The
Nacotchtank Native Americans were the first settlers to inhabit the area now known as Fairlawn, living and fishing along the nearby
Anacostia River. Captain
John Smith was the first
European to visit the region in A.D. 1612, naming the river the "Nacotchtank". War and disease decimated the Nacochtank, and during the last 25 years of the 17th century the tribe ceased to exist as a functional unit and its few remaining members merged with other local
Piscataway tribes. European settlement in Southeast Washington first occurred in 1662 at
Blue Plains (now the site of
the city's sewage treatment plant just to the west of the modern neighborhood of
Bellevue), and at St. Elizabeth (now the site of
St. Elizabeths Hospital psychiatric hospital) and Giesborough (now called
Barry Farm) in 1663. In 1663,
Lord Baltimore granted ownership of the majority of the area on the south bank of the Anacostia River to George Thompson.
William Marbury, a wealthy
Georgetown merchant who later was a party in the landmark
Marbury v. Madison Supreme Court case, purchased much of the "Chichester tract" some time in the late 18th or early 19th century. This
toll bridge was designed to permit easy access to Anacostia so that housing could be constructed on the eastern shore of the Anacostia River. In the late 1820s or early 1830s, Marbury sold his land to Enoch Tucker, a farmer who rented out part of the land to
tenant farmers and built his home near the intersection of Upper Marlborough Road and Piscataway Road. Naming the area Uniontown (it is the neighborhood of
Anacostia today), the development became Washington's first "suburban" community. Van Hook (the lead developer) renamed streets in the area after former presidents: Upper Marlborough Road was now called "Harrison Street," and Piscataway Road now known as "Monroe Street". Fairlawn remained largely undeveloped farm and woodland until 1940.
Uniontown/Anacostia,
Barry Farm,
Congress Heights, and
Randle Highlands were the focus of most housing and retail development. Even these communities remained isolated from one another, and most of the land between them was forest until
World War II. The oppressive need for housing during the war, brought about by a massive influx of federal workers to the capital, led to extensive building of homes in Fairlawn and the linking of the neighborhood with other parts of southeast D.C. The site of the
Anacostia Metro station at this intersection led to concerns that the Metro station would destroy the character of historic Anacostia and Fairlawn, and after pressure from the federal government Metro moved the site of the station to its current location on Howard Road SE. ==Notable establishments and place names in Fairlawn==