Barry Farm

Barry Farm is a neighborhood in Southeast Washington, D.C., located east of the Anacostia River and bounded by the Southeast Freeway to the northwest, Suitland Parkway to the northeast and east, and St. Elizabeths Hospital to the south. The neighborhood was renowned as a significant post-Civil-War settlement of free Blacks and freed slaves established by the Freedmen's Bureau. The streets were named to commemorate the Union generals, Radical Republicans, and Freedmen's Bureau officials who advanced the rights of Black Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction: Howard Road SE for General Oliver O. Howard; Sumner Road SE for Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner; Wade Road SE for Ohio Senator Benjamin Wade; Pomeroy Road SE for Kansas Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy; Stevens Road SE for Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, and Nichols Avenue (now Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE) for Henry Nichols who was the first superintendent of Saint Elizabeth's Hospital (Formerly called the Government Insane Asylum). The neighborhood name is not a reference to the late former mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry, but coincidentally has the same spelling.