page_title: Petworth (Washington, D.C.)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Petworth (Washington, D.C.) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: John Tayloe III, painting by Gilbert Stuart, Metropolitan Museum of Art
context_page_description: Petworth is a residential neighborhood in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. It is bounded to the east by the Armed Forces Retirement Home and Rock Creek Cemetery, to the west by Arkansas Avenue NW, to the south by Rock Creek Church Road NW and Spring Road NW, and to the north by Kennedy Street NW.
  The neighborhood is primarily residential with a mix of terraced houses and single-family homes. It is accessible via the Georgia Ave–Petworth station on the Green Line and Yellow Line of the Washington Metro. Petworth borders to two expanses of historic greenspace, Rock Creek Cemetery and President Lincoln's Cottage at the Soldiers' Home.
  Petworth is represented on the Council of the District of Columbia by the Ward 4 council member: since May 2015, Brandon Todd. Muriel Bowser served as Ward 4 councilmember until she became the city's mayor on January 2, 2015.
context_section_description: Petworth was the name of the 205-acre country estate of John Tayloe III, likely named for the ancient town in West Sussex, England. The estate was bequeathed to his son Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, located at the northeast corner of 7th Street Pike (later known as Brightwood Avenue, now Georgia Avenue) and Rock Creek Church Road. In 1887, it was sold by Tayloe's heirs to developers for $107,000. In 1889, developers registered “Petworth” with the District surveyor as a 387-acre plat of subdivision containing the former Tayloe estate and the Marshal Brown estate. In 1893, additional real estate deals formed "West Petworth," from land west of Brightwood Avenue, including the Ruppert Farm, which was sold for $142,680, the 20-acre Burnaby tract, and a 14-acre property known as Poor Tom’s Last Shaft. In 1900, Henry J. Ruppert sold an additional 31.7 acres west of Brightwood and Iowa Avenues and south of Utica Street (now Allison Street) to the District for a proposed municipal hospital.
  In the early 1900s, the expansion of a streetcar line along Georgia Avenue to the border of Silver Spring, Maryland, made Petworth more accessible.
  Many of the thousands of similar brick row houses in the neighborhood were constructed by Morris Cafritz and by D.J. Dunigan Company in the 1920s–1930s. Dunigan donated the land that became the site for St. Gabriel's Church and School next to Grant Circle.
caption: John Tayloe III by Gilbert Stuart on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
exif: {}