The following guest post comes from members of the Anacostia Homeowners and Residents Association—community leaders and advocates engaged in the fight to preserve a historic community green space in Anacostia. We’re honored to share their reflections and grateful for the opportunity to amplify voices grounded in lived experience and grassroots advocacy. Their words serve as a powerful reminder that community-led resistance is not only possible—it’s essential.
A photograph taken in 1950 from the hill top on Talbert Street, facing north. Note the Capitol building in the distance, partially obscured by the Navy Yard stacks. (John P. Wymer photograph collection, WY 3617)
In the hills of Southeast Washington, DC, there’s a quiet patch of land where birds nest in tall trees and children once ran barefoot through the grass. At first glance, it might look like any other overgrown lot but this space, known to longtime residents as “The Field”, holds over a century’s worth of history. It has been a place of care, exclusion, protest, and renewal. And today, it remains a symbol of a community that has continually stepped forward to protect its roots.
A Place for Children—and Then, Exclusion
The story begins in Squares 5807 and 5869, where land and buildings were donated in the late 1800s to serve children in need at what became the Hillbright Episcopal Home for Children, part of a growing network of care institutions in DC. For years, it offered shelter, safety, and schooling to those with few other options.
But public services proliferated after the Great Depression and by the 1940s, the land was sold to Dexter Realty Company, Inc., which built over 70 townhomes under the name Dexter Heights. These homes came with racially restrictive covenants, meaning that only white families were allowed to buy them. This was before Washington, DC was known as Chocolate City and, across the city, similar rules were used to keep Black families out of new developments, shaping neighborhoods through exclusion.
What had once been a welcoming space for the most vulnerable was now part of a system that locked families out.
A Sanborn map excerpt from 1927 showing the land in Square 5807, including the Hillbright Episcopal Home for Children, and Square 5869 that would later become the Dexter Heights Residential Development. Courtesy, Library of Congress
Community Action and Legal Resistance
That pattern didn’t go unchallenged. In 1977, nearly a decade after the 1968 Fair Housing Act made discriminatory covenants in the District illegal, the Anacostia Homeowners and Residents Association (AHRA), with support from the District of Columbia Office of the Attorney General, filed a lawsuit against the original developer Arthur Morrissette. The case argued that the racial covenants used in Dexter Heights were part of a broader pattern of housing discrimination.
The lawsuit ended in a settlement, and the community gained something powerful: a chance to reclaim a piece of the land. AHRA, with the Anacostia Economic Development Corporation (AEDC) as trustee, took ownership of the property. It was a quiet but important moment. After years of exclusion, the land was finally transferred to the community that had challenged those policies.
And from there a new chapter began, one shaped not by courtrooms, but by connection.
An early 2000s photograph showing reunion of AHRA members and neighbors who had established the Annual Block Party. The green space serves as a backdrop. Courtesy, AHRA Block Party Planning Committee.
The Field as Community Ground
Over the next 40 years, this reclaimed land, nicknamed “The Field,” became a cornerstone of community life. Children played tag and baseball on the large open lawn near the trees. Residents who grew up here reminisce about batting home runs that would occasionally hit neighbors’ houses. Parents gathered after dinner to talk while their kids rode bikes and played in a safe place. The Field was host to the annual block party. Neighbors cared for the space without being asked, mowing, pruning, and picking up litter. It wasn’t an official DC park but it was their local oasis.
The Field wasn’t just a neighborhood park. It was also one of the few remaining virgin forested areas in the neighborhood, with heritage trees that had stood for generations. These trees weren’t just beautiful; they helped cool the neighborhood in summer, sheltered birds and squirrels, and connected residents to the natural rhythms of the land.
In a part of the city where green space was becoming increasingly rare, neighbors winning the fight to protect that green space was even rarer. The Field became a reminder of what the community could achieve when it stood together.
In preparation for the Annual Block Party, neighbors saddle ponies for children to ride, a longstanding tradition. Note the heritage tree to the right, at the intersection of the field with Talbert Terrace SE. Courtesy, AHRA Block Party Planning Committee.
A New Challenge
In the 2010s, something unexpected happened. The Field, owned by the community, began receiving property tax bills that made little sense. The annual taxes ballooned from around $2,000 per year to over $250,000, with little explanation. Within a few years, more than $600,000 in tax debt had accumulated. The District of Columbia did not clarify the tax issues despite AHRA protest.
Then, the land was quietly sold at a discount tax sale for just $29,000, erasing all that debt, and removing the land from community ownership. A developer purchased it and divided the space into nine new lots with plans to build 18 housing units, much more than the one single-family house allowed by the original neighborhood covenants.
At the same time, community members were dealing with more than just the threat to the green space. The same steep hillside where the green space resides is home to the River East at Grandview Condominiums. There, in 2021, a newly constructed condominium development (similar to that now proposed at the green space) became at imminent risk of collapse and displaced over 40 first-time homebuyers in one of the worst geotechnical disasters in recent DC history. The land is steep, and construction here requires extraordinary caution.
A photograph from the 1950s taken at the hill crest along the corner of Talbert Terrace SE and Talbert Street, facing northwest. River East at Grandview Condominiums is constructed at the site of the single family home at right. The field begins just out of frame at left. (John P. Wymer photograph collection, WY 3614)
Concerns deepened when residents learned that the developer behind the proposed development of The Field had recently been fined and jailed for environmental violations, including falsifying building permits.
Despite the myriad of legal and environmental issues the community around The Field faces, the community has redoubled efforts to advocate for responsible stewardship of the land and safe construction. The community is fighting to preserve its roots and, just as in the past, the effort is bringing us closer together, uniting a diverse group of neighbors new and old.
The District of Columbia is aware of the issues involved in this case. In 2023, the Executive Office of the Mayor issued a statement to AHRA supportive of investigating possible remedies. Neighbors continue to support public ownership of the land as a park. To date, and despite over a decade of AHRA’s advocacy, neither the Mayor nor Council has taken steps to correct the errors and resulting injustice. Refusing to act echoes the very history this land was once part of, when Black communities across DC were denied land or had it taken from them.
A Living Story
Walking through The Field today, you can still hear the wind in the branches, the echo of kids laughing, the work of neighbors mowing and pruning. This land holds many stories, some painful, some hopeful, and some triumphant, but all part of the same root system.
It’s not just about policy or property lines. It’s about a community that saw legal injustice and pursued justice, that took land meant to exclude and made it into an inclusive place for everyone, and that won’t allow the erasure of their community history.
The work of saving The Field isn’t over. But its history proves something powerful: even small places can hold big stories. And sometimes, resistance takes root in the very ground beneath your feet.
Want to Learn More or Get Involved? Contact the Anacostia Homeowners and Residents Association at talbertdexterahra@gmail.com to support efforts to preserve the historic community green space.