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Ledroit Park If you have questions about the following data or want more information, contact us at 202-965-3715. If you would like to be included in periodic e-mail updates on this or other neighborhoods, send your name and e-mail address to info@hananhomes.com. As of September 30, 2008, 23 single-family homes were for sale in LeDroit Park, and five were under contract. In the third quarter of 2008, 12 homes sold. In the first half of 2008, 18 single-family homes sold in LeDroit Park. In 2007, there were 43 sales, while 46 homes sold in 2006. The average sale price in the first half of 2008 was $450,468. This compares to $548,754 and $555,201 in 2007 and 2006, respectively. The average list price was $462,494 in the first half of 2008, $570,828 in 2007, and $575,000 in 2006. Listed below are the sales by price range.
For his buildings, James McGill, a local developer before the turn of the century, used the romantic architectural designs of Andrew Jackson Downing which included Eastlake, Second Empire, and Italianate. Fifty of the original 64 houses remain, many of which have been restored. The rowhouses that were constructed in the late 1880s and 1890s were low-rise brick buildings with terra cotta and decorative brickwork with rooflines accented with turrets, towers, gables, and iron cresting. These buildings are also being refurbished as young professionals move into the neighborhood. LeDroit could be used as a lesson on the residential history of the city of Washington. In 1974, the Interior Department gave official designation of the LeDroit Park Historic District, and the LeDroit Park Preservation Society has been working to restore some of the original homes. Howard University plays a prominent role in today's LeDroit. Its hospital sits on its southwest corner. Gage-Eckington Elementary School is in the center of the neighborhood. Many of Shaw's clubs are located in the legal neighborhood of LeDroit (see highlights of Shaw/U-Street Corridor). Crispus Attucks Park, a private community park, is located in eastern LeDroit. It is named after a former slave and first person to lose his life in the Boston Massacre. In 1873 real estate speculators, Amzi Barber, one of the founders of Howard University (see history of Columbia Heights), and Andrew Langdon designated a triangular tract of 55 acres for a new subdivision situated in farmland. It was to be a suburb organized around a circular drive with streets laid out at an angle. It was named for LeDroit Langdon, the father of Andrew who was also a renowned real estate broker and the father-in-law of Barber. James H. McGill designed and built 64 detached and semi-detached houses over the next 14 years. The subdivision was a block from the terminal of the horse-drawn streetcar line which was later electrified. The developers encircled LeDroit Park with a cast-iron and wood fence with only a southern entrance, leaving the neighborhood isolated from its neighbors with the gates closed at night guarded by a watchman. Only whites were allowed to buy into the community, and government administrators, lawyers, doctors, and other professionals moved in. Perennials and evergreens and flowers, particularly roses and chrysanthemums were abundant. In 1867 Howard University was established, named after General Oliver Otis Howard, a Civil War general who commanded 36 battles including Bull Run, a West Point Graduate, and the first president of the university. Howardtown was a black residential area founded in the 1870s next to Howard University. As Howardtown expanded, blacks started to jump the fence into LeDroit Park and cut through the development to venture downtown. In 1886, blacks demonstrated against the fence and two years later dismantled it. The LeDroit Park Citizens' Association replaced the fence with barbed wire which was also torn down. The fence war continued until 1891 when the fence was permanently removed. The through streets changed the character of the neighborhood and in 1893, Octavius Williams, a barber, became the first black homeowner. The next year, Robert and Mary Church Terrell became the second black family owners, helped by a white real estate agent. Robert Terrell was the first African-American municipal Judge and his wife was the first African American to serve on the DC School Board and one of the founders of the NAACP. A steady turnover to the black elite occurred in LeDroit Park who for years kept much of the original character of the neighborhood. Among its residents were Paul Laurence Dunbar, an Ohio writer and poet; Anna J. Cooper, a pioneer in black adult education; General Benjamin Davis, the first African-American general, and violinist Clarence Cameron White. During the 1920s and 1930s, Oscar de Priest, the first black Congressman since Reconstruction, and Langston Hughes lived in LeDroit. The largest change in the early century was the development in 1919 of a 34,000-seat ballpark stadium by Clark C. Griffith, which was one of the few integrated public venues in the city. During the Depression, the National Capital Housing Authority built public housing apartments in LeDroit. By the 1950s and 1960s, middle-class families were replaced by low-income residents. By the 1970s, vacant lots evidenced the loss of homes from vandalism and fires. The LeDroit Park Civic Association, under the leadership of Walter E. Washington, the first mayor of DC elected under home rule, and his wife Bennetta Bullock Washington, worked to increase city support for the neighborhood.
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