Banneker Recreation Center

Year: 1934
Style: Colonial Revival
City: Washington, DC

Banneker Recreation Center opened in 1934 in Columbia Heights, built in the Colonial Revival style and named for Benjamin Banneker, the free Black surveyor who helped lay out the original boundaries of the District of Columbia in 1791. For decades it operated as the city's premier recreation center for African Americans.

the building

Still in use. The building continues to operate today as the Banneker Community Center, run by the DC Department of Parks and Recreation, an active recreation facility since it opened in 1934.

the style

Colonial Revival (c. 1880–1960): America quoting its own past: symmetrical fronts, shuttered windows, and a front door dressed with fanlight, sidelights, or a small columned porch.

significance

Banneker Recreation Center was listed on the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites in 1985 and individually on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

nearby

Normal School for Colored Girls 320 ft · Colonial Revival
Founders Library 0.2 mi · 1939
James Ormond Wilson Normal School 0.3 mi · Tudor Revival · 1911
First African New Church (Church of the New Jerusalem) 0.4 mi · Gothic Revival
Clifton Terrace 0.4 mi · Colonial Revival · 1915
Blanche Kelso Bruce Elementary School 0.5 mi · Renaissance Revival · 1916

All 315 buildings in Washington, DC