American University

American University. Top of the Town. , Beyond Ward Circle to your left is the campus of American University, chartered by Congress in 1893. Methodist Bishop John Fletcher Hurst guided the university’s development as a center for training future public servants. With its schools in business, law, public affairs, communications, and more, the modern university continues Hurst’s wide-ranging vision. , American University’s ties to the nation’s capital are not just geographic. During both world wars, the U.S. military used the campus as training grounds, with soldiers and sailors adding new energy to daily life in Tenleytown. And President John F. Kennedy chose his American University commencement speech in 1963 as the moment to call on the Soviet Union to craft a historic nuclear test ban treaty. , American University occupies grounds once owned by Tenleytown’s largest landowners, the descendants of the Addison-Murdock families. In the early 1800s, John Murdock’s hospitality attracted distinguished guests, including George Washington, to his country estate, “Friendship.” During the Civil War (1861–1865), Murdock’s tract, incorporating today’s Ward Circle and Katzen Arts Center, became Fort Gaines, headquarters of the dashing French Algerian “Zouaves.” When Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary dined with Colonel de Troibriand on the camp’s French cuisine, Lincoln declared it “the best meal he had had in Washington,” and announced, “if their men could fight as well as they could cook, the regiment would do very well indeed.”