Forest Hills (Washington, D.C.)

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Forest Hills is a residential neighborhood in the northwest part of Washington, D.C. It is bordered by Connecticut Avenue NW to the west, Rock Creek Park to the east, Chevy Chase to the north, and Tilden Street NW to the south. People often call it Van Ness because the area is served by the Van Ness–UDC Metro station on the Red Line and is near the University of the District of Columbia’s Van Ness campus. Public transport includes the Red Line and several DC Metrobus routes: H2, H3, H4, and L1, L2, L4.

The neighborhood has the former Civil War site Fort Kearny (no longer visible today) and Soapstone Valley Park, which surrounds a Rock Creek tributary. Nearby institutions include the Howard University School of Law across Connecticut Avenue from UDC on Upton Street NW. The Levine School of Music is on Upton Street in the building that used to be the Carnegie Geophysical Laboratory, and the Edmund Burke School (founded in 1968) is also on Upton Street in the former Devitt Prep building.

The Hillwood Museum sits in a house once owned by Marjorie Merriweather Post and houses her decorative collection, including Fabergé eggs. Embassies on Linnean Avenue NW (the Czech Republic and the Netherlands) and on Connecticut Avenue (Suriname) are in Forest Hills, with Hungary’s embassy just south of Tilden Street in nearby Cleveland Park and other embassies farther west in North Cleveland Park. The Seventh-day Adventist Capital Memorial Church is at 3150 Chesapeake Street NW. The National Bureau of Standards, now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), was at one time the neighborhood’s largest employer.

Historically, the area did not have restricted housing covenants, which helped it become predominantly Jewish during the 1940s and 1950s.