Village Life 17th street and oakwood terrace nw
Seventeenth Street was the original western edge of Samuel P. Brown’s Mount Pleasant Village. At 3423 Oakwood Terrace is “Oakwood,” an original village house built in 1871 for city politician J.W. Buker. Brown sold lots from 17th Street east to today’s 14th Street, reserving the land west of 17th Street for his family estate. Early villagers established the Mount Pleasant Assembly to discuss the issues of the day and address community concerns. They organized an omnibus company, which ran a horse-drawn coach from 14th Street and Park Road to the Treasury Department downtown in the morning and back in the evening. The Assembly also built Union Hall on Newton Street for meetings, worship services, and parties, and a four-room school on Hiatt Place. In 1883 Samuel Brown’s son Chapin began sub- dividing the family estate as well. You’ll see the subdivision’s first house—1701 Newton Street— as you walk to Sign 7. Even before the National Zoo was founded in 1889, and Rock Creek Park was set aside in 1890, the wild woodlands bordering the village were a happy part of daily life. The young sons of developer Luther Fristoe and his wife Caroline, who moved here in 1887, often played at the creek and the zoo. Others came from farther away: Theodore Roose- velt, president from 1901 to 1909, rode horseback, hiked, and even skinny-dipped in Rock Creek Park. He arrived so often via 17th Street that Washingtonians dubbed it the Roosevelt Entrance.
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