The question recently came up on Twitter as to why the street that stretches from Audi Field on First Street SW to the D.C. jail at 19th Street SE and which runs pretty much parallel to the Anacostia River, is named not for that body of water, but for the Potomac, to which it gets nowhere near. One answer is that it used to go a bit further west, all the way to 3rd Street SW. This put it pretty close to Buzzard’s Point, which was where the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers converged before the building of Hains Point in 1892. Still, it runs much closer to the Anacostia for a much longer distance. (Ed. note: The original name of said street was Georgia Avenue. ––MHC)
This got me to thinking about a question I have mulled for a while, but never really looked into, which is, When was the Eastern Branch renamed Anacostia River? In an effort to figure this out, I went to my favorite data set: the newspaper archives that the Library of Congress maintains online. I searched through, in 5 year increments, the words “anacostia river” and “eastern branch” and then plotted those out as percentages.
One thing is very clear: For the first 30 years that Washington existed, the only name in use was “Eastern Branch.” The very first time the words “Anacostia River” are used are in the February 21, 1834 edition of the Alexandria Gazette. In a short item about doings in congress, it refers to a petition of residents “residing on the south side of the Anacostia River or Eastern Branch of Potomac” in which they request that a free bridge be built over that river.
It is another ten years before the river is once again referred to as the Anacostia, and as can be seen on the graph below, it is not until 1890-94 that this word is used with any frequency. It takes until 1930 for the two to be used in approximately equal measure.
As the number of newspapers available on Chronicling America is drastically reduced after this era, I did not continue to count words thereafter.
What is clear is
that when the decision to rename Potomac Avenue was made in 1908, the
term “Anacostia River” was still only used about 20% of the time,
so the more likely name would for the renamed street would have been
“Eastern Branch Avenue,” which is not only decidedly clunky but
easily confused with Eastern Avenue over on the border with Maryland.
Furthermore, I suspect that someone at the time (and even
today) would expect a roadway named “Anacostia Avenue” to be in,
well, Anacostia.
The real question therefore is, why did they have to name it after any waterway? Why not just name it after the guy who desperately wanted his state’s name off the street in the first place? Maybe we should all just start referring to Potomac Avenue as “Bacon Avenue” from here on in.
Actually, scratch that. There is absolutely no reason to name anything after an ex-Confederate, segregationist enslaver. So, unless anyone has a better idea, Potomac Avenue it will remain.