Pennsylvania Avenue SE, 1911 — developer Arthur E. Randle (among the four men pictured) standing in his still-unpaved avenue, with the firehouse he donated at right and the neighborhood's first grand houses rising behind. Library of Congress.
Two of Southeast Washington's most historic neighborhoods — Congress Heights and Randle Highlands — share a single founder, and his name is still on one of them. Colonel Arthur E. Randle, born in 1859, was a newspaper publisher who became one of the most consequential real estate developers in the District's history. In October 1906, The Washington Post called his projects "among the largest real estate enterprises ever successfully carried through in the District."
His formula was simple and, at the time, radical: buy the high ground east of the Anacostia River before the bridges and streetcars arrived, then build the bridges and streetcars.
The Bet on Congress Heights
In 1890, most of Washington ended at the Anacostia. The land on the far bank — bluffs with sweeping views back toward the Capitol — was farmland, cheap precisely because getting downtown from there was an ordeal.
Randle saw the bluffs differently. He founded a settlement he named Congress Heights, for the view of the Capitol from its high ground. And rather than wait for the city to connect it, he connected it himself: he founded the Capital Railway Company and the Belt Railway to guarantee streetcar service between his new neighborhood and the rest of Washington. A developer who owns the transit line serving his own subdivision never has to worry about the transit line.
It worked. Congress Heights filled in with frame Victorians, brick rowhouses, and workers' cottages — much of the housing stock that still defines the neighborhood today. And it filled in as a community, not just a subdivision: within fifteen years the new neighborhood had its own amateur theater troupe.
The Congress Heights Dramatic Club, photographed by Harris & Ewing in 1905 — community life in Randle's neighborhood, barely fifteen years after its founding. Library of Congress.
Doubling Down at the Bridge
In 1899, Randle sold his interest in the Capital Railway and put the fortune into his second act: a large tract known as "East Washington Highlands," sitting at the foot of the Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge — the crossing known today as the John Philip Sousa Bridge.
The logic was the same as before. The bridge was the neighborhood's reason to exist: Pennsylvania Avenue ran straight from the Capitol, across the river, and up his hillside. He platted the tract under his own name — Randle Highlands — and sold the high ground, the views, and the commute.
The success of Randle Highlands funded a third act. "North Randle Highlands," his follow-on development, became the land we now know as Dupont Park, Penn Branch, and the lower portion of Greenway. Add Hillcrest and Shipley Terrace, which he also had a hand in developing, and a remarkable share of the settled neighborhoods east of the river trace back to one man's land records. Hillcrest, in fact, came pre-marketed: a resort hotel called the Overlook Inn had spent the 1890s teaching Washington's elite to ride coaches up these very heights — Randle developed land the fashionable set already knew.
A Mansion as a Sales Pitch
Randle didn't just sell the hilltop — he moved onto it. He built himself a grand Greek Revival mansion at 2909 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, so stately that Washingtonians nicknamed it the "Southeast White House," and it still stands today. The house was marketing as much as residence: Randle wanted Pennsylvania Avenue east of the river lined with mansions, and he campaigned openly for the city's prominent families to build grand homes along his avenue. Some did — the big foursquares and columned houses on the avenue's high ground are the surviving evidence.
He understood that a neighborhood needs anchors as much as houses, and he supplied them personally. He established Randle Highlands School — whose 1911 building still presides at 30th Street SE — and donated the land for the Chemical Company No. 2 firehouse at 2813 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, which is still a working DC firehouse more than a century later. By one accounting, he gave the District enough street mileage across his developments to pave a road from Washington to Baltimore.
The Colonel's Later Years
When his building days wound down, Randle eased out of the development business and spent his later years between his Washington home and a country estate in Glenn Dale, Maryland, just over the Prince George's County line — a short ride down the same roads his streetcars had once anchored.
He died on July 20, 1929, at age seventy, and was buried in Congressional Cemetery — which sits, fittingly, on the west bank of the Anacostia at the approach to the Pennsylvania Avenue crossing. The developer who spent his life betting on that bridge rests within sight of it, and the avenue that runs past his grave still climbs the hill to the neighborhood that carries his name.
An Honest Footnote
Like most Washington subdivisions of that era, Randle's developments were originally marketed and sold on racially exclusionary terms — a practice that was widespread in early-twentieth-century American real estate. Courts ruled such restrictions unenforceable in 1948, and fair housing law has squarely prohibited them for more than half a century. The neighborhoods Randle platted long ago outgrew their founder's era, and their history since is its own story — one told well by institutions like the Anacostia Community Museum.
What He Left Behind
Walk Randle Highlands today and you're walking the streetcar suburb he laid out: American Foursquares with deep porches, bungalows, brick colonials, and semi-detached pairs on lots that feel generous by DC standards. Congress Heights kept its own mix — detached frame houses, porch-front rows, and the commercial spine along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
That housing stock matters if you're buying, because it shapes the financing:
- Detached houses are the simplest properties to finance. No condo project review, no association dues in your qualifying ratios. The loan turns on you and the house.
- Century-old houses often need work — and there are loans built for that. FHA 203(k) and Fannie Mae HomeStyle renovation loans underwrite against the home's value after the planned improvements, so the renovation doesn't have to come out of savings.
- DC's assistance programs go further here than almost anywhere in the city. Prices in both neighborhoods sit comfortably inside the caps for the District's first-time-buyer recordation discount and, in most cases, the five-year Tax Abatement program.
And if you already own one of Randle's houses — bought years ago, mortgage mostly paid down, value up — you're sitting on the other thing he built: equity. A cash-out refinance or home equity loan can put it to work without giving up the house.
Explore the Neighborhoods
We keep dedicated financing guides for both of the Colonel's neighborhoods:
- Randle Highlands home loans — foursquares, bungalows, renovation lending, and equity options
- Congress Heights home loans — detached houses, full rowhouses, and how DC's assistance programs stack at these prices
Thinking about buying east of the river, or putting the equity in a house you already own to work? Get pre-qualified or talk to us first — we'll start with the house and the numbers, not a sales pitch.
