Washington Highlands, Washington, D.C.
| Washington Highlands | |
|---|---|
 Washington Highlands, highlighted in red |
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| Population (2007) | |
| • Total | 8,829 |
Washington Highlands is a residential neighborhood in Southeast Washington, D.C., in the United States. It lies within Ward 8, and is one of the poorest and most crime-ridden sections of the city. Most residents live in large public and low-income apartment complexes, although there are extensive tracts of single-family detached homes in the neighborhood.
Washington Highlands is bounded by 13th Street SE on the northeast, Oxon Run Park on the northwest and southwest, and Southern Avenue on the southeast. The neighborhood is situated on a series of high hills overlooking the creek known as Oxon Run. It draws its name from the city of Washington, D.C., and the hills on which it was built.
At the time of European colonization of North America, the area known as Washington Highlands was occupied by Nacotchtank tribe of Native Americans, a non-migratory band whose villages lined the northern and southern banks of the Anacostia River. The Nacochtanks were decimated by disease brought to the New World by European explorers, and disappeared by 1700 AD. The flat area below the highlands became farms owned by white settlers, with large numbers of African American slaves working the fields.
The development of Washington Highlands closely parallels that of the adjacent neighborhood of Congress Heights. In 1890, Colonel Arthur E. Randle, a successful newspaper publisher, decided to found a settlement east of the river which he called Congress Heights. The Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge (now the John Philip Sousa Bridge) began construction in November 1887, and by June 1890 was nearing completion. Randle understood that this new bridge would bring rapid development east of the Anacostia River, and he intended to take advantage of it.
The development was immediately successful. To ensure that his investment continued to pay off, Randle invested heavily in the Belt Railway, a local streetcar company founded in March 1875. On March 2, 1895, Randle founded the Capital Railway Company to construct streetcar lines over the Navy Yard Bridge and down Nichols Avenue to Congress Heights.
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