Ran across a fascinating post on Greater Greater Washington about planned but never completed traffic circles. Our area had quite a few, including Meade Circle, named for the Civil War general, which was planned at the intersection of 16th, Columbia and Mt. Pleasant, and Grant Circle at 12th, Columbia, California Ave and New Jersey Ave. Of course, the last three streets were never built that far up into our neighborhood — 12th ends at about Florida, New Jersey ends in Shaw, and California was reduced to a few blocks (and is no longer an avenue). There was also to be a McLellan Circle near Howard U. at 8th and College, which is now either Bryant or Barry.
The map, which I overlaid on Google Maps above, shows a lot of other interesting features, like different street names (Kennesaw for Irving, Yale for Fairmont, etc, which I’ve written about before) plus an entirely different street alignment.
If you click “view larger toggle-able map” you can toggle back and forth between the old map and the new one. The map is from 1887, and is Axel Silversparre’s Map of Washington, D.C., and environs : with marginal numbers and measuring tape attachment for instantly locating points of interest within a radius of twenty miles from the Capitol.
