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This report was prepared by Carolyn Long, Armesleigh Park resident since 1987. This year we celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of Armesleigh Park. The first houses in this early twentieth-century suburb were built and offered for sale by Harry A. Kite in 1919, coinciding with the opening of the Connecticut and Wisconsin Avenue streetcar lines, the homecoming of World War I soldiers, and the end of the Spanish influenza pandemic. By 1925 Armesleigh Park encompassed the 3800 blocks of Albemarle Street, Alton Place, Yuma Street, part of Windom Place and Warren Street, and the 4300, 4400, and 4500 blocks of 38th and 39th streets between Albemarle and Warren. There were also five houses in the 3900 block of Alton Place, two in the 3900 block of Yuma Street, and two in the 3900 block of Windom Place. I have researched and written this report for the Tenleytown Historical Society (tenleytownhistoricalsociety.org), the Tenleytown Neighbors Association, and for the residents of Armesleigh Park. It is based in part on the 2003 “Tenleytown Historic Resources Survey” prepared by Paul Kelsey Williams for the Tenleytown Historical Society, and on preliminary work on Armesleigh Park that I did in 2004. In 2019 I accessed property sales from the Recorder of Deeds Office, now at the DC Archives, and Tax Assessment records on microfilm at the Washingtoniana Division of the DC Public Library. Fortunately, a lot of other information is now available online. I searched for local newspaper articles though GenealogyBank and ProQuest, found and copied Surveyors maps through SurDocs, the website for the Office of the Surveyor of Land Records Management System, and was able to download larger area maps through the DC Public Library, the Historical Society of Washington, and the Library of Congress. With the exception of photographs of interior details contributed by Armesleigh Park homeowners, all exterior and interior photographs of Armesleigh Park houses were taken by me between March and December 2019. Photographs of neighborhood parties are used with permission from the individuals depicted. This report was printed by the Tenleytown UPS Store at 4200 Wisconsin Avenue; thanks to franchise owner Rich Habel for his assistance. The cost of printing was funded by a grant from ANC 3E and by donations from Tenleytown Neighbors Association and Tenleytown Historical Society. © 2020 by Carolyn Morrow Long 1 SECTION 1 1890-1916 HOW THE LAND THAT BECAME ARMESLEIGH PARK PASSED FROM THE ESTATE OF ARIANNA LYLES TO HARRY ARTHUR KITE 2 ALBEMARLE ALTON YUMA WINDOM WARREN This diagram is from “Builders in Greater Tenleytown, Tenleytown Development, Northwest DC,” part of “Tenleytown Development, Washington DC,” prepared by the District of Columbia Office of Planning. Dark blue indicates houses built by Harry Kite in Armesleigh Park (arranged from north to south) on Albemarle, Alton Place, Yuma, Windom Place, Warren, 38th and 39th. (https://planning.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/op/publication/attachments/Tenleytown_Hi story%20in%20Maps%20opt.pdf.) 3 THE REST—THE LOVE-LYLES-MAGRUGER PROPERTY The history of Armesleigh Park goes back to the eighteenth century, when what became Tenleytown was situated on part of the 3,124-acre “Friendship” tract granted by Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, to James Stoddert and Thomas Addison in 1713. A portion of Friendship eventually passed to Charles Jones of Clean Drinking Manor in Montgomery County, Maryland, and around 1800 Jones gave one hundred acres to his widowed sister Sarah Love. This became the Love-Lyles-Magruder estate. Sarah Love’s original brick residence known as “The Rest” still stands at 4343 39th Street at the corner of Windom Place. In 1835 this house, constructed in the earliest years of the 1800s, passed to Sarah Jones’ niece Arianna Jones Bruce, widow of Dennis Lyles. Mrs. Lyles ran it as a farm and orchard using enslaved labor.1 Subsequent deeds of sale make reference to the Lyles estate being “distinguished as part of a tract of land called Friendship.” This view of The Rest facing 39th Street is actually the side of the house. The large mill stone, now used as a planter, came from Charles Jones’ “Clean Drinking Manor.” There is still a Jones Mill Road in the Maryland suburbs. Photo by Carolyn Long 2012. This view of The Rest facing Windom Place is actually the front of the house. It was originally a simple rectangular brick Georgian colonial. The porch and tower were added in the 1890s. Photo by Carolyn Long 2012. 