07/30/2026
What if your front door opened directly onto a public park? In D.C., it does.
The 1870 Public Parking Act created the city’s front yards, allowing property owners to landscape the “park” land outside the front walls of their homes.
City ownership of front yards goes back to the very beginning, when Pierre L’Enfant designed the federal city in 1791. His plan included very broad streets, with the widest – including East Capitol Street and Massachusetts, Maryland and Pennsylvania avenues – spanning a whopping 160 feet.
As Washington entered the post-Civil War building boom, Congress acknowledged the full span would never be paved. Instead, lawmakers in 1870 allowed owners of homes facing the street to landscape and, in 1899, to fence the land between the sidewalks and property lines.
The 1870 Public Parking Act authorized D.C. “to set apart from time to time, as parks, to be adorned with shade trees, walks, and inclosed with curbstones, not exceeding one-half the width of any and all avenues and streets in the said City of Washington, except Pennsylvania Avenue, leaving a roadway of not less than 35 feet in width in the center of said avenues and streets …”
Then in 1899, fence regulations allowed property owners to install short, open fences between sidewalks and property lines.
This house, built in 1886, was the home of Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book Critic from 1981-2014. His wife, Marie Arana, biographer and novelist, was the editor of the Washington Post Book World. Their garden was designed by Adrian Higgins, former gardening columnist for the Washington Post. The home was on the 1983, 2005 and 2012 Capitol Hill House & Garden Tour.
