In 1910 Congress waived the street grid northeast of the Naval Observatory because the terrain was too steep, which is why the streets in Massachusetts Avenue Heights curve and the lots are irregular.
The most useful fact about Massachusetts Avenue Heights is a piece of 1910 legislation. Congress waived the imposed street grid northeast of the Naval Observatory on the grounds that the terrain was too steep to carry it, and the developer laid out curving streets and irregular parcels instead. Nearly everything a buyer notices here descends from that waiver: the way the streets bend, why two adjoining lots are wildly different shapes, why acreage varies so much inside one subdivision. The tract was formally subdivided in 1911, and the parcel pattern it created is still legible on the assessment map.
John W. Thompson's syndicate put the land together between 1884 and 1894, including 240 acres acquired from William C. Hill, and bridged Rock Creek in 1888 to make the ground reachable from the city. The 212-acre tract was formally subdivided in 1911, with the first sales that April on 36th, Davis, Edmunds and Fulton Streets. Promotional material of the period advertised villa sites ranging from a quarter acre to nine acres, and that range is not merely marketing history — it still shows up in the parcel pattern, which is why lot size varies far more here than in a neighborhood platted to a uniform standard. Thompson Circle and McGill Terrace carry the developer's name and that of his first wife, Janette McGill.
This is the practical trap. Portions of the original subdivision have been renamed and are now marketed separately: Woodland Normanstone has been in use since around 1988, and Observatory Circle covers what began as the southern portion of the same 1911 tract. The same house can appear in the MLS under Massachusetts Avenue Heights, Woodland Normanstone or Observatory Circle depending on who wrote the listing. If you are running comparables or saved searches, run all three, and check the subdivision name on the assessment record rather than trusting the listing label.
Massachusetts Avenue Heights is not itself a local historic district. The separate Massachusetts Avenue Historic District, designated in 1973, covers the avenue frontage — so a house fronting the avenue and a house three streets in can get different answers on whether exterior work is referred for a preservation finding. Confirm the designation status of the specific parcel with the Historic Preservation Office before planning an exterior project; the mechanism and the 120-day finding under D.C. Code § 6-1107(c) are set out on our Washington, DC page. Off the avenue the governing document is Title 11 DCMR, the Zoning Regulations of 2016, and on lots of this size and shape the setback and lot-occupancy math is worth running before you make an offer, not after.
Massachusetts Avenue Heights sits in a Ward 3 boundary area where the in-boundary assignment is set address by address rather than uniformly across the subdivision, and the three overlapping neighborhood names make listing-sheet school claims particularly unreliable here. Pull the assignment for the exact address from the DCPS boundary tool for the school year in question. That is the only answer that will hold up, and as of August 2026 it is the one to rely on.
Massachusetts Avenue Heights sits within Washington, DC — that guide covers the zoning, permitting and site constraints that apply across the wider area.
Artur can confirm what applies to a specific address here — lot, zoning, association documents and school assignment — before you write an offer.
