Lafayette-Pointer Park is one of the finest assets of our wonderful Chevy Chase-DC neighborhood, and the Friends of Lafayette Park (FOLP), which was founded in 1999, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization of neighbors and community members dedicated to preserving and improving the park. Over two decades of volunteer work, the FOLP has implemented the addition of gardens (particularly on the park’s perimeter), playgrounds, the former tot lot, amphitheater, gazebo, upgraded tennis courts and ball fields, and added benches, picnic tables and much more. The FOLP provided input to the city for the city’s renovation of the park playground in 2015, and for the new rec center in 2021. In the future the FOLP plans to work with the city to create an improved running track, stormwater management plan to address erosion, and other park improvements.
The FOLP, through dedicated volunteers, maintains the beautiful gardens inside and surrounding the park (on Quesada and 33rd Streets and Broad Branch Road). The city does not maintain the gardens, and the extent of the work and costs are rising. Please join your neighbors as we work to maintain these improvements and add more. You can help by giving us your thoughts and ideas for the park, volunteering to work with the garden group, attending our Spring and Fall clean-up days, and contributing funds to our annual campaign.
Lafayette-Pointer Park is located in Northwest Washington DC, in Ward 4. The park is nine acres and is supervised by the Department of Parks and Recreation. It shares the site with Lafayette Elementary School, part of the DC Public School System. The site is framed by the following streets, Quesada, Broad Branch, 33rd, and Northampton on the south side of the park. The park is open daily to the public and closed after dark.
In 1928, 12 acres of rolling parkland were purchased by the District of Columbia to build Lafayette School. The area is roughly bounded by Broad Branch Road, Northampton, 33rd, and Quesada Streets. According to treasured remembrances of local residents summarized by Sharon Moran in Origins II published by Neighborhood Planning Council #2 and #3 in 1976, some of the land was a farm owned by the late Mr. Horace Jones.
His original 1859 farmhouse still stands on Quesada Street. Behind the house the Jones’ cattle grazed in the area where today children play in the tot lot.
Much of the land for the park, however, was acquired from African-American families who owned several small houses and farm plots near Broad Branch Road and Oliver Street. The families farmed the land for nearly 80 years, until 1928, when the city acquired the land to build the park and Lafayette Elementary School. Many of the families were descendants of George Pointer, according to Historic Chevy Chase DC, an organization that researched the history of the park. Pointer was born enslaved in 1773 but able to purchase his own freedom and worked for more than 40 years as a supervising engineer on what became the C&O Canal. The families were among the first freed African-Americans to become landowners in upper Northwest DC, according to Historic Chevy Chase DC.
The houses were torn down to make way for the first school, which was a collapsible frame building. When the brick school was built and opened in 1931, residents remember the land around the school was woods, a barn and just a few houses on 33rd Street — a farm-like setting that delighted the children. During WWII, victory gardens were part of the landscape, taking advantage of the sunny south side.
As part of the Historic Chevy Chase DC research project, beginning in 2018, the group launched a petition in 2019 seeking to rename the park Lafayette-Pointer Park. The group also was able to locate and contact a number of Pointer family descendants. The DC City Council gave its approval for the name change in late 2020. A sign near the rec center provides additional information, maps, and historic drawings.
For more information on the history of the park by Historic Chevy Chase DC:
Today the parkland is Lafayette-Pointer Park, a Chevy Chase-DC community resource with tennis courts, playgrounds, paths, flowers, gazebo, and shady places with benches to sit.