Anacostia Historic District
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Anacostia Historic District
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Houses at 13th and W Streets
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| Location | Roughly bounded by Good Hope Rd., 16th St., Mapleview, Washington, District of Columbia |
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| Area | 83 acres (34 ha) |
| Built | 1854 |
| Architectural style | Italianate, Other, Cottage style |
| NRHP Reference # | 78003050 |
| Added to NRHP | October 11, 1978 |
The Anacostia Historic District is a historic district in the city of Washington, D.C., comprising approximately 20 squares and about 550 buildings built between 1854 and 1930. The Anacostia Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. "The architectural character of the Anacostia area is unique in Washington. Nowhere else in the District of Columbia does there exist such a collection of late-19th and early-20th century small-scale frame and brick working-class housing."
The historic district is roughly bounded by:
Buildings within the Anacostia Historic District are generally two-story brick and wood frame structures. The houses are primarily wood frame construction, mostly in the Italianate, Cottage, and Washington Row House architectural styles (although there are some homes in the Queen Anne style). Cottage-style buildings tend to have been built earlier, with Italianate structures more popular after 1870. Queen Anne-style homes tend to be clustered in Griswold's subdivision. Many of the homes feature large lawns and wrap-around porches.
The Nacotchtank Native Americans were the first settlers to inhabit the area now known as Anacostia, living and fishing along the Anacostia River. Captain John Smith was the first European to visit the region in 1612, naming the river the "Nacotchtank". Henry Fleet (an English explorer kidnapped for five years by the Nacotchtank beginning in 1621) and Leonard Calvert (later Governor of the Province of Maryland) gave the area its more etymologically correct name, "Anacostine," from which the modern name of Anacostia is derived. The name means "trading village," and the Nacochtank villages which dotted the south side of the Anacostia River were busy trading sites for Native Americans in the region. War and disease decimated the Nacochtank, and during the last 25 years of the 17th century the tribe ceased to exist as a functional unit and its few remaining members merged with other local Piscataway tribes.
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