If you have any suggestions for additions to the links below, please contact us.
Community and DC Organizations
- Cultural Tourism DC
- Chevy Chase Citizens Association
- Chevy Chase News & Notes (former ANC Commissioner Jerry Malitz’s free, widely circulated newsletter — a wealth of information that gets updated daily)
- Neighborhood Info DC (data on all of DC’s neighborhoods and wards)
- https://www.nnvdc.org/ Northwest Neighbors Village
Historical Societies
- Chevy Chase Historical Society (Maryland)
- Cleveland Park Historical Society
- Tenleytown Historical Society
- Montgomery County Historical Society
- The Historical Society of Washington, DC
Historic Districts in Washington, DC
- List of Historic Districts from DC Preservation League
- Historic District brochures from DC Historic Preservation Office
DC-wide Historical Research Organizations
Local History Blogs
- The House History Man
- Streets of Washington
- Boundary Stones: WETA’s Washington History Blog
- Pieces of History — A Blog of the U.S. National Archives
- Ghosts of DC blog
Sustainability and Green Issues
- Resources for Preservation and Sustainability – DC Office of Planning
- Preservation Green Lab – National Trust for Historic Preservation
Researching Your District of Columbia Home
The Washingtoniana Collection of the DC Library is the best place to start in researching your home. They are available at their interim location at UDC, 4340 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008, during the renovation of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library downtown. They regularly hold house history workshops and registration is required.
Other online and in-person sources of information useful for house histories include:
- For tracing transfers in ownership: The D.C. Recorder of Deeds
- Locating people: DC City Directories (for years 1822-1973)
- For finding residents in the census data: Heritage Quest database
- For finding building-specific information on construction year, name of builder, lot/square/microfilm location of building permit: HistoryQuestDC
For historic atlases or plat maps:
- Boschke 1857-1965 online at the Library of Congress
- Hopkins 1887-1896 online at DigDC
- Baist 1903-1919 online at the Library of Congress
- Baist 1903-1968 in print in Washingtoniana
- Sanborn 1888-1916 online at the Library of Congress
- DC Atlas current map online at DG
Historic Houses/Museums Nearby
- Hillwood Estate Museum and Gardens
- Tudor Place Historic House and Gardens
- Dumbarton House and Gardens
- Woodrow Wilson House
- President Lincoln’s Cottage
- Old Stone House, 3051 M Street NW
- Clara Barton National Historic Site
- Larz Anderson House, 2118 Massachusetts Ave. NW
- White House History Museum
- Heurich House Museum
- Mary McLeod Bethune Council House NPS