On this self-guided walking tour of Tenleytown, historical markers lead you to: – The highest elevation in the District of Columbia – Grant Road, a winding byway that recalls the area’s rural past – The site of Reno City, a once-thriving, post-Civil War community of working-class African American and white families
– The site of Fort Reno, one of the city’s strongest Civil War defenses
– Towers that mark Tenleytown as an important communications center
– The studios where Kermit the Frog started his career
– The place where women of the U.S. Navy broke the Japanese code during World War II
Top of the Town
TENLEYTOWN HERITAGE TRAIL
Fashionable student Becky Keane, center, leaves Wilson High School with friends, 1967.
During World War II, a recent Wilson High School graduate visited his old stomping grounds.
Three R's The red-brick school to your right is Alice Deal Junior High, honoring the mathematics teacher and union leader who launched Washington’s first junior high school. That school opened in 1919 at Seventh and O Streets, NW. Architect Albert Harris’s Colonial design for Deal Junior High represented the finest in modern school construction. From its opening in 1931, Deal’s student body included diplomatic children, giving it an international flavor typical of Washington. On a remnant of old Howard Road at the southeast corner of Alice Deal is the Jesse Reno School, designed by municipal architect Snowden Ashford and opened nearly 30 years before Deal to serve the neighborhood’s African American children. Before Reno opened, they had walked either to a “colored” school at the site of today’s Murch Elementary or to one on Foxhall Road. Reno School served 160 elementary pupils, and offered adult education at night. But between 1928 and the early 1950's, the city razed Reno City, home to most of Tenleytown’s African American families, in order to create a water reservoir, Fort Reno park, and school campuses. As a result, the “colored” school lost its students and closed. The building survives, however, along with a few fire hydrants amid the lawns of Fort Reno Park and some houses in the 4800 block of 41st Street, as the only visible reminders of the Reno City community. Woodrow Wilson High School, on your left, opened in 1935, honoring our intellectual 28th president, a past presi- dent of Princeton University, and the only U.S. president to have earned a PhD. Princeton’s “tiger” came too, to serve as Wilson’s athletic mascot. A community swimming pool, long promised to the citizens of Tenleytown, was added in 1978 and rebuilt in 2008.
Alice Deal eighth graders Roberta Buffett, Nancy Stone, Barbara Freeman, Edee Stewart, and Barbara McCollum model the dresses they sewed in home economics class using the same pattern, 1947.
The student body of Reno School, 1949.
Olympic Rower Aquil Abdullah '91
DC Councilmember Yvette Alexander '79
Investor Warren Buffett '47
Developer Oliver Carr '43
Some notable Wilson High School grads. DC Councilmember Kwame Brown ’89 and Radio One’s Alfred Liggins ’83 did not sit for a senior picture.
Arena Stage's Zelda Diamond Fichandler '41
DC Council Chair John Hechinger '37
Jefferson Airplane's Jorma Kaukonen '59
PEPCO CEO John Derrick '57
Broadcaster Melvin Lindsay '73
Broadcaster Derek McGinty '77
DC Councilmember Harry Thomas '78
Virginia Senator John Warner '45
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