4 The Hopkins District of Columbia Real Property Atlas for 1887 shows a large pink area bounded on the west by the Georgetown and Rockville Road (now Wisconsin Avenue), on the north by Grant Road, on the east by the lands of various owners, and on the south by Pierce’s Mill Road. Note the small black square—The Rest—connected by a roadway to the Georgetown and Rockville Road. The area is marked “Mrs. A. J. Lyles,” referring to Arianna Jones (Bruce) Lyles. On November 23, 1885, five years before the Armesleigh Park subdivision was first conceived, Arianna Lyles sold a portion of her land bordering on Grant Road to Joseph Michael Curran and his wife Mary Louise Divine Curran for $100.2 A building permit for their large frame dwelling was issued on April 13, 1891. This 1959 photograph from Judith Beck Helm’s Tenleytown DC: Country Village into City Neighborhood (p. 246) shows the Curran House at 4419 39th Street before the roofline was changed and the front porch was removed. The Currans had twelve children born between 1873 and 1899. Their oldest son Robert became the “huntsman” and “master of hounds” for the Chevy Chase Hunt Club.3 When Albemarle Street was cut through in 1897, the Currans sold some of their Grant Road property to the District of 5 Columbia for $4,000 and were later awarded an additional $2,170 for 2,258 square feet taken by eminent domain.4 Joseph Curran continued to live in the family home at 39th Street corner of Alton Place until his death in 1936, and some of his adult children lived there through the 1960s. The imposing house still stands on this corner.5 Arianna Lyles died at The Rest on March 4, 1888, in her ninety-first year. She had already made her will on September 14, 1886, leaving her property to her granddaughters Arianna Elizabeth Marshall (Ward) and Eleanor Ann Helen Marshall (Magruder). Arianna (born 1848) and Eleanor (born 1852) were the children of Mrs. Lyles’ only daughter Sallie with her husband Thomas Marshall. Sallie Lyles Marshall died in 1855, when Arianna was seven and Eleanor was three. Thomas Marshall immediately remarried, and the two little girls went to live with their new family in Virginia. By the time of the 1880 census Arianna and Eleanor had come home to live with their grandmother at The Rest. Arianna Lyles’ disposed of her Tenleytown estate as follows: “I Arianna J. Lyles do…give and bequeath to Arianna E. Ward and Eleanor Ann Magruder all my property real and personal in the District of Columbia…. I also will that the furniture of this my house be equally divided between the two sisters my granddaughters and I appoint them both executors of this my last will and testament.”6 A June 1888 plat from the Library of Congress Division of Geography and Maps (G3852.T4G46 1888 .L3) documents the subdivision of the Lyles estate into two lots bounded on the west by the Tennallytown to Georgetown Road, on the north by Grant Road, on the east by various property owners, and on the south by Pierce’s Mill Road. Pierce’s Mill Road disappeared when Van Ness and Upton streets were cut through. The inscription by surveyor William J. Salsman described “a tract of land known as ‘The Rest’ containing seventy-one and 17/100 acres” and went on to give the dimensions of the two portions. Arianna Ward kept the lower part containing forty and 13/100 acres, and Eleanor Magruder kept the upper part containing thirty-one and 4/100 acres. A small square on the map indicates the family home. The sisters formalized this arrangement by a deed dated July 1, 1889.7 On December 27, 1889, Arianna Ward sold her share of the land to Austin Herr for $47,500.8 Austin Herr was listed in the DC city directory as a partner in “Austin Herr and James W. Walsh, bankers and brokers, Sun Building, 1315 F Street.” Herr had no interest in developing the property, 6 and on September 30, 1891, he sold it to Charles C. Glover and Thomas E. Hyde, both of whom were real estate investors and officers of the Riggs Bank. An article in the Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, titled “An Important Deal,” described the sale to Glover and Hyde and commented that “This purchase is but another of Mr. Glover’s shrewd transactions in real estate.... Land in this neighborhood is rapidly developing and prices should advance there…. It is high and picturesque and affords excellent opportunities for suburban homes.”9 The land that Austin Herr sold to Glover and Hyde now comprises the area bounded by 39th Street/Wisconsin Avenue, Warren Street, 38th Street, and Upton Street (squares 1832, 1831, 1830, and 1829). In 1923 developers William S. Phillips and W.L. King laid out streets and lots and began to build and sell “semi-detached brick and hollow tile houses in North Cleveland Park for $13,500 to $15,250.”10 GEORGE AUGUSTUS ARMES Photographs of George Armes from Wikipedia Eleanor Magruder’s portion of the Lyles estate became Armesleigh Park.