District Schools & Universities
Not only is Washington, DC, the national capital and the home of the federal government, but from its beginning the city has also been a center of public and private education. Today, residents and visitors alike can visit several university campuses, and see numerous primary and secondary school buildings throughout the District's neighborhoods. Many of the school buildings, while still serving an educational function, have changed with the city to meet new needs. Other school buildings, like the former Shaw Junior High School and Syphax School, have been repurposed for new uses, such as housing. Especially notable is Franklin School, a National Historic Landmark, which has housed the Planet Word Museum since 2020.
This tour reveals a diversity of social histories, from an era of racial segregation through a period of integration following the U.S. Supreme Court decisions of Bolling v. Sharpe and Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which called for the desegregation of public schools.
This tour will also illustrate the variety of architectural styles, from the High Victorian Gothic style Healy Building at Georgetown University and Elizabethan style Cardozo High School to the early Modernism of Slowe Elementary School. One stop on the tour recognizes the former Dunbar High School building, which was designed in a Collegiate Gothic style and stood from 1916 to 1977. Dunbar continues to serve students today, but from a building completed in 2013 (the high school's third building). This is just a subset of the many historically-designated educational buildings in the District.
For an additional tour on school buildings, please see "African American Schools" under the Tours tab.
Loading Sites
Sites 56
John Philip Sousa Junior High School: This middle school stands as the epicenter of a critical battle in desegregating public education.
John Philip Sousa Junior High (now Middle) School, built in 1950, stands as a symbol of the lengthy conflict over the desegregation of public schools and the beginning of the modern civil rights…
Randle Highlands School: This school was designed in a Tudor and Elizabethan Revival style by Snowden Ashford, the city’s first Municipal Architect.
The Randle Highlands School, built between 1911 and 1912, is strongly associated with the history of the District’s public schools, and its construction in the early 20th century was due to the need…
Smothers Elementary School: This school, named for Henry Smothers, has welcomed students since the 1920s.
As DC’s urban landscape grew to accommodate its growing population, so did its young population of school-aged children. While schoolhouses existed throughout the city for these children, they were…
National Training School for Women and Girls
Founded in 1909, the National Training School for Women and Girls educated Black women from around the world. Unlike other prominent Black schools, such as the Tuskegee Institute, the founders did not…
Lucy Diggs Slowe Elementary School: Constructed during the fight for educational equality, the Lucy Diggs Slowe Elementary School stands as a symbol of civil rights activism in Brookland.
“Must we allow this nonsensical custom of segregation to deny our children adequate educational facilities while enrollment for schools of the other race is hardly sufficient for maintenance?” O.V. Maedel, “Slowe School Overcrowding,” letter to the editor, Evening Star, Nov. 4, 1950.
Holy Name College (and James Sherwood Farmhouse): This 10-acre landmark includes an 1880s Queen Anne style farmhouse and a 1930s Romanesque Revival/Art Deco style college building.
Holy Name College and the James Sherwood Farmhouse sit on 10-acres in the Brookland neighborhood. The two-story, wood-frame farmhouse was completed by farmer James Sherwood in 1886 within what had…
Bunker Hill Elementary School: This Colonial Revival style building is one of the District's best examples of an “extensible” school.
Established in 1883, Bunker Hill Elementary School's first building, a one-room brick structure, was used to educate white students before being reassigned to the city’s “colored” school division. A…
Marist College (Marist Hall): This Romanesque Revival style building on the campus of the Catholic University of America is one of many historic seminaries in Brookland’s “Little Rome.”
Marist Hall began as Marist College and served as a hub of advanced studies for the Society of Mary, one of the earliest Roman Catholic religious orders. The Society of Mary was legally incorporated…
Holy Redeemer College: Holy Redeemer College stands as a built legacy of “Little Rome” in Northeast DC.
Constructed in 1933, architect Anthony A.F. Schmitt designed Holy Redeemer College as a residential home for members of the Redemptorist religious order while they pursued studies at nearby Catholic…
Alexander Crummell School: Built between 1910 and 1911, the Alexander Crummell School is a notable 20th-century DC public school building.
The Alexander Crummell School, built between 1910 and 1911, is located in Ivy City. Municipal Architect Snowden Ashford designed the building in 1910 in a personalized Renaissance style, and…
Young, Browne, Phelps and Spingarn Educational Campus Historic District: This planned school campus includes four Colonial and Classical Revival style schools.
