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.

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.”

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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

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Author 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)