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 405 writers who lived and wrote in the greater Washington, DC region!

Featured Author

Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan’s first book, The Feminine Mystique (1963), spurred the development of the Second Wave of Feminism in the U.S.  She became a leader in the women’s rights movement, co-founding the National Organization for Women in 1966, and serving as its first president through 1970; establishing the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America) in 1969; and co-founding the National Women’s Political Caucus in 1971.

Friedan attended Smith College, where she wrote poems and published them in campus journals, and became editor-in-chief for the college newspaper.  After graduation, she became a journalist for labor union newspapers.  She left this work to become a stay-at-home mother, raising three children.  In the 1970s, she returned to reporting.  She also taught at New York University and the New School for Social Research, and as a visiting professor at Temple University, Yale University, Queens College CUNY, and the University of Southern California, and did research at Cornell University.

Friedan published six books.  Her titles include: It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women’s Movement (1976), The Second Stage (1981), The Fountain of Age (1993), Beyond Gender (1997), and her memoir, Life So Far (2000).  She lived at this address from 1994 until her death.

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Just some of our many homes...

Mabel Loomis Todd

1305-1315 30th St. NW

Henry Adams

2017 I Street NW

George M. Lightfoot

1329 Missouri Ave. NW

Alice Tisdale Hobart

3031 Sedgwick St. NW

Anthony Hecht

4256 Nebraska Ave. NW

Gideon Ferebee, Jr.

71 N Street NW

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

1221 Newton St. NE

Elaine Magarrell

2131 Tunlaw Rd. NW

Robert Peary

2940 Newark Street, NW

Luis Muñoz Marín

1914 Connecticut Ave. NW

Julia Magruder

1906 Calvert St. NW

Cecilio J. Carneiro

2015 Belmont Street NW

Louis Untermeyer

200 C St. SE, Washington DC

John Bigelow, Jr.

1836 Jefferson Place Northwest, Washington, DC, USA

James Roosevelt II

2133 R Street, Washington, DC

James Roosevelt II

1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

Molly Elliot Seawell

1767 P St. NW, Washington, DC

Ellen Tarr O’Connor Calder

1015 O St. NW, Washington DC

Mery Berri Chapman Hansbrough

1100 Alabama Ave SE, Washington, DC, USA

Frederick Douglass

1411 W St. SE, Washington DC

Frederick Douglass

320 A St. NE, Washington DC

Ambrose Bierce

1368 Euclid St. NW

Ambrose Bierce

18 Logan Circle NW

Ambrose Bierce

1825 19th St. NW

Ambrose Bierce

1321 Fairmont St. NW

Eugene McCarthy

7902 Custer Rd.

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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)
Doug Lang (April 11, 1941)
Gil Scott-Heron (April 1, 1949)
Christopher Hitchens (April 13, 1949)
Essex Hemphill (April 16, 1957)
Yvonne Brown (April 18, 1977)