Spingarn Senior High School, Browne Junior High School, Charles Young Elementary School, and Phelps Architecture, Construction and Engineering (formerly Vocational) High School are located on…
Joel Elias Spingarn Senior High School: Spingarn was constructed to serve African American students during the final period of segregated schools in DC.
Built between 1951 and 1952, Spingarn High School was constructed for the education of African American students, meant to relieve the overcrowding of the other segregated high schools and had been…
Eastern High School: This Capitol Hill high school was designed in a Collegiate Gothic style and has been a major landmark along East Capitol Street for a century.
Eastern High School, located in the Capitol Hill neighborhood on the 1700 block of East Capitol Street NE, was constructed between 1921 and 1923 and designed by Municipal Architect Snowden Ashford in…
Rutherford B. Hayes School: This public school from 1897 was one of the city's first to be designed by private architects rather than a city office.
The Rutherford B. Hayes School is a large red brick school building constructed in 1897. It was designed by Charles E. Burden in a unique Italianate style characterized by twin entry towers and…
Gallaudet College Historic District: The Gallaudet College Historic District includes most of the original campus of the only university in the U.S. dedicated to the education of the deaf.
Gallaudet University, founded in 1864 as the National Deaf-Mute College, has been since its inception the only institution of higher learning in the United States devoted specifically to the education…
M Street High School (Perry School): M Street High School was one of the nation’s first high schools for African Americans and represents an important development of Washington’s education system.
Founded in 1870 as the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth, M Street High School navigated multiple makeshift locations until 1890 when Congress earmarked $112,000 for the construction of a…
Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (1916-1977): Dunbar High School became the country's first public high school for African Americans, producing generations of Black leaders.
Founded in 1870 as the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth in the basement of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church, the school became the country's first public high school for African Americans.…
Margaret Murray Washington School: This school provided vocational and manual training for African American students throughout the 20th century.
As public education programs expanded in the early 20th century, vocational education became more popular in order to train young people with desirable skills for specific industries. The Margaret…
John Fox Slater School: This building illustrates DC school design in the 1880s and 1890s.
Completed in 1891 for African American students by the city's Office of the Building Inspector, the John Fox Slater School was designed in a Queen Anne/Romanesque Revival style. The former school…
John Mercer Langston School: This building is an exceptional example of an African American school built during DC’s segregated school system era.
John Mercer Langston School was built in 1902 to handle the overflow of students from neighboring John Fox Slater School. Named for John Mercer Langston (1829-1897), the first African American…
Armstrong Manual Training School: The Armstrong Manual Training School is illustrative of the national campaign for vocational training for African Americans promoted by Booker T. Washington.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Armstrong Manual Training School and M Street High School were the only two high schools in DC that admitted black students. From its founding, Armstrong…
Morse School: Morse Elementary School is a significant property in the history of DC’s public schooling efforts in the 20th century.
Located in the Shaw neighborhood of Washington, DC, the Morse School served many purposes after its opening in 1883 as an elementary school that exclusively served white children. Designed by an…
Robert Gould Shaw Junior High School: From vocational training to junior high school to senior housing, this building demonstrates adaptive reuse.
Originally the William McKinley Manual Training School, this 1902 building served as the white counterpart to Armstrong Manual Training School, which offered vocational training for Black students.…
Central High School (Cardozo Senior High School): The city's largest and most elaborate high school was built 1914-1916 as the successor to Washington High School.
Built between 1914 and 1916, Cardozo High School is the work of William B. Ittner, a nationally prominent school architect from St. Louis. The Elizabethan-style building and athletic facilities were…
Howard University: This Historic District and National Historic Landmark encompasses three significant buildings on the Main Yard.
These three buildings on Howard University’s Main Yard are nationally significant as the setting for the institution’s role in the legal establishment of racially desegregated public education, and…
Miner Normal School: Since its construction, the Miner Building has played a significant role in Black education in DC.
Myrtilla Miner (1815-1864), a pioneer for Black female education, established the “Normal School for Colored Girls,” also known as the “Miner School for Girls” in 1851; its eventual large,…
Blanche Kelso Bruce School: Named for Blanche K. Bruce, this school served generations of African American students during the Jim Crow era.
