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Edgewood, Washington, D.c.




The neighborhood, outside the original boundaries of Washington City, was originally part of the farmland of Washington County . In 1863 , Salmon P. Chase , then U.S. Treasury Secretary under Abraham Lincoln , attenuated 50 acres of land there and built a mansion and estate that he called Edgewood. The mansion itself was at what is now the corner of Edgewood and Fourth Streets NE. When Chase died in 1873, his daughter, Kate Chase Sprague , moved onto the crumbling estate and lived a reclusive life with her mentally Retarded daughter, farming pigs until she died in poverty in 1899.

In the 20th Century the property belonged to the St. Vincent's Orphanage Asylum and Catholic School, the largest orphanage for girls and a Coed school. Around 1950 , however, the city gained possession of the area and began developing it as an urban neighborhood.

Edgewood Terrace , a large complex of mixed-income and senior-citizen public housing, began development in 1970 at the hands of Bethesda, Maryland developer Eugene Ford. Today, Edgewood Terrace remains the central and dominant landmark of the Edgewood neighborhood, enough so that the neighborhood itself is frequently called Edgewood Terrace.