Petworth is a residential neighborhood in the
Northwest quadrant of
Washington, D.C., bounded by
Georgia Avenue to the west, North Capitol Street to the east, Rock Creek Church Road to the south, and Kennedy Street NW to the north. Petworth and the rest of
Ward 4 are represented in the
Council of the District of Columbia by
Muriel Bowser.
The neighborhood was originally the site of two separate country estates in
Washington County, D.C., a then-unincorporated part of the
District of Columbia: Petworth, the estate of Col. John Tayloe, and the Marshall Brown estate, which eventually also became the property of the Tayloe family. In the late 1880s, after the estates had become part of the city, two real-estate investment partnerships purchased the estates for development. The neighborhood bloomed with the expansion of the
streetcar line up
Georgia Avenue (then known as Seventh Street Extended or Brightwood Avenue) from
Florida Avenue (Boundary Street) to the Washington DC line at
Silver Spring, Maryland.
Many of the thousands of similar brick row houses in the neighborhood were constructed by Cafritz Builders and also by D.J. Dunigan Company in the 1920s and 30s. Dunigan personally donated the land that became the site for St. Gabriel's Church and School adjacent to
Grant Circle.
Today, the neighborhood is primarily residential with a mix of
townhouses and single-family homes. It is served by the
Georgia Ave-Petworth station on the
Washington Metro's
Green Line and
Yellow Line....
Read More