Mount Pleasant, Washington, D.C.

Mount Pleasant is a neighborhood in the northwestern quadrant of Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The neighborhood is bounded by Rock Creek Park to the north and west; and Harvard Street, NW and the Adams Morgan neighborhood to the south; and Sixteenth Street, NW and the Columbia Heights neighborhood to the east. The neighborhood is home to approximately twelve thousand people, which is approximately two percent of the population of the city.

Today, Mount Pleasant is a diverse community of affluent people, middle class wage earners, working class people, and immigrants.

History

In 1727, Charles Calvert, 5th Lord Baltimore (then governor of the Maryland Colony) awarded a land grant for present day Mount Pleasant to James Holmead. This estate also included the present-day Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, Park View, and Pleasant Plains neighborhoods. James's son, Anthony, inherited the estate in 1750 and named it Pleasant Plains. After the United States Congress created the District of Columbia in 1791, Pleasant Plains estate became part of Washington County, a section of the District lying between what now is Florida Avenue and the Maryland border. The Holmeads began selling tracts of the Pleasant Plains estate until they had sold everything. Today, the family name is preserved in Holmead Place, a short street located west of Thirteenth Street between Spring and Park Roads NW, in what now is Columbia Heights. During 1794 and 1796 Robert Peter, Georgetown's...
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