Mount Vernon Square Historic District

About this property

Mount Vernon Square is a city square and neighborhood in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. The square is located where the following streets would otherwise intersect: Massachusetts Avenue NW, New York Avenue NW, K Street NW, and 8th Street NW. Mount Vernon Square is bounded on the east by 7th Street NW, on the west by 9th Street NW, on the north by Mount Vernon Place, and on the south by a two-block section of K Street NW that is slightly offset from the rest of K Street. In the center of the square is the Carnegie Library of Washington D.C., finished in 1903, as a gift of industrialist Andrew Carnegie. The white marble Beaux-Arts building was originally the central library for Washington, D.C. The building now houses the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., and an Apple Store. The square was in the original L'Enfant Plan for the city but in the early 1800s was divided into four triangles by the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and New York Avenue. The old Northern Liberty Market stood along Seventh Street until 1872, when it was demolished by Governor Alexander Shepherd in a night raid with two to 300 men. The roadways were removed in 1882 at the request of residents who complained that "in its former condition the constant passage of vehicles of all descriptions through the park made it unpleasant and oftentimes dangerous for those frequenting it." The Carnegie Library of Washington D.C. was built in 1903. It was the central library for the city until 1972, when the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library was completed. The library sat abandoned for a decade until it was renovated as a library for the University of the District of Columbia. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the city's furniture stores and more economical department stores such as Goldberg's and Kaufman's were located along 7th Street NW in the 7th Street shopping district, most of which was in the neighborhood now known as Mount Vernon Square. Further south, just below today's Chinatown, the 7th Street corridor met the F Street corridor with its more upscale apparel and department stores. In 1999, the library became the headquarters for the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. The City Museum of Washington opened in the library in May 2003, but closed less than two years later. In 2008, a sculpture was installed on the lawn at the south side of the square - "The Hand" created by Jim Fauntleroy in the 1960s for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Poor People’s Campaign. The Washington Convention and Sports Authority took over the library building in 2011, renting it out for events. The building underwent significant renovations in 2018, to accommodate a new Apple Store and exhibit space for the Historical Society.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in District of Columbia County

Historic places, battles, and census history across District of Columbia County.

More historic places in District of Columbia

Browse all historic places in District of Columbia.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

District of Columbia history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.