronoco St
Conrad Aiken
323 Second Street SE, Washington DC
Jessie Redmon Fauset
1812 13th St. NW
Jessie Redmon Fauset
1716 17th St. NW
Douglass Wallop
3435 8th St S, Arlington VA
Molly Elliot Seawell
1767 P St. NW, Washington, DC
Walter Karig
3834 Seminary Road
Dolores Kendrick
1250 4th Street Southwest, Southwest Washington, Washington, DC, USA
Cissy Patterson
15 Dupont Circle NW
Ellis L. Yochelson
12303 Stafford Lane
Philander Chase Johnson
1020 Massachusetts Ave. NE
John Hays Hammond
2221 Kalorama Road NW
John Hays Hammond
1500 Rhode Island Ave. NW
Cyrus Adler
1627 R St NW, Washington DC
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
8 Logan Circle NW
Latest from Twitter
A Twitter List by TwitterDevAuthor Birthdays
in May
Benjamin Ogle Tayloe (May 21, 1796)
Adam Francis Plummer (May 14, 1819)
Jessie Benton Frémont (May 31, 1824)
LaSalle Corbell Pickett (May 16, 1843)
John Bigelow, Jr. (May 12, 1854)
Jeanie Gould Lincoln (May 28, 1855)
Robert Peary (May 6, 1856)
Wendell Phillips Stafford (May 1, 1861)
Saint-John Perse (May 31, 1887)
Henri Bonnet (May 26, 1888)
Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890)
Archibald MacLeish (May 7, 1892)
Rudolph Fisher (May 9, 1897)
Sterling A. Brown (May 1, 1901)
Manley Wade Wellman (May 21, 1903)
Anna Roosevelt Halsted (May 3, 1906)
William Waring Cuney (May 6, 1906)
Rachel Carson (May 27, 1907)
Hervé Alphand (May 31, 1907)
Randall Jarrell (May 6, 1914)
Herman Wouk (May 27, 1915)
John F. Kennedy (May 29, 1917)
Daniel Berrigan (May 9, 1921)
Claribel Alegría (May 12, 1924)
David Shears (May 20, 1926)
Linda Pastan (May 27, 1932)
Stanley Plumly (May 23, 1939)
Nora Ephron (May 19, 1941)
Lee Lally (May 1943)
C. Bruce Johnson (May 5, 1950)
Tim Russert (May 7, 1950)