The real estate atlases published by the G.W. Baist Company are a wonderful resource for the study of the development of D.C. neighborhoods. The Washingtoniana Division at the MLK Library and the Kiplinger Library at the Historical Society of Washington have nearly-complete sets and as well as staff who can help you explore the collections to their fullest. Some of these atlases have been digitized by the Library of Congress and they’re great fun to explore. (There are commercial sites that will sell you digitized images of these maps, but it’s always worth checking first whether the volume you’re interested in is available for free from a library.)

It can be tricky to find your way around the atlases and locate the parts of the city you’re interested in. Baist’s atlases were issued in multi-volume sets in three-year cycles, with D.C. occupying first 2 and then 3 and then 4 volumes. The N.W. quadrant north of Florida Avenue is generally in Vol. 3, so you can use the Baist atlases to catch a snapshot of neighborhood development every 3-4 years. For example, here is Baist’s 4-volume atlas set published between 1913 and 1915. If you click on the third volume in that set, you’ll find thumbnails of the pages in  Vol. 3, which was published in 1915, including an Index Page, which will guide you to the part of the city you want to find:

If you click on the thumbnail of the Index page and then zoom in, following the directions on the page, you’ll see that Cleveland Park occupies plates 26 and 28 of this volume:

Then click back to the overview page for the volume and click ahead to the third group of pages to find plates 26 and 28. Plate 26 covers the from south side of Ordway Street south, and plate 28 covers the northern section of the neighborhood. Here is plate 26:

If you zoom in or download the full-sized image from the Library of Congress site, you’ll see some blocks almost fully developed and others owned by private owners or bought up by developers but not yet built out.

Compare the corresponding page from the 1919 atlas, and you will find the platted areas gradually being built out and the undeveloped areas shrinking:

By way of contrast, in 1903, the first year the Library of Congress has digitized, the area was so little developed that Vol. 3 is just called “West Washington and the County.” (In this atlas, Cleveland Park is on Plates 18 and 21.) The gradual movement of development across the boundaries of the original L’Enfant City (Florida Avenue was originally “Boundary Street”) gives some useful context for the development of D.C.’s early “suburbs”. You will see familiar landmarks like the Zoo and the Naval Observatory, but the Cathedral has not yet appeared on the map, as its foundation stone was laid in 1907.

When Cleveland Park was first developed around the turn of the 20th century, it was known as “Connecticut Avenue Highlands”. You can just make out a billboard advertising the new development in this photo. The billboard is near the current site of the Uptown Theater and the houses in the background are on Newark Street. It’s instructive to remember as you drive through Washington’s exurbs that a century ago Cleveland Park was one of those areas where rural land was being cleared for new subdivisions.

Note the multimodal transportation: a trolley car and a horse-drawn carriage, and cars, too, for the buyers the developers were really courting! Development of the area was made possible by the completion of the Connecticut Avenue bridge over Rock Creek Park, which allowed the extension of a trolley line from downtown to Chevy Chase.

Some background on the development of Connecticut Avenue Highlands is available in this 2005 Intowner article by Paul K. Williams (pdf). Thanks to CPHS member Laine Shakerdge for the copies of these wonderful pics. Do you have old pictures or stories to tell of Cleveland Park in days of yore? Drop us a line. We’d love to feature your stories here.