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

George M. Lightfoot

A professor of Latin at Howard University for 48 years, George M. Lightfoot was editor of The Howard University Record, founder of the university’s Classics Club, and author of numerous articles on the Roman Classics, classical pedagogy, and civil rights.

Lightfoot graduated from the Howard Academy (Howard University’s preparatory school) in 1887, and received an A.B. from Williams College (1891) and an M.A. from Catholic University (1922). He purchased the house as investment property in approximately 1917, and lived here from 1931 until his death in 1947. Lightfoot held regular salons in this home for intellectuals of African descent; attendees included Carter G. Woodson, W.E.B. DuBois, Arthur Schomberg, Ralph Bunche, and Alain Locke.

Lightfoot is remembered with a scholarship at Howard University in his name.

(Read more)

Just some of our many homes...

Robert Sargent

815 A St. NE, Washington, DC

Emily Lee Sherwood

125 C St. SE, Washington DC

John Killens

1650 Harvard St. NW

Jean Toomer

1422 Harvard St. NW

Augustus Thomas

310 A Street NE, Washington, DC

Robert Lowell

721 Madison Place NW, Washington, DC

Tallulah Bankhead

1868 Columbia Rd. NW

Tallulah Bankhead

1900 Q St. NW, Washington DC

Seabury Grandin Quinn

1430 Monroe Street NE

Emma Willard

1305-1315 30th St. NW

Elizabeth C. Sullam

1662 32nd St NW

Elizabeth C. Sullam

725 24th St. NW

Gabrielle Edgcomb

2039 New Hampshire Ave. NW

Letitia Woods Brown

4311 18th St. NW

Ulysses S. Grant

3238 R St. NW, Washington DC

Ulysses S. Grant

1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

Floyd Dell

1851 Ingleside Terrace NW

Floyd Dell

6307 Lone Oak Dr.

Martin Galvin

8101 Connecticut Avenue, Chevy Chase, MD, USA

E. Franklin Frazier

220 Rhode Island Ave NW, Washington, DC, USA

Jeanie Gould Lincoln

2108 R St NW, Washington DC

Jeanie Gould Lincoln

1620 19th St. NW, Washington, DC

Jeanie Gould Lincoln

2235 Q St NW, Washington DC

Jeanie Gould Lincoln

1717 20th St NW, Washington DC

Joseph Story

1801 F St. NW, Washington, DC

Ellen Tarr O’Connor Calder

1015 O St. NW, Washington DC

J. Saunders Redding

7935 Orchid St. NW

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Author 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)