Grant Road Historic District

The Grant Road Historic District is located on the 4400 and 4500 blocks of Grant Road NW in the Tenleytown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The 4400 block begins north of Tenley Circle at the intersection with Wisconsin Avenue, then crosses Fort Drive. Nebraska Avenue divides the two blocks. The 4500 block begins at the junction of 39th Street, Albemarle Street, and Grant Street, then proceeds northeast to the intersection with Brandywine Street. The historic district ends at this intersection, but this portion of Grant Road extends for another half block. Nebraska Avenue separates Grant Street from a one block portion further northeast between Cumberland and Davenport Streets. There are two additional stretches of Grant Road further east: two blocks between 30th and 32nd Streets, and an unnumbered portion between Broad Branch Road and Ridge Road that passes through Rock Creek Park. The historic district includes the road itself and 13 contributing buildings, one of which is a commercial building on Wisconsin Avenue. The remaining buildings are single-family homes on Grant Road: homes on the north side of the 4400 block and south side of the 4500 block. There are several non-contributing houses on the 4500 block that were built in the mid-20th century. The 4500 block of Grant Road is narrow at only 33 feet (10 m) wide, which is around half the standard width of streets in the city, and does not have a sidewalk or street furniture. The buildings on the 4400 block include the commercial building fronting Wisconsin Avenue and three homes on a small ridge. ==History==

18th and 19th centuries Around 1795, blacksmith John Tennally opened a small tavern at the intersection of present-day Wisconsin Avenue and River Road, which were former Native American footpaths. Around a dozen families soon moved to the area, forming a village called Tennallytown, the second oldest settlement in present-day Washington, D.C. The village became a stagecoach stop for people traveling between Georgetown and Maryland. In the 1791 plan for the new federal City of Washington, the village was included in the city's boundary. Due to its distance from the city center, Tenallytown would remain a small rural village in Washington County for many years. The village's name gradually changed to the present spelling, Tenleytown. In 1805 present-day Wisconsin Avenue became a toll road and was later macadamized in the late 1810s and early 1820s. The village continued to grow in the 1800s, with a church, school, houses, and other businesses built near the tavern. By the 1850s the stagecoach service had ended due to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the village was connected to rural communities to its east by a country lane that was called New Cut Road or Road from Turnpike to Broad Branch. During the Civil War farmland in the surrounding area was seized by the federal government after the Union Army was defeated at the First Battle of Bull Run. The government built Fort Reno, one of 68 fortifications built to defend the city, on the city's highest natural point of 409 feet (125 m). The people who lived in the remaining houses on Grant Road took notice and sought to protect their properties from demolition. Following a historic landmark designation process, the 4400 and 4500 blocks of Grant Road and its 13 remaining historic buildings were added to the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites on April 21, 2002, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 3, 2004. The Grant Road Historic District was the first historic district in the city to include just a single street. In 2017 a mural depicting some of Tenleytown's history and landmarks was painted on the side of 4425 Wisconsin Avenue NW. ==Architecture==

The two-story stucco and stone commercial building at 4425 Wisconsin Avenue NW is one of several buildings in the historic district designed in the Italianate style. The building is two-stories and three bays wide with a sloped roof. It originally included a projecting storefront but that was later replaced with the current show window. The building's main entrance is on Wisconsin Avenue, but the side door facing Grant Road originally served as a second entrance. The house at 4561 Grant Road NW, also known as the Payne House, is another two-story, two-bay wide Italianate house. It includes the original porch with decorative elements. The vernacular I-house at 4565 Grant Road NW is two-stories and three bays wide with a small porch. The last house in the historic district, 3812 Brandywine Street NW, is also two-stories and three bays wide. It was designed in the Italianate style and includes a small porch. ==Table of contributing buildings==