Palisades Recreation Center

Palisades Recreation Center. District of Columbia Parks and Recreation. , Inhabitants , When Captain John Smith first sailed up the Potomac in 1608, he encountered several Native American villages on both sides of the river in what was later to become the District of Columbia. Various names have been assigned to these early inhabitants, although most historians believe that they were Algonquian speaking and perhaps related to the Piscataway tribes of Maryland. The inhabitants may have belonged to the same tribe occupying the banks of the Potomac near the Eastern Branch, known today as the Anacostia River. That tribe has been referred to in the past by the names "Nacotchtankes" and "Necostins," as well as the later derivative "Anacostin." The designs for the paver "rugs" at the benches here were inspired by local Native American ceramic patterns., A Summer Community , For its views, landscapes and cool summer breezes, the Palisades became a site for country homes as early as the 1820s, when Georgetown iron founder Henry Foxall purchased his "Spring Hill" farm. Across the Maryland border in the 1880s, a summer camp of Methodist Chatauqua adult-education movement evolved into an amusement resort known since as Glen Echo Park. About the same time, Stilson Hutchins, founder of The Washington Post, erected a country home in the vicinity., The neighborhood's natural advantages and proximity to the new reservoirs and graveled Conduit Road encouraged attempts at residential subdivisions as early as 1876. But the Palisades of the Potomac Land Improvement Company, formed in 1890, was the first to have any success, giving the neighborhood its name and several architectural landmarks. Stilson Hutchins, Jacob Clark, Edward Cotterell, John C. Hurst and other investors purchased several tracts, divided them into 50-foot-wide lots, and built fashionable homes for themselves to lure affluent buyers. Architect Richard Ough designed the earliest, Queen-Anne-style residences, including his own home at 4898 MacArthur Boulevard, and "Glen Hurst" for John C. Hurst at 4933 MacArthur., Suburban Development , In 1917, there were only six houses present on Sherier Place; by 1920, there were thirty-five. The house that once stood here at 5136 Sherier Place, N.W., was constructed by its owner, Jesse Baltimore, in 1925, in the midst of the Palisades residential development. The "Jesse Baltimore House," as it came to be known, was a Sears, Roebuck and Company "Fullerton" model kit house. Considered a truly American house type, foursquare-type houses typically employ American Arts and Crafts principles of horizontality, manifested as heavy rooflines with overhanging eaves. Other Sears, Roebuck houses exits with the Palisades., Baltimore lived in the house with his family until 1958. The National Park Service bought the property south of the Jesse Baltimore House in 1958 and one year later purchased the Baltimore property. In 1972, NPS transferred the property to the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation as an addition to the Palisades Recreation Center. During the 1970s, the house was used as a halfway house by the D.C. Department of Human Services. By the time it was razed in 2008, it had been vacant for close to twenty years.