Qualla: Thomas Circle

Thomas Circle: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. George Henry Thomas was a Virginian who chose the Union when Virginia seceded - the rarest of Civil War acts, which cost him most of his family and earned him both Lincoln's trust and the nickname Rock of Chickamauga for refusing to retreat when most of the federal army around him did in September 1863. Fourteen years after Chickamauga, Congress dedicated his equestrian statue at the intersection of Fourteenth and Massachusetts in Washington - the country a Virginian had helped to hold together remembering, in bronze, what that holding had cost. The intersection took his name. Today Thomas Circle marks the boundary between downtown Washington and the gentrifying neighborhoods to the north - a circle within a tunnel within a city, the Massachusetts Avenue underpass running directly beneath the general's horse.

Read more: Thomas Circle on Qualla

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Thomas Circle: L'Enfant's Drawing

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. Pierre L'Enfant put an intersection here on his 1791 plan for the federal city - the meeting of Fourteenth Street, M Street, Massachusetts Avenue, and Vermont Avenue NW. By 1792 the plan called for that intersection to be a circle. Development was slow. The area was effectively c...

Read more: Thomas Circle on Qualla

Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 3.0

Thomas Circle: The Rock of Chickamauga

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0. The equestrian statue was dedicated on November 19, 1879. John Quincy Adams Ward sculpted it - the same sculptor who carved the statue of George Washington at Federal Hall in New York and the Henry Ward Beecher monument in Brooklyn. Thomas sits on his horse facing south down Four...

Read more: Thomas Circle on Qualla

Image: AgnosticPreachersKid | CC BY-SA 3.0

Thomas Circle: Two Churches and a Tunnel

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit rockcreek from Washington, D.C., CC BY 2.0. Two churches face each other across Thomas Circle. The Luther Place Memorial Church, built in the early 1870s on the north side as a memorial to those who died in the Civil War and as a symbol of postwar reconciliation, is a Gothic Revival stone building still active as a Luthera...

Read more: Thomas Circle on Qualla

Image: rockcreek from Washington, D.C. | CC BY 2.0

Thomas Circle: The 1952 Mistake

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aswab, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1952 the District added north-south through-traffic lanes that cut directly across the circle, leaving the Thomas statue on a small, inaccessible oval island in the middle of moving traffic. Pedestrians could no longer reach the statue without jaywalking across three lanes of ...

Read more: Thomas Circle on Qualla

Image: Aswab | CC BY-SA 3.0

Thomas Circle: Gateway

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0. Thomas Circle today sits on the boundary between two different Washingtons. To the south lies downtown - office buildings, hotels (the Washington Plaza Hotel sits directly on the circle), the law firms and trade associations of K Street, the federal city. To the north lies what c...

Read more: Thomas Circle on Qualla

Image: Farragutful | CC BY-SA 4.0