Chapter 9: Dry Meadows and the Encroaching City

An 1894 Hopkins map of Washington, DC, and vicinity shows the first Chevy Chase Land Company development in Maryland. The Harris property is a dot marked “Harris” (circled here in red) on Broad Branch Road, to the right of Chevy Chase Circle. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division

Main Points

Development in the District grew as the population increased.
Residential segregation became common as sales in new developments were limited to white buyers.
Mary Harris put her children’s names on the Dry Meadows deed to protect it.
By 1902 the Dry Meadows was home to Mary Moten, her brother, her son, her daughter, and her grandchildren.
The young families living at Dry Meadows needed more room so they moved to the nearby Black neighborhood of Reno.
After World War I, racial tensions exploded as development increased segregation.
To build more white schools, the government bought up the property of Black neighborhoods using eminent domain.

Housing Development

As the federal government grew in the last decades of the 19^th century, so did the population of the District. The development of more housing began in the city and then spread into the open areas of Washington County. By 1890 the Chevy Chase Land Company, one of the biggest development companies, had acquired many acres in the District and nearby Maryland. It invested in electric streetcar service and the extension of roads in the District to the Maryland border. The new housing was intended for affluent white families.¹

At the end of the 19^th century, the Chevy Chase Land Company first subdivided its Maryland property and called it Chevy Chase. A small neighborhood was developed nearby for domestic workers who the affluent Chevy Chase residents employed. The area chosen was called Belmont, located near the District/Maryland border at what is today, Friendship Heights. When some plots in Belmont were purchased by Black people, there were great protests by neighbors, and the project eventually dissolved.²

This detail from a 1919 Baist’s Real Estate Survey map shows the extensive development by the Chevy Chase Land Company. The Harris property is a small triangle, located at the end of Patterson Street at the center right of the map and surrounded by newly developed housing. One piece of farmland backs onto their property. Courtesy of Library of Congress. Geography and Map Division.

Development of new housing was rapid in rural areas of the District. Mary Harris wanted to be sure that her children would get the family property after her death, so in 1898 she took legal action to divide it up among her four surviving children. A 1919 plat map shows a couple of large farms near the Dry Meadows property, but most of the area had been subdivided into small lots.³

Changes in the 20^th Century

Mary Harris died around the turn of the century. Her daughter Mary Moten lost her husband too, and she remained at Dry Meadows, sharing the property with three of her children and their families. Her brother Joseph and his wife came down from New York to live there as well.^[4]

The Independent Funeral Directors Association of Washington, DC. — Photo of the Independent Funeral Directors Association of Washington, DC, and guests on November 19, 1936. Because he was vice president of the organization, William Moten may be seated in the front row. Courtesy of Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

Racial Tensions

Space became more limited at Dry Meadows, so by 1917 Mary Moten’s son William and her daughter Rosetta and their families moved from Dry Meadows to the predominantly Black neighborhood of Reno in Tenleytown. It was an important move because a modern new school, the Jesse Reno School, had been built for Black children. William Moten developed a good business as a funeral director, became vice president of the Black directors’ professional organization, and purchased a home in Reno.⁵

After World War I, veterans returned home in an economic downturn. District Black residents began seeking more rights, better job opportunities, and the end of discrimination. Racial tension exploded when attacks on women were attributed to Black men, and mobs of white men roamed the city inciting violence. Economic insecurity rose in the Black community and home ownership decreased.⁶

In the 20s centrally located Black neighborhoods like Reno in Tenleytown came under pressure for gentrification, and newly developed plots of land often had deeds restricting sale to white buyers. In 1926 the Supreme Court upheld racially restrictive covenants in deeds, and residential segregation grew. Little by little race relations deteriorated.⁷

The 1930s of African American homes in the Fort Reno neighborhood — Photo from the 1930s of African American homes in the Fort Reno neighborhood on Dennison Place, Northwest, the street where William Moten and his family lived. Homes were razed to build a park. Reprinted with permission of John P. Wymer photo collection, Historical Society of Washington, DC.

Using the power of an eminent domain, the government began acquiring Black-owned property in Reno to build schools, then the federal government passed a bill to condemn Reno homes to build a park commemorating the Civil War fort. White residents supported the changes. Black homes in Reno were razed, and churches and a cemetery were moved away from the area. The Black cemetery, which was not far from the Dry Meadows property, was most probably the site of the graves of several Harris/Moten family members. William Moten had to sell his home to the government and his sister Rosetta and her family were displaced as well. The two families moved to two different areas of the District, and Reno, once a thriving Black neighborhood, disappeared.⁸

Photo from the Washington Post, June 2, 1929, in section entitled Days News in Camera Views.

The Sale of Dry Meadows

Like the Reno neighborhood, the Harris’s Dry Meadows property and the other properties of the Black settlement on Broad Branch Road were under siege by development in the 1920s. The large areas of surrounding farmland were bought and subdivided into lots which were sold only to white people. The need for a school became evident, and the government used eminent domain to buy the properties of the Broad Branch settlement. Thus, Mary Moten was forced to sell Dry Meadows to the government in the summer of 1928 so that a new elementary school for white children could be built. The property had belonged to the family for some eighty years.⁹

Did you know…?

Many communities in the 18^th and 19th centuries had white, Black, and immigrant families living near each other?
In the early 20^th century some Black families in DC were forced to move so that white schools could be built on their land?
In 2015 the 8^th generation of George Pointer’s descendants had a reunion on the grounds of Lafayette School where their ancestors had lived for almost 80 years. Several years later the school’s park was renamed after their ancestor.
October 11, 2023 will be George Pointer’s 250^th birthday.

Questions for Students

Why did racial conflict arise in the District in the second decade of the 20^th century?
Why did the government choose Black neighborhoods to build new schools?

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Endnotes

Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green, Between Freedom and Equality, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021, pp. 138-139
Torrey and Green, 139-140
Torrey and Green, 140
Torrey and Green, 143-144
Torrey and Green, 146-149
Torrey and Green, 150
Torrey and Green, 150-151
Torrey and Green, 151-155
Torrey and Green, 157-158

Other Sources

Asch, Chris Myers, and George Derek Musgrove. Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital. Chapel Hill: the University of North Carolina Press, 2017
Green, Constance McLaughlin. The Secret City, A History of Race Relations in the Nation’s Capital. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967
Helm, Judith Beck. Tenleytown, D.C., Country Village into City Neighborhood. Washington DC: Tennally Press, 1981.