Bounded by St. Elizabeths Hospital, Alabama Avenue and Morris Road, SE, and the Anacostia River

In 1867 the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) purchased 375 acres from white farmers David and Julia Barry to resettle formerly enslaved African Americans. By 1870 more than 500 families had purchased lots and built homes at Barry Farm, later renamed Hillsdale.

During World War II, the U.S. Government constructed “Barry Farms” housing on Hillsdale’s eastern edge to relieve overcrowding across the Anacostia [River]. Soon, Southwest [DC] urban renewal brought more families, spurring the over building of multi-family housing. These projects and the Suitland Parkway and Anacostia Freeway greatly changed the neighborhood. Most remaining historic houses date to around 1900; a few older ones remain along Elvans Road.

[Photo caption:]

A home on Sheridan Road in Barry Farm, early 1900s.

Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

Marker is on Howard Road, SE, west of Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, SE, on the right when traveling east.

Courtesy hmdb.org

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