Langston Terrace Dwellings are historic structures located in the Kingman Park

Kingman Park, Washington, D.C.

Kingman Park is a residential neighborhood in the Northeast quadrant of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. Kingman Park's boundaries are 15th Street NE to the west; C Street SE to the south; Benning Road to the north; and Anacostia Park to the east...

 neighborhood in the Northeast quadrant of Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

  The apartments were built between 1935 and 1938 and they were listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

 in 1987.

History

Langston Terrace was the first federally funded housing project in Washington and the second in the United States. It was part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration

Public Works Administration

The Public Works Administration , part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression...

 and was named in honor of John Mercer Langston

John Mercer Langston

John Mercer Langston was an American abolitionist, attorney, educator, and political activist. He was the first dean of the law school at Howard University and helped create the department. He was the first president of what is now Virginia State University. In 1888 he was the first African...

, a 19th century American abolitionist and attorney who founded Howard University

Howard University

Howard University is a federally chartered, non-profit, private, coeducational, nonsectarian, historically black university located in Washington, D.C., United States...

 Law School, and served as a U.S. congressman from Virginia. The complex was designed by Bauhaus

Bauhaus

', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

-trained Washington architect Hilyard Robinson

Hilyard Robinson

Hilyard R. Robinson was a renowned African-American modernist architect known for his work in designing public housing.-Life:A native Washingtonian, Robinson studied at the prestigious M Street High School, Philadelphia's School of Industrial Design, the University of Pennsylvania School of...

 in the International Style

International style (architecture)

The International style is a major architectural style that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the formative decades of Modern architecture. The term originated from the name of a book by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style...

.

The 274-unit complex was constructed primary by African American laborers. The garden apartment buildings were built around common areas. Daniel Olney’s The Progress of the Negro Race is a terra-cotta frieze in the central courtyard. It depicts African American history from slavery to World War I migration. His Madonna and Children is located in the same courtyard. The animal sculptures also serve as climbing structures for children.