History

Mentions of Van Ness in the Evening Star, October 31 – November 6, 1926. Searched for "North Cleveland Park", "Bureau of Standards", "Van Ness street", "Forest Hills".

Clips are machine-read text (OCR) from scanned Evening Star pages on the Library of Congress's Chronicling America, lightly cleaned (line-break hyphens rejoined, stray symbols removed); misspellings are the scanner's. Newspapers this old are public domain. Each clip links to its page at loc.gov. Clips that mention race, covenants, deed restrictions or slurs are skipped automatically (keyword list: race, races, racial, colored, coloured, negro, negroes, white only, whites only, for whites, white people, white persons, white residents, caucasian, segregation, segregated, covenant, covenants, restricted, restriction, restrictions, plus a list of slurs), because they need an editor's context; legal notices and lists of private individuals are skipped too.

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  Bureau of Standards · [between 1909 and 1932]Bureau of Standards
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  Bureau of Standards · [between 1909 and 1920]Bureau of Standards, Instrument shop
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  Bureau of Standards · [between 1916 and 1917]Bureau of Standards, standard scales
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  Bureau of Standards · [between 1918 and 1921]Wind tunnel, Bureau [of] Standards
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  Bureau of Standards · [19]23 March 26Test car, Bureau of Standards, 3/26/23

Photographs from the Library of Congress (National Photo Company Collection), each with no known restrictions on publication or in the public domain, per the Library. Titles are the Library's, written when the photos were catalogued; some use the language of their time. Each links to its record.

Connecticut Avenue NW

Honors: State of Connecticut

L'Enfant's avenue originally ended at Boundary Street. Around 1890 Congressman Francis Newlands, who had quietly bought land toward Chevy Chase, graded a straight extension with streetcar track down its center. The Bureau of Standards opened its first campus beside it at Van Ness Street in 1901, and the Taft Bridge linked both halves in 1907.

Sources: Connecticut Avenue - Wikipedia · List of state-named roadways in Washington, D.C. - Wikipedia

Davenport Street NWlate 1920s

A straighter Davenport Street was cut through to Forest Hills in the late 1920s. Because Grant Road wandered, the stretches that fit the grid were renamed Davenport Street; city directories show some households' addresses changing from Grant Road to Davenport Street between 1925 and 1931.

Earlier: Grant Road (in part)Source: Grant Road: The historic country lane in DC's modern street grid (Forest Hills Connection)

Gates Road NWlate 1800s

Honors: The Gates family, who farmed there

Like Grant Road, Gates Road ignores the street grid because it predates it. Forest Hills Connection says it dates to the late 1800s, is named for the family that once farmed there, and now runs as an extension of Chesapeake Street east of Forest Hills Park.

Source: The Ghosts of Van Ness's Past (Forest Hills Connection)

Grant Road NWby 1870 (on the Carpenter map)

A country lane dating to 1859 or earlier that became a Civil War military road from Tennallytown to the forts. An 1867 map labels it New Cut Road; an 1870 map calls it Grant Road. Local historians say it is generally assumed to honor Ulysses S. Grant after his March 1864 tour of the defenses, but that is not documented.

Earlier: New Cut RoadSource: Grant Road: The historic country lane in DC's modern street grid (Forest Hills Connection)

Reservation 630 (former Melvin Hazen Park)1942 (Hazen name); removed 2022

The stream valley park between Rodman and Tilden streets west of Connecticut Avenue was named in 1942 for Melvin C. Hazen, a DC commissioner who died in 1941. After research showed his role in razing the Black community of Reno City, the Park Service dropped his name in February 2022; it is now officially Reservation 630.

Earlier: Melvin Hazen Park, Melvin Hazen TrailSources: NPS To Remove Name Of Racist Former D.C. Official From Northwest Park And Trail (DCist, 2022) · It's the end of the trail for 'Melvin Hazen' trail (Forest Hills Connection)

Van Ness

Honors: John Peter Van Ness, congressman and mayor of Washington, 1830-1834

There is no official neighborhood by this name; Wikipedia treats Van Ness as another name for Forest Hills, after the Van Ness-UDC station. The neighborhood and Van Ness Street are named for John Peter Van Ness, a New York congressman who settled in Washington and served as its mayor from 1830 to 1834.

Sources: Forest Hills (Washington, D.C.) - Wikipedia · Van Ness-UDC station - Wikipedia · John Peter Van Ness - Wikipedia · Van Ness: A Neighborhood Steeped in History (Van Ness Neighborhood, HelloNation, 2026)

Still looking for a reliable source on Linnean Avenue NW, Reno Road NW, Tilden Street NW, Veazey Street NW, Windom Place NW, Upton Street NW, Albemarle Street NW, Brandywine Street NW, Chesapeake Street NW, Ellicott Street NW, Yuma Street NW, International Drive NW. We don't publish a name's story until we can cite one. Know it? Tell us.

We haven't found a recorded oral history about Van Ness in a public archive yet.

Search the archives yourself: The People's Archive, DC Public Library · Historic Chevy Chase DC Oral History Archive · Humanities Truck Community Archive, American University · Tenleytown Historical Society · Boundary Stones (WETA) · Glover Park History: Oral History and Reminiscences · Cleveland Park Historical Society Oral Histories · Rainbow History Project Digital Collections · hometown DC (DC History Center) · Hola Cultura: Adams Morgan History · Citizens Association of Georgetown · Peabody Room, Georgetown Neighborhood Library (DC Public Library) · Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum Archives: A Right to the City Exhibition Records · Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project · Mosaic Theater H Street Oral History Project · Library of Congress, Manuscript Division · Anacostia Community Museum Archives (Smithsonian) · Naval History and Heritage Command, Navy Department Library · The Catholic University of America Archives · Bygone Brookland · Dig DC, DC Public Library · hometown DC (HumanitiesDC / Historical Society of Washington, D.C.) · Dig DC, DC Public Library's digital repository · A Right to the City exhibition records, Anacostia Community Museum Archives (Smithsonian) · Rainbow History Project Digital Collections · Palisades Community Association · Forest Hills Connection (neighborhood history series) · Foggy Bottom Association History Project: Oral Histories · George Washington University Special Collections Research Center · Woodley Park Community: A Sketch of Our Past · Empower DC: Ivy City · Power of Preserving the Black Deaf Experience (Dig DC) · Gallaudet University Archives. Summaries are ours; the recordings and their rights stay with each archive.

• DC Historic Preservation Office, Historic Data on DC Buildings (HistoryQuest), CC BY 4.0
• Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), Chronicling America, Library of Congress; public domain

History data refreshed Nov 2.