Saying Their Names is an annual event sponsored by KCA at Walter Pierce Park (photo by Gretchen Roberts Shorter)

KCA MEMBERS STRIVE TO DISCOVER, DOCUMENT, AND PROTECT OUR NEIGHBORHOOD’S IMPORTANT HISTORY. Our accomplishments include:

• Nominating Kalorama Park to the National Register of Historic Places, approved by the DC Historic Preservation Review Board in November 2015. KCA members worked with the historical-research firm Prologue DC to uncover the fascinating story of Kalorama Park, resulting in the Kalorama Park Historic Register nomination.
• Nominating Kalorama Park to the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. The National Park Service approved the nomination in 2008, honoring the escape of 20-year-old Hortense Prout from slavery on John Little’s farm at the site in 1861. Click here to read the Kalorama Park Underground Railroad nomination.
• Nominating the Kalorama Triangle Historic District to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987, to protect the architecturally significant buildings of the area bounded by Connecticut Avenue, Rock Creek Park, Columbia Road, and Calvert Street. (Click here to see the Historic District map.) KCA members worked with EHT Traceries Inc. to prepare the Kalorama Triangle Historic District Survey.
• Nominating the Washington Heights Historic District to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, to protect the architecturally significant buildings of the area bounded by Florida Avenue, Columbia Road, and 18th Street. (Click here to see the Historic District map.) KCA members worked with EHT Traceries Inc. to conduct the building-by-building Washington Heights Historic District Survey.
• Working with Howard University and members of the concerned community on the Walter Pierce Park Archaeology Project. Since 2005, KCA members have worked with Howard and American University scholars, descendants and other concerned citizens to document and protect the park’s African American and Quaker cemeteries, where more than 8,428 individuals were buried during the 19th Century. (For much more, go to walterpierceparkcemeteries.org.)
• Nominating Mt. Pleasant Plains Cemetery at Walter Pierce Park as a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom site. In 2015, KCA members earned national recognition for those who are buried in the park who risked their lives for freedom. Read the full report here, Mt. Pleasant Plains Cemetery at Walter Pierce Park underground railroad nomination 
• The Lanier Heights Historic District survey, conducted in 2007 and 2008 by KCA members and EHT Traceries Inc. to protect the historically significant buildings in the area bounded by Calvert Street, Columbia Road, Harvard Street and Rock Creek Park. KCA decided not to send the nomination to the DC Historic Preservation Review Board because of residents’ objections. Click to read the Lanier Heights Historic Survey.
• 

  Holt House before 1890. (Brady-Handy Collection, Library of Congress)

  Preserving Holt House: a Phase 1 architectural engineering assessment was conducted in 2003 by Quinn Evans Architectural Engineering with funds provided by KCA and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Holt House is a five-part country manor house built in 1817. Though badly deteriorated as a result of neglect, it still stands today across from Walter Pierce Park, on National Zoo grounds. To read the Quinn Evans assessment, click on Holt House Report 2003. 

  To donate to KCA’s historic-preservation efforts, make a check out to KCA, with “historic preservation” or a specific project on the notation line, and send it to KCA, P.O. Box 21311, Washington, DC 20009. To donate by credit card through PayPal, go to Join & Donate.