A Walking Tour of Washington, DC - Dupont Circle
It was the Board of Public works under the leadership of Alexander Shepherd that spearheaded the way
for the development of Dupont Circle. Nevada Senator William Morris Stewart led the “California
Syndicate” which bought up tracts of undeveloped land. The style of the neighborhood was set
when Stewart erected his mansion (now demolished) in the 1870s. By the late 1880s the Dupont
neighborhood was an affluent and vibrant neighborhood.
The Dupont Circle Historic District is a primarily residential district extending generally in all
directions from Dupont Circle. The area was developed in the last quarter of the 19th century and
the early years of the 20th century. Two types of housing predominate in the historic district: palatial
mansions and freestanding residences built in the styles popular between 1895 and 1910; and threeand-
four-story rowhouses, many of which are variations on the Queen Anne and Richardsonian
Romanesque Revival styles, built primarily before the turn of the century. The mansions line the broad,
tree-lined diagonal avenues that intersect the circle and the rowhouses line the grid streets of the
historic district. This juxtaposition of house types and street pattern gives the area a unique character.
The majority of the houses in the Dupont Circle Historic District are not mansions, however. The
blocks along the grid streets are lined with rowhouses that were occupied by middle-class professionals
and official Washingtonians. In recent years, pressure for large-scale commercial office development on
Connecticut Avenue has been intense. A number of new office buildings, some unsympathetic to the
historic district line the northern and southern fringes of Connecticut Avenue.
Dupont Circle Historic District is roughly bounded by Rhode Island Avenue, NW; M and N Sts.,
NW, on the south; Florida Avenue, NW, on the west; Swann St., NW, on the north; and the 16th
Street Historic District on the east. This walking tour will start in the cirlce itself...
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