Logan Circle is a traffic circle park, neighborhood, and historic district in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. The primarily residential neighborhood includes two historic districts, properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and sites designated D.C. Historic Landmarks. Vermont Avenue NW, Rhode Island Avenue NW, 13th Street NW, and P Street NW meet at the circle. An equestrian statue of Major General John A. Logan stands at its center. It is the only major circle downtown that remains entirely residential.
History
Originally known as Iowa Circle, Congress renamed the park in 1930 in honor of John A. Logan, Commander of the Army of Tennessee during the Civil War, Commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, and U.S. representative and senator for the state of Illinois, who lived at 4 Logan Circle. At the center of the circle stands Major General John A. Logan, an equestrian statue of Logan sculpted by Franklin Simmons and a bronze statue base designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt. On April 9, 1901, the 25 feet (7.6 m) monument was dedicated by President William McKinley, Senator Chauncey Depew, and General Grenville M. Dodge. EZ DC Junk Removal
During the 2000s, the area gentrified, and housing costs sharply increased after derelict buildings were torn down or remodeled. The commercial corridors along 14th and P streets attracted significant revitalization. They now feature a variety of retailers, restaurants, art galleries, live theater, and nightlife venues such as Number Nine and Trade, gay bars catering to the neighborhood’s booming LGBT population.
Landmarks
The Logan Circle Historic District is an eight-block area surrounding the circle, containing 135 late-19th-century residences designed predominantly in the Late Victorian and Richardsonian Romanesque styles of architecture. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 30, 1972.
The District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites includes several properties in Logan Circle which are not listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Among them are the former residences of Charles Manuel “Sweet Daddy” Grace, flamboyant founder of the United House of Prayer For All People; John A. Lankford, the first African American architect in Washington, D.C.; Belford Lawson, Jr., lead attorney in the landmark case New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co.; Alain LeRoy Locke, the first African American Rhodes Scholar and a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance; Mary Jane Patterson, the first African American woman to earn a bachelor’s degree; Ella Watson, subject of Gordon Parks’s famous photograph American Gothic, Washington, D.C.; and James Lesesne Wells, noted graphic artist and longtime art instructor at Howard University.
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