“It’s a quiet, walkable neighborhood that’s very community-oriented but that’s also very vibrant and fun,” said longtime resident Melissa Lane, a vice president of the Glover Park Citizens Association and a former Advisory Neighborhood Commission representative. “You have the benefit of being close to Georgetown, but there’s lots to do right here, too.”
Glover Park was developed in the early 1900s on a plot of land owned by local banker and philanthropist Charles C. Glover, who later also donated 77 acres to the National Capital Parks Commission for what would become Glover-Archbold Park, according to Carlton Fletcher’s Web site, Glover Park History.
Most of the neighborhood’s characteristic rowhouses were built between 1929 and 1939, according to Chuck Holzwarth, an agent with Washington Fine Properties, who lived in the neighborhood for 11 years and works there frequently. Those rowhouses, along with condominiums, co-ops and apartments, still define the neighborhood’s housing stock, Holzwarth said.
Holzwarth said many home buyers are drawn to Glover Park for the same reason he was when he bought his first home there in 1986.
“I was renting in Georgetown, and for what I could afford back then, if I’d wanted to buy in Georgetown, I could have gotten a postage stamp,” Holzwarth said. “I got a great house in Glover Park and got much more space than I would have had in Georgetown.”
The neighborhood saw a boom in retail development in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with a slew of restaurants and retail stores, including a Whole Foods, being built along Wisconsin Avenue, Holzwarth said.
The fact that it’s so easy to walk to a variety of amenities within Glover Park is one of the neighborhood’s best features, said Lisa Alejandro, who has lived there since 2000.
“We often don’t drive anywhere on weekends, because we have five parks, a bunch of restaurants, a Whole Foods and recreation centers within walking distance,” said Alejandro, 40, an international trade analyst.
Residents also touted the availability of Capital Bikeshare and the ease of using the multiple bus routes that travel through the neighborhood, though some bemoaned the lack of easy Metrorail access — the closest stops are roughly two miles away.
“I think we’d all like better public transportation options,” said Lane, 55, an economist with the National Science Foundation. “Even our bus service has been cut back significantly. Glover Park is car-centric, because it has to be.”
As a result, said Mitch Wander, who maintains the neighborhood’s e-mail discussion group, “the favorite topic to complain about . . . is parking, followed closely by dogs off the leash and dog poop.” Wander, a federal employee and Army reservist who lives in Glover Park with his wife, Emily, and their two children, added: “I think that for most of us, we can step back and smile, and be delighted that those are, in fact, the two biggest issues for people who live here.”
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