National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

NPS Form 10-900-a 0MB Approval No. 1024-0018
(M6)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
CLEVELAND PARK HISTORIC DISTRICT
WASHINGTON D.C.
Section number 8 Page 3
District of Columbia to receive such a designation, and the Cleveland Park
area maintains its integrity especially with regard to scale. (Criteria C;
Area of Significance: Community Planning and Development)
The Cleveland Park Historic District includes significant architectural
examples of commercial architecture from the 1920's and 1930's. Located
within the Cleveland Park Historic District is the first shopping center in
Washington D.C. and possibly the earliest on the East Coast of this particular
configuration since it was repeatedly cited in contemporary journals as a new
solution to urban traffic, parking and shopping problems. The Park and Shop
(Connecticut and Ordway) introduced the novel idea of a single commercial
complex with coordinated merchandising and easily accessible off-street
parking in front making one-stop shopping a convenient reality. The Cleveland
Park Historic District includes in its commercial precinct an unusually intact
example of the 1920's linear shopping (commercial) strip which generated
increasing traffic congestion caused by on-street parking and located adjacent
to it is the 1930 prototype shopping center which provided a solution to that
problem. In addition directly across Connecticut Avenue in the 3400 block are
two mixed use commercial projects of the 1930's capitalizing on the ideas
introduced in the Park and Shop prototype shopping center. In a microcosm the
Cleveland Park Shopping area represents the problems created during the 1920's
with the increasing personal use of the automobile and the solution provided
to ease that problem and subsequent variations on the solution. The Cleveland
Park commercial precinct possesses the integrity of its original location,
design, materials, workmanship, setting, feeling and association visually
representing in the 1980's enlightened thinking and planning for the
development of neighborhood shopping in the 1920's and 1930's. (Criteria C;
Areas of Significance: Community Planning and Development and Architecture)
The Cleveland Park Historic District also includes important
architectural examples of the development of apartment house design- in the
District of Columbia. It has examples of small scale apartment buildings
(some of which are combined with first floor shops) of the 1920's along
Connecticut Avenue adjacent to and punctuating the corners in the commercial
precinct. Located on one of the residential street are the first garden
apartments in the District of Columbia. Along Connecticut Avenue north of the
shops are outstanding examples of late 1920's suburban style apartment houses
in the Jacobean style and Art Deco apartment buildings of the 1930's.
(Criteria C; Area of Significance: Architecture)
Finally the Cleveland Park Historic District yields information important
to the understanding of the physical growth and development of Washington D.C.
as a city. The Cleveland Park Historic District embodies visual examples of
three distinct historic phases in its growth and development which parallel
the history of the city. One 18th century estate, Rosedale, with its
surrounding landscape intact, exemplifies the earliest period of the federal
city when it was contained within its boundaries and only a few landowners
found it convenient to travel into "town" from the surrounding farmland known
as the "county". One summer home estate, Twin Oaks, stands intact as a
reminder of the period in the 1880's when President Grover Cleveland set a