Qualla: Columbia Heights (Washington, D.C.)

Columbia Heights (Washington, D.C.): Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. Duke Ellington bought his first house at 2728 Sherman Avenue NW in 1919. He was twenty years old, newly married, and trying to make a name for himself with a small Washington band called the Washingtonians. He lived in Columbia Heights for three years before he left for Harlem. Half a century later, Marvin Gaye walked the same blocks on his way to Cardozo High School. J. Willard Marriott opened his first business, an A&W root beer franchise, on 14th Street in 1927. None of this is in the tourist guides. Most visitors to Washington never come north of Florida Avenue. But the neighborhood the city has called Cowtown, Pleasant Plains, Mount Pleasant, and finally Columbia Heights has been one of the most important pieces of Black American cultural geography in the country.

Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 3.0

Columbia Heights (Washington, D.C.): Sherman's Subdivision

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA 2.0. The neighborhood takes its name from Columbian College, a non-sectarian college founded in 1821 by Baptist minister Luther Rice on what is now the southern edge of Columbia Heights. The college eventually became George Washington University and moved to Foggy Bottom in 1912, but ...

Image: Ted Eytan | CC BY-SA 2.0

Columbia Heights (Washington, D.C.): Streetcars and Apartments

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nashpaul, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1914 four streetcar lines served Columbia Heights, putting downtown twenty minutes away. The neighborhood became a destination for upper-level federal workers, Supreme Court justices, and high-ranking military officers. Authors Jean Toomer, Ambrose Bierce, and Sinclair Lewis l...

Image: Nashpaul | CC BY-SA 3.0

Columbia Heights (Washington, D.C.): A Black Middle-Class Enclave

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Fitzgerald, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1949 the District redrew the segregation map. Central High School, on the southern edge of Columbia Heights, did not have enough white students to fill its classrooms; the school was renamed Cardozo and designated as a colored high school. The decision accelerated demographic ...

Image: Peter Fitzgerald | CC BY-SA 3.0

Columbia Heights (Washington, D.C.): 1968

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. Word of Martin Luther King's assassination in Memphis reached Washington on the evening of April 4. By the next morning the 14th Street corridor was on fire. The riots that followed devastated the commercial spine of Columbia Heights and U Street. More than nine hundred businesse...

Image: Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Columbia Heights (Washington, D.C.): The Metro and What Came After

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Payton Chung from DCA, USA, CC BY 2.0. In planning the Green Line in the 1970s, Metro deliberately routed its tracks through the riot-damaged corridors as a deliberate act of redevelopment policy. The Columbia Heights station opened in September 1999. The DC USA mall opened on March 5, 2008, with 546,000 square feet o...

Image: Payton Chung from DCA, USA | CC BY 2.0