A map of Mt. Pleasant and Columbia Heights from 1903. Courtesy of Ghosts of D.C.

This post has been updated

If a realtor told you there was a beautiful house for sale on Xenia Street NW, you probably wouldn’t have any idea what they were talking about. That’s because it is now known as Decatur Street. Or Zanesville Street? That’s now Farragut Street. Kenesaw Street? That’s now Irving Street.

As Ghosts of D.C. has recently written, the streets in the parts of D.C. that existed outside of L’Enfant’s original plans had very different names. It wasn’t until the early 1900s, in fact, that the District Commissioners adopted new street names for a variety of new neighborhoods, including Petworth, Columbia Heights, Cleveland Park, Woodley Park, Anacostia, and others. All told, the name changes affected 100 new subdivisions in D.C.—the parts of town that were then thought of as the suburbs.

An announcement of new street names in Petworth appeared in The Washington Post in 1901.

An interesting history of the Crestwood neighborhood included the following explanation as to how the new names were assigned:

The plan called for numbered streets traveling north and south—while east-west streets would run in alphabetical order and be named after famous Americans. Thoroughfares that had already appeared on maps as Savannah, Trenton, Utica, Vallejo, Yuma, Zanesvillle, Albemarle and Brandywine Streets were changed to Taylor, Upshur, Varnum, Webster, Allison, Buchanan, Crittenden and Decatur.

While it may be unfortunate that some of the better street names from that time were changed, there was at least some logic to it all—before the changes were made, east-west streets could go by different names depending on what neighborhood they were in. Kenyon Street—which was one of the few names that went unchanged—had once only run through Mt. Pleasant and Columbia Heights, turning into Marshall Street in the block between Sherman Avenue and Georgia Avenue (then known as Seventh Street or Brightwood Avenue) and Hancock Street thereafter. Park Road only really existed from where Mt. Pleasant Street is today until it hit 14th Street; to the west it was Lowell Street and to the east it was Whitney Avenue.

Names continued to evolve and change for a few years until they got to where we are today. So, still interested in that house on Xenia Street?

UPDATE, 12:55 p.m.: Apparently you can still on Xenia Street if you really want! There’s one in Southeast and Southwest D.C., though they’re very short.