Spring Valley is a largely residential neighborhood in Ward 3, NorthwestWashington, D.C. As of July 2021, it was the most expensive neighborhood in the District, with homes selling at a median price of $1.465 million.[1]
It had the highest percentage of people voting for Donald Trump of any precinct in the 2016 election, at 15%.[3]
History
The neighborhood was the flagship development of the W.C. and A.N. Miller Companies, which sold its first homes in the subdivision in 1928, and built and sold homes there over the next 80 years.[4] The neighborhood was originally deed-restricted, with W.C. and A.N. Miller prohibiting the sale or rental of the property to "persons of Negro blood or extraction, or to any person of Semitic race, blood, or origin, which racial description shall be deemed to include Armenians, Jews, Hebrews, Persians, and Syrians"; the Millers claimed that these covenants reflected the desires of the residents, and not the prejudice of the company or its officers, and anyway could not be eliminated.[5] Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled such covenants were unenforceable in 1948, they remained in the language of the deeds and were the subject of litigation into the 1960s.
Much of the land was formerly owned by American University. In 1917 the federal government established a weapons testing facility on land leased from the university, and the U.S. Army established Camp Leach to produce and test chemical weapons there, including mustard gas components, lewisite, and arsenic.[6] The Army closed down the facility after World War I, and the university sold off the property for development. In 1993, construction workers discovered unexploded chemical mortar rounds and 75mm shells, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers carried out a cleanup dubbed Operation Safe Removal over the next two years which uncovered 141 munitions, including 42 poison gas shells.[6] Nevertheless, reports of health problems continued and in 1997, the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, at the request of D.C. Department of Health officials, released a report indicating the Army Corps of Engineers had botched the cleanup. Further investigations found that the contamination was not widespread, and limits to certain plots, notably the home at 4825 Glenbrook Road NW. Its owners, whose lawyers characterized the plot as the "mother of all toxic dumps," settled a federal lawsuit with the government, American University, and W.C. and A.N. Miller, and the house was demolished in 2012.[7] Excavation and restoration at the 4825 Glenbrook site took 8 years, being declared complete in August 2020.[8]
The cleanup by 2013 had cost the army $221 million,[9] before being paused in 2014 for three years. Between 2000 and 2017, more than 500 additional munition items, 400 pounds of laboratory glassware, and 100 tons of contaminated soil were removed as the cleanup continued.[10] Work was paused with the discovery of an unknown substance containing low levels of mustard gas, and again after seven workers were sickened.[11] By 2018, more than 1,600 homes had been screened for potentially elevated levels of arsenic, and contaminated soil had been removed from 180 homes.[12]
Geography
Intersection of 49th St. and Hillbrook Lane NW in February 2021
The neighborhood is bounded by Nebraska Avenue and Loughboro Road to its south, Dalecarlia Parkway to its west, and Massachusetts Avenue to its northeast; Dalecarlia and Mass. Ave. converge at Westmoreland Circle, on the Maryland border.
Massachusetts Avenue is the main commercial corridor serving the area. Neighborhood landmarks include the main campus of American University and the Wesley Theological Seminary, at 4400 and 4500 Massachusetts Ave. NW respectively. The former Washington College of Law campus at 4801 and 4910 Massachusetts Avenue is also here, although the institution has since moved to nearby Tenleytown. Paradoxically, the neighborhood to the northeast is called American University Park, even though the bulk of the main campus is located in Spring Valley.
American University and Wesley Theological Seminary are located in the southeast of the neighborhood. No elementary or secondary institutions are located in Spring Valley; District of Columbia Public Schools students attend Horace Mann Elementary School, Hardy Middle School, and Jackson-Reed High School.
Dupont Circle is a traffic circle, park, neighborhood, and historic district in Northwest Washington, D.C. The Dupont Circle neighborhood is bounded approximately by 16th Street NW to the east, 22nd Street NW to the west, M Street NW to the south, and Florida Avenue NW to the north. Much of the neighborhood is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. However, the local government Advisory Neighborhood Commission and the Dupont Circle Historic District have slightly different boundaries.
Northwest is the northwestern quadrant of Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, and is located north of the National Mall and west of North Capitol Street. It is the largest of the four quadrants of the city, and it includes the central business district, the Federal Triangle, and the museums along the northern side of the National Mall, as well as many of the District's historic neighborhoods.
