DC's Hidden Places: Olive Street

• May 25th 2016

by Nena Perry-Brown

This week, UrbanTurf visited another of DC’s Hidden Places, a three-block street in the East Village of Georgetown.

Narrow and tree-lined, Olive Street is nestled between 27th and 30th Streets, running parallel between M and N Streets (map). The 27th Street end abuts Rose Park, a grassy offshoot of Rock Creek Park.

2706 Olive Street, an end unit with a huge backyard that opens onto Rose Park, fomerly housed Julia Child, one of the nation’s most beloved and well-known chefs. It is one of the few wood-frame homes left in Georgetown and was built shortly after the Civil War by freed slave Edgar Murphy.

On the other side of the block are the Phillips School Condominiums, which repurposed what was once Georgetown’s third education facility for its black student population before it closed in 1950. A river used to run through this development as well.

Thirteen years ago, residents Jan and Alan moved from Dupont Circle to the 2700 block of Olive Street and have noticed that each block has its own energy and sense of community.

“One of our neighbors who lived here moved into the next block of Olive, but she just couldn’t stand to be away. She actually sold that and moved back into the [Phillips School] condos.”

The couple also mentioned that the few blocks surrounding Olive Street have been an epicenter for government officials and journalists alike since before the John F. Kennedy administration, calling it an “enclave of intrigue” and noting the regular presence of not-so-Secret Service agents on their block and along 27th.

One former resident of Olive Street is Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker, who wrote a farewell to the street, mentioning that it also made cameos in movies Burn After Reading and Wedding Crashers.

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This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dcs_hidden_places_olive_street/11275.