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
Yan Huiqing
Born in Shanghai, Yan Huiqing was one of the first American-educated Chinese scholars and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1900. He has also published under the names Wei Ching Williams Yen, and W.W. Yen. Yan taught English in Shanghai before entering government service and serving as premier fives times. He was China’s first ambassador to the Soviet Union and the Chinese delegate to the League of Nations.
Yan was the author of the two volume An English and Chinese Standard Dictionary(1908). During World War II while under Japanese house-arrest in Hong Kong, he translated and compiled Stories of Old China (1942). His autobiography East-West Kaleidoscope, 1877–1946: An Autobiography was published in English in 1974 and in Chinese in 2003.
He lived in this residence as the Chinese Ambassador to the United States from 1931–1933.
Just some of our many homes...
James Weldon Johnson
1333 R St. NW, Washington DC
Jean Toomer
1422 Harvard St. NW
Owen Dodson
1813 16th St. NW, Washington DC
Owen Dodson
1707 Columbia Rd. NW
Charles W. Bailey II
3001 Albemarle St. NW
George Watterston
224 Second St. SE, Washington, DC
Luis Muñoz Marín
1914 Connecticut Ave. NW
Whittaker Chambers
2831 28th St NW
Edwin Zimmerman
1824 Phelps Place Northwest, Washington, DC, USA
John Elsberg
422 Cleveland St., Arlington, VA
Evalyn Walsh McLean
2020 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Evalyn Walsh McLean
3308 R Street NW, Washington DC
Una Marson
1921 S St. NW, Washington DC
Gwendolyn Bennett
1454 T St. NW, Washington DC
Jean Johnson
6041 Ridge Drive, Bethesda, MD, USA
Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice
1525 H St NW, Washington, DC, United States
Josiah Henson
11420 Old Georgetown Rd.
Leonora Speyer
1318 30th St NW
Herman Taube
10500 Rockville Pike
Howard Nemerov
5425 39th St NW, Washington DC
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
Joseph Kraft
3115 O Street NW, Washington, DC
Eugene McCarthy
7902 Custer Rd.
Tcheng Yu-hsiu
2001 19th St NW
Latest from Twitter
A Twitter List by TwitterDevAuthor Birthdays
in March
Emily Lee Sherwood (March 28, 1839)
Emily Hawthorn (March 21, 1845)
Ella Dorsey (March 2, 1855)
John Hays Hammond (March 31, 1855)
Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson (March 3, 1876)
Margaret Fishback (March 10, 1900)
Alba de Céspedes (March 11, 1911)
L. Ron Hubbard (March 13, 1911)
Lucille Fletcher (March 28, 1912)
Francis Coleman Rosenberger (March 22, 1915)
Henry Brandon (March 9, 1916)
Eugene McCarthy (March 29, 1916)
Robert Lowell (March 1, 1917)
Pearl Bailey (March 29, 1918)
Douglass Wallop (March 8, 1920)
Anne Truitt (March 16, 1921)
Shirley Graves Cochrane (March 5, 1925)
Stacy Johnson Tuthill (March 10, 1925)
Rafael Squirru (March 23, 1925)
Sandra Day O’Connor (March 26, 1930)
Judith Farr (March 13, 1936)
Jane Flanders (March 26, 1940)
James Oliver Horton (March 28, 1943)
Askia Muhammad (March 28, 1945)
Mark Wayne Craver (March 3, 1956)
Venus Thrash (March 30, 1959)