The Palisades, or simply Palisades, is a neighborhood in Washington, D.C., along the Potomac River, running roughly from the edge of the Georgetown University campus to the D.C.-Maryland boundary. MacArthur Boulevard is the main thoroughfare that passes through the Palisades.
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Shepherd Park is a neighborhood in the northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. In the years following World War II, restrictive covenants which had prevented Jews and African Americans from purchasing homes in the neighborhood were no longer enforced, and the neighborhood became largely Jewish and African American. Over the past 40 years, the Jewish population of the neighborhood has declined, but the neighborhood has continued to support a thriving upper and middle class African American community. The Shepherd Park Citizens Association and Neighbors Inc. led efforts to stem white flight from the neighborhood in the 1960s and 1970s, and it has remained a continuously integrated neighborhood, with very active and inclusive civic groups.
Camp American University was the name the U.S. military used for the segment of the Washington, D.C. main campus of American University during World War I and World War II.
Camp Leach was the name the U.S. military used for the segment of the Washington, D.C. main campus of American University during World War I and World War II. The site is now in Spring Valley.
Dalecarlia Reservoir is the primary storage basin for drinking water in Washington, D.C., fed by an underground aqueduct in turn fed by low dams which divert portions of the Potomac River near Great Falls and Little Falls. The reservoir is located between Spring Valley and the Palisades, two neighborhoods in Northwest Washington, and Brookmont, a neighborhood in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Pine Bluff Chemical Activity is a subordinate organization of the United States Army Chemical Materials Agency located at Pine Bluff Arsenal in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The U.S. Army stored approximately twelve percent of its original chemical weapons at the Pine Bluff Arsenal since 1942. Destruction of the last chemical weapons occurred on November 12, 2010.
Petworth is a residential neighborhood in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. It is bounded to the east by the Armed Forces Retirement Home and Rock Creek Cemetery, to the west by Arkansas Avenue NW, to the south by Rock Creek Church Road NW and Spring Road NW, and to the north by Kennedy Street NW.
Streetcars in Washington, D.C. transported people across the city and region from 1862 until 1962.
The Capital Crescent Trail (CCT) is a 7.04-mile (11.33 km) long, shared-use rail trail that runs from Georgetown in Washington, D.C., to Bethesda, Maryland. An extension of the trail from Bethesda to Silver Spring along a route formerly known as the Georgetown Branch Trail is being built as part of the Purple Line light rail project.
Wakefield is a neighborhood in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C., bounded by Albemarle Street NW to the south, Nebraska Avenue NW to the west, and Connecticut Avenue to the east. It is served by the Van Ness-UDC and Tenleytown-AU station on the Washington Metro's Red Line.
Little Falls Branch, a 3.8-mile-long (6.1 km) tributary stream of the Potomac River, is located in Montgomery County, Maryland. In the 19th century, the stream was also called Powder Mill Branch. It drains portions of Bethesda, Somerset, Friendship Heights, and the District of Columbia, flows under the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O), and empties into the Potomac at Little Falls rapids, which marks the upper end of the tidal Potomac.
A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), "the term chemical weapon may also be applied to any toxic chemical or its precursor that can cause death, injury, temporary incapacitation or sensory irritation through its chemical action. Munitions or other delivery devices designed to deliver chemical weapons, whether filled or unfilled, are also considered weapons themselves."
The Current Newspapers consisted of four print and online weekly community newspapers in Washington, D.C., with editions targeted to affluent communities in Georgetown, Dupont Circle, Foggy Bottom, and Northwest DC.
Montgomery Blair Sibley is a former American lawyer who had his Florida Bar license suspended in 2008, and is best known for defending Deborah Palfrey, the "DC Madam", in 2007-2008.
Segra Field is a soccer-specific stadium in Leesburg, Virginia, and the home of Loudoun United FC of the USL Championship and Old Glory DC of Major League Rugby.
Frank "Skip" Groff was an American record producer, DJ, and owner of Yesterday and Today record store in Rockville, Maryland, at the center of much of Washington D.C.'s punk and alternative music scenes.
The W.C. and A.N. Miller Companies are a group of related privately-held real estate firms known for developing residential communities in Washington, D.C. and its surrounding metropolitan area. Developers of neighborhoods including Spring Valley and Wesley Heights in D.C., Sumner in Bethesda, and Potomac Falls in Potomac, Maryland, they were considered to be one of Washington's most renowned realty developers in the early 20th century.
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