Named in honor of Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841-1848), the first African American to serve a full term as an elected U.S. senator, the Renaissance Revival-style Bruce School served generations of African…
House of Mercy: This historic property overlooking Rock Creek Valley is now known as the Rosemount Center.
House of Mercy is located at the northwest edge of the Mount Pleasant Historic District on a ridge overlooking the wooded Rock Creek Valley. The building was constructed in a once rural setting, but…
MacFarland Junior High School: This middle school accommodated the rapid growth of Petworth.
The rapid development of Petworth in the three decades after 1900 meant that it needed new schools. Until the early 1920s, there was only a single elementary school in the neighborhood. Addressing…
Theodore Roosevelt High School: Once a business technical school, Theodore Roosevelt High School now serves the Petworth community as a general public high school.
Roosevelt High School was founded in 1890 as Business High School, then DC’s only institution devoted to instruction in business. The co-educational and segregated school had an itinerant early…
Military Road School: This school relates the struggles of Black people for accessible, public education in DC.
Established in 1864 to educate free people of color, the Military Road School was formerly located on Military Road, which connected DC’s Civil War forts. In particular, the Military Road School was…
Calvin Coolidge Senior High School: Constructed between 1937 and 1940, Calvin Coolidge Senior High School stands as one of the last schools built under DC’s Five-Year Building Plan.
Designed by Nathan C. Wyeth, Calvin Coolidge Senior High School (Coolidge High School) constitutes a significant example of Georgian Revival architecture in the District—and remains part of the…
Marjorie Webster Junior College Historic District: The Marjorie Webster School was an early private educational institution focused on the needs of working women.
This small intact campus was built by Marjorie Webster, a significant figure in the education of women in Washington, as a private junior college dedicated to the educational needs of working women.…
Lafayette Elementary School: Lafayette Elementary School became a visual landmark of the Chevy Chase neighborhood, as well as a community center, from 1931 onwards.
Built in 1931, Lafayette Elementary School accommodated the rapid growth of the suburban community, Chevy Chase. One of several schools of the 1925 five-year plan, this major building campaign…
Jesse Reno School: The Jesse Reno School, built in 1903, was a predominantly African American elementary school in the Tenleytown neighborhood.
The Jesse Reno School was built in 1903 for African American children. Designed by municipal architect Snowden Ashford, the school had four rooms on the first floor and four on the basement level. Its…
Jackson-Reed High School (Woodrow Wilson High School): This high school in Tenleytown opened in 1935 to help address overcrowding in DC's schools during the Great Depression.
Tenleytown's Jackson-Reed High School (originally called Woodrow Wilson High School) exemplifies the high standard of architectural quality that characterized Washington's public school design and…
Immaculata Seminary Historic District: Upon its construction in 1904, this school for girls became a major landmark in an increasingly busy Tenleytown.
In the early 20th century, the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary of the Woods, a Catholic order, purchased the property to establish the Immaculata Seminary school for girls, and constructed an…
Rose Lees Hardy School: The Rose Lees Hardy School honors its namesake through a deep commitment to education.
Virginia-born Miss Rose Lees Hardy (1869-1932) was the Assistant Superintendent of DC Public Schools from 1925 until her death in 1932. As a specialist in primary education and piano, Miss Hardy left…
Chain Bridge Road School: This 1923 school is a link to the African American community that grew around Battery Kemble after the Civil War.
One of only a few extant rural schools in Washington, this four-room schoolhouse, built in 1923, serves as a link and memorial to the vanished post-Civil War community of Black refugees and freedmen…
Conduit Road School: The Conduit Road Schoolhouse is a historic schoolhouse, characteristic of buildings of its type built in the late 1800s.
Originally built in 1864 and rebuilt in 1874, the Conduit Road Schoolhouse is a one-story one-room clapboard building with a brick foundation. It is a simple rectangular structure, with a recent small…
Western High School (Duke Ellington School of the Arts): This monumental hilltop school was one of DC's first buildings designed specifically for high school education.
Western High School is among the city’s grandest Classical Revival school buildings, poised like a temple of learning on the heights above Georgetown. Built in between 1897 and 1898, it is one of the…
Old North Building: As the oldest remaining academic building at Georgetown University, the Old North Building has a storied past.
