This project documents the homes of literary authors who once lived in the greater Washington, DC region. We wanted to honor the widest range of literary authors possible, including authors of different backgrounds, writing styles, and influences. We include novelists, poets, playwrights, and memoirists. We do not include writers who were solely journalists, and, with few exceptions, authors of genre literature. We have tried hard to include authors from a range of time periods, from the city’s founding in 1800 through the present.
Recent Additions
What’s New?
We got a great review in the Washington City Paper in August 2020, calling our project “an online database of more than 300 writers and their D.C. homes [that] offers a glittering who’s who of Washington literary history.”
Our official relaunch celebration took place on November 29, 2018. After a decade of implementing this project independently, co-editors Kim Roberts and Dan Vera were pleased to celebrate the project’s new permanent home. Sponsored by HumanitiesDC, this updated version of the website features a responsive design easily navigable by desktop or smartphone users. They have promised to continue and preserve our research on writers’ homes in perpetuity.
HumanitiesDC is one of 56 state humanities councils and the capital’s local affiliate for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
With our latest additions, we are now documenting the homes of 383 writers who lived and wrote in the greater Washington, DC region!
Featured Author
Jean Jules Jusserand
A French diplomat who served in England, Tunisia, and Denmark, Jean Jules Jusserand served longest as U.S. Minister to France, living in DC from 1902 to 1925. In that role, he advised four U.S. Presidents, becoming particularly close with Theodore Roosevelt, and worked on the adoption of the Treaty of Versailles that ended WWI.
Jusserand was also a scholar and author who specialized in English literature, writing nonfiction books on William Shakespeare, English travelers of the Middle Ages, and a Literary History of the English People. His With Americans of Past and Present Days (1916) earned the first Pulitzer Prize for History, and his memoir, What Me Befell, was published in 1933.
A granite bench in Rock Creek Park, located on Beach Drive south of Peirce Mill, was dedicated in 1936, the first memorial erected on Federal property to a foreign diplomat. It was designed by Joseph Freedlander, and is engraved with the words “Jusserand: Personal Tribute of Esteem and Affection.”
Just some of our many homes...
Manley Wade Wellman
400 Shepherd St. NW, Washington, DC
John Elsberg
422 Cleveland St., Arlington, VA
Adam Francis Plummer
4811 Riverdale Rd.
Ed Cox
1920 S St. NW Washington DC
Ed Cox
1301 15th St. NW, Washington DC
Ed Cox
11345 Saratoga Ave. NE, Washington DC
Luis Muñoz Marín
1914 Connecticut Ave. NW
Jean Toomer
1422 Harvard St. NW
Courtland Darke Baker
1724 Q Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA
Perle Mesta
2300 S St. NW, Washington DC
Perle Mesta
2600 Woodley Rd. NW
Perle Mesta
4040 52nd St. NW
Perle Mesta
1785 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Duke Ellington
420 Elm St. NW, Washington DC
Duke Ellington
1805 13th St. NW, Washington DC
Duke Ellington
2728 Sherman Ave. NW
Duke Ellington
1816 13th Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA
James Roosevelt II
2133 R Street, Washington, DC
James Roosevelt II
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Ben Bradlee
3014 N St. NW, Washington DC
Julia Child
1677 Wisconsin Ave. NW
Julia Child
2706 Olive St. NW
Julia Child
1745 N St. NW, Washington DC
Julia Child
1311 35th Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USA
Andy Razaf
531 9th St NE, Washington, DC
Seabury Grandin Quinn
1430 Monroe Street NE
Marita Bonner
1805 2nd St. NW, Washington DC
Marita Bonner
2201 2nd St. NW, Washington DC
Herbert Hoover
2300 S St. NW, Washington DC
Herbert Hoover
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Jean Jules Jusserand
2460 16th St. NW
Willis Richardson
512 U St. NW, Washington, DC
Andrei Gromyko
1125 16th Street, NW
Catherine Marshall
3100 Cathedral Ave NW
Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson
2118 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Latest from Twitter
A Twitter List by TwitterDevAuthor Birthdays
in April
George Washington Parke Custis (April 30, 1781)
Edward Everett Hale (April 3, 1822)
Ulysses S. Grant (April 27, 1822)
John Willis Menard (April 3, 1838)
Augustus Goodyear Heaton (April 28, 1844)
Thomas Nelson Page (April 23, 1853)
Henry Berenger (April 22, 1867)
Yan Huiqing (April 2, 1877)
Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882)
Caresse Crosby (April 20, 1891)
Robert E. Sherwood (April 4, 1896)
Harlan Miller (April 3, 1897)
Duke Ellington (April 29, 1899)
Whittaker Chambers (April 1, 1901)
Clare Booth Luce (April 10, 1903)
Richard Eberhart (April 5, 1904)
Ward Dorrance (April 30, 1904)
Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905)
William W. Warner (April 2, 1920)
Charles W. Bailey II (April 28, 1929)
Fletcher Knebel (April 28, 1929)
Octave S. Stevenson (April 28, 1930)
Gil Scott-Heron (April 1, 1949)
Christopher Hitchens (April 13, 1949)
Essex Hemphill (April 16, 1957)
Yvonne Brown (April 18, 1977)