A MIXTURE OF PEOPLE AND STYLES

Crestwood was built on a large tract of land called “Argyle, Cowall and Lorn.”  About 300 acres between Rock Creek and Piney Branch were granted to Randall Blake in 1722.  After a succession of owners, the land was bought by Alexander de Bodisco in 1845.  This well-like Georgetown resident was the Minister from Imperial Russia.  He became infamous in Washington history when he married Harriet Beall Williams, a sixteen-year-old school-girl.  The fifty-three year old Baron must have been quite a sight carrying his beloved’s books to school every day during their courtship!

At about the time of Bodisco’s death in 1854, the estate was bought by Thomas Blagden, a successful lumber merchant who operated a wharf on the Anacostia just west of the Navy Yard.  Blagden moved his family into the home that Bodisco had built as a country residence.  That house stood at the northeast corner of 18th and Varnum Streets until the 1930s.

Thomas Blagden died in 1870 without a will, which led to a series of intra-family lawsuits.  The result of one suit was the 1876 partition of the old Argyle estate into 40 lots of about 4 to 12 acres each.  Blagden’s second wife, Laura Silliman Blagden, lived in the old estate mansion until her death in 1907.  She was the sister of Blagden’s first wife, Emily, who had died in 1853.

Thomas Blagden’s son, Thomas (1853-1938), created the Argyle deer park, which for a few years was a source of much rubbernecking for travelers along the old Piney Branch Road.  He also donated a large portion of his share of the Argyle estate for the creation of Rock Creek Park (in about 1890) and for the extension of Sixteenth Street (in about 1900).

The married name of Thomas Blagden’s daughter, Harriet Silliman Mathewson (she married Brooklyner Dr. Arthur Mathewson), is commemorated by Mathewson Drive, which connects the southern part of Crestwood with Blagden Avenue, Rock Creek Park and points west.

Development came late to Crestwood for several reasons: distance from a streetcar line; some of the Blagden heirs seem to have been uninterested in subdividing and both world wars came when building booms were imminent.  In about 1905, the widow Laura S. Blagden subdivided the area around 17th and 18th Streets, between Shepherd and Upshur Streets, as “Mount Pleasant Heights.”  The lots were small, indicating a vision of intense, probably row-house, development but the distance from the streetcar terminus at 14th Street and Park Road discouraged development.

The oldest homes in Crestwood are at the northern point, around the triangle of Blagden Avenue, 16th Street and Decatur Street.  Some of these detached houses were built between 1909 and 1913, shortly after Capital Traction’s 14th Street streetcar line was extended to its new terminus just two blocks east.  Before automobiles were commonplace, the area on the east of 16th Street was much more desirable, than that on the west due to its proximity to the streetcars.  World War I raged in Europe and no new homes were built in Crestwood from 1913 to 1919.

The eastern edge of the neighborhood, along 16th Street, and the central portion, 17th to 18th between Taylor and Allison Streets, were developed in the 1920’s.  Landowners in the large southwestern bulge of Crestwood, which comprised nearly half of the neighborhood, did not sub-divide until the late 1930’s though development in the 1920s and 1930s would surely have been profitable.  The principal owner in that section was Arthur S. Mathewson, a Blagden descendent.  The only home built in that area was “The Rocks” (1921), a huge house built by Mona B. Gaillard and currently the home of Senator John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV of West Virginia. The home was named after the Gaillard family’s South Carolina estate.

The development of the southwestern part of the neighborhood began about 1940.  All of the houses were detached, and stood on large lots.  Developer/builder Paul P. Stone was probably the most prolific in Crestwood at that time.  By 1940 Stone was calling the community “Crestwood at Rock Creek Park.”

World War II had engulfed Europe by then and U.S entry into the war delayed the physical development in Crestwood yet again.  By the time building stopped in the 1950s, Crestwood had become home to many affluent African American families.  Crestwood has maintained an integrated population and has been a rock of stability among changing and often troubled neighborhoods.

Notable Washingtonians and national luminaries who currently reside in or have lived in Crestwood include the following: Walter E. Fauntroy, former DC Congressional Delegate; Charles B. Rangel, Congressional Representative (NY); William Sessions, former FBI Director; John Thompson, former Georgetown University basketball coach; Todd Duncan, opera singer and actor; Dr. Lois Mailou Jones, internationally acclaimed artist; Major General Cunningham Bryant, first Black commander, DC, National Guard;  N.M. Cohen, co-founder of Giant Food Inc.; Phil Lustine, Lustine Automotive Group; Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senator baseball team; B. Doyle Mitchell, Sr., former president of Industrial Bank of Washington; Fred Valentine, former Washington Senator and Baltimore Oriole baseball player; Malcolm Gibbs, founder of People Drug Stores; Maurice Turner, former DC Chief of Police; Linda Cropp, DC City Council Chairperson; and Adrian Fenty, DC City Councilmember representing Ward Four.

Crestwood’s blend of homes ranging from row houses to generous detached houses will always provide for an economically diverse neighborhood.  The fact that it is nestled between Rock Creek Park and 16th Street and is easily accessible to Downtown ensures that Crestwood will remain a desirable residential community.

Courtesy of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., the D.C Public Library, and DC North Newspaper.