The Old North Building is the oldest remaining academic building on the Georgetown University campus, built between 1794 and 1797. An 1829 Prospectus shows the North and South Buildings as the heart…
Healy Building (Georgetown University): Located on a bluff overlooking the Potomac River, Healy Hall is the main symbol of Georgetown University.
Named for Patrick Francis Healy, then the President of Georgetown University, Healy Hall began construction in November 1877 and was largely finished by 1879. Reverend Healy consulted with a number of…
Francis Junior High School: This school, which opened in 1928, was the District's first purpose-built junior high for African American students.
Francis Junior High School, which opened in 1928, was the District's first purpose-built junior high for African American students. The original building, dating to 1927-29, was designed by DC…
Thaddeus Stevens School: This landmark was the first public school building in the District to provide facilities for African Americans considered comparable to those provided for white students.
Built in 1868, enlarged in 1885, and partially rebuilt and enlarged between 1895 and 1896, Stevens School is one of the oldest surviving elementary school buildings in the District. Named after…
Ulysses Grant School: This Victorian Era public school building is a rare surviving example that maintains many of its original interior finishes.
Foggy Bottom's historic Ulysses Grant School is a three-story, brick masonry public school building constructed in 1882. The robust Victorian Era building was originally named the Analostan School, in…
George Washington University/Old West End Historic District: This historic district comprises the historic core of the George Washington University and its surroundings.
The George Washington University/Old West End Historic District is located in the present-day neighborhood of Foggy Bottom in northwest Washington, DC and encompasses the historic core of The George…
George Washington University, Stockton Hall: Like Corcoran Hall, Stockton Hall was part of Albert Harris' early plans for the George Washington University quadrangle.
Stockton Hall is the sister building to Corcoran Hall, and is one of two buildings constructed after a 1922 plan by architect Albert Harris for a Georgian Revival quadrangle to house George Washington…
Charles Sumner School: Named for the famed abolitionist, the Sumner School was one of DC's first buildings dedicated to Black public education.
The Sumner School is one of three post-Civil War Black schools in DC and is named in honor of Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts Senator and ardent abolitionist who attempted, unsuccessfully, to ban…
Benjamin Franklin School (and Interiors): This award-winning public school building is an important landmark of DC's public school system.
Built between 1865 and 1869, the Benjamin Franklin School was the flagship of a group of seven modern urban public school buildings constructed between 1862 and 1875 to house, for the first time, a…
Strong John Thomson School: Upon its construction, the Thomson School was cited as a model school for elementary education in DC.
Strong John Thomson School was built in 1910 and designed by Marsh & Peter, one of the city’s most prominent architectural firms during the first two decades of the twentieth century. It highlights…
Daniel Webster School: This 12-room schoolhouse typifies the city’s post-Civil War public schools and is one of the last such buildings downtown.
Typical of DC's post-Civil War red brick schoolhouses, the Daniel Webster School shows how mass-production and technology influenced the design of civic buildings in an era of great public works. It…
Thomas Jefferson Junior High School: Thomas Jefferson Junior High School marks a significant period in the nation’s history of educational evolution and stands as an outstanding architectural example of the Georgian Revival Style.
Designed by Nathan C. Wyeth, Thomas Jefferson Junior High School’s exemplary Georgian Revival Style is evidenced through architectural symmetry, a cupola over the main block, and a two-story entry…
Elizabeth G. Randall Junior High School (Cardozo School): Built in 1906, the Randall School represents an important era in African American education and now houses the Rubell Museum.
Established in 1906 as Cardozo Elementary School, the building became the home of Elizabeth G. Randall Junior High School in 1927, and was repeatedly expanded to meet the educational needs of…
William Syphax School: This historically black elementary school commemorates William Syphax (1825-1891), the first president of the Board of Trustees of Colored Schools of Washington and Georgetown.
William Syphax was born in 1825 to Charles Syphax and Maria Carter. Charles, Syphax’s father, was enslaved by a man named George Washington Parke Custis, grandson and adopted son of George and Martha…
National War College: Established as the Army War College, it played a significant role in America's military development in the early 1900s.
In 1898, the Spanish-American War exposed the U.S. military's weaknesses through uncoordinated Army units and internal issues of communication. Despite America's ultimate victory, Secretary of War…Tour curated by: DC Preservation League