Grimke, Charlotte Forten House
- Year
- 1881
- City
- Washington, DC
The Charlotte Forten Grimké House at 1608 R Street NW in Dupont Circle was home from 1881 to 1886 to Charlotte Forten Grimké (1837–1914), an African-American abolitionist and educator who was among the first Northerners to enter Union-controlled areas of the South during the Civil War to teach freedmen and their children. She lived here with her husband, Rev. Francis Grimké. The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.
the building
A Dupont Circle row house. The two-story red-brick row house is two bays wide, with a single-story polygonal bay on the left and the entrance on the right. The door is topped by a transom window under a bracketed hood, and a heavy modillioned cornice runs along the bay, the main roofline, and the entrance hood. Windows on both floors sit in segmental-arch openings with soldier-brick headers.
significance
The house is a DC Historic Landmark (#L_0127), a National Historic Landmark, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
nearby
- The Cairo
- Scottish Rite Temple
- Saint Luke's Episcopal Church
- Page, Thomas Nelson, House
- Belmont, Perry House (International Eastern Star Temple)
- Carnegie Institution of Washington, Administration Building