Lanier Heights

Lanier Heights is a small urban neighborhood located in the northwest section of Washington, D.C., and is one of the early subdivisions which were created within the District of Columbia, but which lay outside of the original, officially-planned City of Washington. Situated two miles north of the White House, Lanier Heights is within the larger and newer neighborhood of Adams Morgan, and is usually considered to be a part of that more prominent locale. The area of Lanier Heights, about 45 acres (18.2 hectares) in size, is bounded by 16th Street on the east, Adams Mill Road and the National Zoo on the west; Columbia Road to the south, and Harvard Street on the north. Developed mostly between 1900 and 1940, Lanier Heights consists primarily of row houses, plus a number of low- and medium-rise apartment buildings. The architecture is generally typical of the early twentieth century, in a variety of styles, especially Classical Revival. Some of the apartment houses have distinctive, well-crafted Art Deco designs. The area also contains a commercial stretch of stores on its southern side along Columbia Road. And just to the north of Lanier Heights is the slightly older neighborhood of Mount Pleasant.

Before the founding of Washington, D.C. in 1791, most of the land beneath Lanier Heights was originally part of a large, undeveloped piece of property granted to John Bradford in 1714, a tract which he named Plain Dealing; in 1763 this entire tract was acquired by Robert Peter of Georgetown. Additionally, a small portion of the neighborhood's land came from part of a large piece of property acquired by James Holmead in 1733. Very little occurred on the land here until after 1800. One early structure in the area was a tavern that James Eslin built in 1826, on property that he had obtained for use as a small farm. The tavern, which quickly became a popular local gambling house, was situated near the present-day intersection of 16th Street and Columbia Road. (The Eslin tract, the eastern piece of the neighborhood, was eventually developed in the 1920s.) But in general, the land that became Lanier Heights was being only lightly used—at times for common farming—until shortly after the end of the Civil War, when Washington started to grow with more vigor. For a time after the war, there was a small quarry, for construction stone and gravel, located along Rock Creek at the northern edge of the area.

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