Education for All FLORIDA AVENUE AND EIGHTH STREET NE
GALLAUDET UNIVERISTY is world-renowned as the premier institution for higher education for deaf and hard of hearing students. It opened as the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and Blind in 1856 on land donated by former Postmaster General Amos Kendall. In 1864 Congress chartered its collegiate program, which President Abraham Lincoln signed into law . e school’s current name hon- or s omas Hopkins Gallaudet, founder of the fir st U.S. school for the deaf and father of the university’ s fir st president, Edward Miner Gallaudet. Gallaudet was designated a university in 1986. Two years later it selected i ts fir st deaf president a er students, supported by faculty, sta , alumni, the national deaf community, and national lead- ers, demanded a “Deaf President Now! ” eir e ort launched a movement leading to important laws expanding access to communications, including the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Gallaudet students study in both American Sign Language and English at the university recognized as the center of American Deaf Culture. “Gallaudet College” is a National Historic Landmark, and the original campus (1866-1878) is in the National Register of Historic Places. Just east of the Gallaudet campus is the Trinidad neighborhood, named for the former estate of DC banker and philanthropist William Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888). Among Corcoran’s legacies to his city are the former Riggs Bank, Oak Hill Cemetery, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. In 1875 Corcoran donated Trinidad to Columbian College (George Washington University’s prede- cessor), which sold it to the Washington Brick Machine Company.
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