HPO's Kim Williams "Lost Farms and Estates of Washington DC" book profiled by WaPo columnist John Kelly

Click on the link to read the entire John Kelly Washington Post column about the Lost Farms and Estates of Washington, DC book by Kim Williams of the DC Historic Preservation Office.

Note that historian Kim Williams has participated in the Bloomingdale historic district activities.  

By John Kelly Columnist May 1 at 10:48 PM

If John Adlum had had his way, the U.S. government would be growing grapes on the Mall and turning it into wine. Lovely, lovely wine.

Alas, the Feds did not see things his way. In the early 19th century, they spurned Adlum’s suggestion that the way to lessen American dependence on foreign wine was to create our own by testing out grape varieties at the base of Capitol Hill.

But Adlum didn’t give up. “He took it upon himself to do what he thought the government should be doing,” said Kim Prothro Williams, author of the new book “Lost Farms and Estates of Washington, D.C.”

I met Williams recently on a patch of land that was once the center of Adlum’s agricultural experiments. We were two blocks from Wisconsin Avenue NW on a street named for Adlum’s old estate: Springland Lane. There was nary a grape vine in sight. There was, however, a physical remnant of those agricultural days: a low stone building with a slanting roof. It’s the springhouse that served Adlum’s vineyard, which once ranged over the rolling landscape here

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