Buying & selling in Woodley Park

Woodley Park at a glance

Woodley Park sits between Rock Creek Park and the Zoo on the east and the Cleveland Park side of the ridge on the west, bounded roughly by Woodley Road and the Klingle Valley Trail to the north, Calvert Street to the south, and 34th Street to the west (Source: Wikipedia). Connecticut Avenue runs through the middle as the commercial spine rather than an edge, and Cathedral Avenue runs through the interior. The name comes from Woodley House, built in 1801 by Philip Barton Key and later used as a summer residence by President Grover Cleveland and by Secretary of War Henry Stimson; the house still stands on a school campus and is not a private residence today (Source: Wikipedia).

The housing runs in two clear tracks. The side streets hold rows of early-twentieth-century rowhouses, and much of that fabric is inside the Old Woodley Park Historic District, a 54-acre district listed on the National Register on June 15, 1990 for its late-19th and 20th-century revival architecture (Source: Wikipedia). Connecticut Avenue carries the large buildings — apartment houses along the avenue north of the small historic district (Source: Wikipedia), some rowhouses on the avenue converted to commercial use, and condominium stock that now includes the 1928 Wardman Tower (Source: Wikipedia).

Woodley Park, block by block

The neighborhood reads differently depending on how close you are to the avenue:

• Connecticut Avenue at Calvert Street — The commercial heart of the neighborhood: storefronts and restaurants at the intersection of Calvert Street and Connecticut Avenue NW, with apartment and condominium floors above (Source: Wikimedia Commons). Restaurant rosters on this stretch turn over, so check what is open now rather than relying on a list.
• The historic-district side streets — The blocks around 28th and Cathedral Streets NW sit inside the Old Woodley Park Historic District, listed on the National Register on June 15, 1990, and are built out with rows of early-twentieth-century houses (Source: Wikipedia). Exterior changes visible from the street go through DC historic-preservation review.
• The Wardman Park site on Woodley Road — The former hotel property at 2600 Woodley Road NW, next to the Metro station. The hotel closed permanently in January 2021, the site sold in December 2021 for $152.2 million, the 1980 main building was demolished between October 2022 and mid-2023, and two residential towers opened on the site in 2025; the 1928 Wardman Tower annex was kept and converted to condominiums (Source: Wikipedia).
• The Rock Creek and Zoo edge — The east side of the neighborhood borders the Smithsonian National Zoological Park and Rock Creek Park. The Zoo's main pedestrian entrance is at 3001 Connecticut Ave NW, admission is free, and every visitor needs a timed-entry pass reserved in advance (Source: Smithsonian's National Zoo).
• The Klingle Valley border — Klingle Road and the Klingle Valley Trail form the northern edge against Cleveland Park. The trail is a ten-foot multi-use path that opened on June 24, 2017 on the roadbed of a section closed to cars since 1990, and it links the two neighborhoods through the park (Source: Wikipedia).
• The Cathedral Avenue interior — Cathedral Avenue crosses the neighborhood rather than bounding it, carrying traffic between Connecticut Avenue and the 34th Street end. Blocks toward that western edge are a longer walk to the station than the ones on the avenue (Source: Wikipedia).

Five things locals know

Five things that come up once you start walking the blocks:

• There are two bridges over Rock Creek here, and they get confused constantly — The Taft Bridge carries Connecticut Avenue, was built between 1897 and 1907, and was listed on the National Register on July 3, 2003. The Duke Ellington Bridge just north of it carries Calvert Street NW across to 18th Street in Adams Morgan, was built between 1933 and 1935 as the Calvert Street Bridge, and was renamed in 1974 for the Washington-born composer (Source: Wikipedia).
• The lions on the Taft Bridge are replicas — Roland Hinton Perry designed and sculpted the four cast-concrete lions in 1906 and they were installed at the bridge ends in 1907. The originals deteriorated over the following decades and were replaced with new concrete castings in 2000, which is what you see today (Source: Wikipedia).
• The Wardman Tower outlived the hotel it was built for — The eight-story, 350-room annex went up in 1928 to a design by Mihran Mesrobian and was listed on the National Register in January 1984. The main hotel building put up in 1979-80 came down in 2022-23, while the tower was preserved and converted into condominiums (Source: Wikipedia).
• Klingle Road has been closed to cars since 1990 by decision, not neglect — A three-quarter-mile section carrying roughly 3,200 vehicles a day washed out in 1990. A two-decade argument over reopening it ended in 2008, when Ward 3 legislation required the roadbed to stay closed to motor traffic and be converted to a trail; the Klingle Valley Trail opened on June 24, 2017 (Source: Wikipedia).
• The Metro station has been renamed three times — It was designated Zoological Park in planning, became Woodley Park-Zoo in 1979 before it opened on December 5, 1981, gained Adams Morgan in the name in 1999, and was shortened on November 3, 2011 to Woodley Park with Zoo/Adams Morgan as a subtitle. It has always been a Red Line station (Source: Wikipedia).

Getting around

Woodley Park station is at Connecticut Avenue and 24th Street NW, opened on December 5, 1981, and is served by the Red Line only (Source: Wikipedia). That is one ride to Dupont Circle, Farragut North and Union Station, and a transfer for anything on another line. Metrobus routes run the Connecticut Avenue corridor through the neighborhood; check the current route numbers on WMATA's trip planner, because the DC bus network was renamed in 2025. On foot, the Klingle Valley Trail connects north into Cleveland Park and into Rock Creek Park, and the Duke Ellington Bridge puts 18th Street in Adams Morgan within a walk across the gorge.

Driving in and out runs on Connecticut Avenue over the Taft Bridge or on Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, which Wikipedia describes as a major thoroughfare on the stretch south of the Zoo (Source: Wikipedia). Parking is the part to check address by address. Rowhouses on the side streets mostly rely on street parking, some have alley or garage space and many do not, and buildings on the avenue differ on whether a space is included, deeded or rented. Zoo weekends put visitor demand on the same blocks, and the Zoo's own timed-entry system encourages arrival by Metro. Current residential permit parking rules for these blocks should be confirmed with DDOT rather than assumed from a listing.

Walking distance to the station is the other thing worth measuring rather than guessing. Blocks on and near Connecticut Avenue between Calvert Street and Woodley Road are at the station; the side streets running west toward 34th Street and Cleveland Avenue are meaningfully farther, and the ridge means some of that walk is uphill.

The market & what to expect

Two different products trade here, and they price on different things. Rowhouses on the historic-district side streets are early-twentieth-century construction, so condition, systems, original exterior fabric and what has already been approved and permitted drive the number more than square footage does. On Connecticut Avenue the building itself carries much of the value: ownership structure, monthly fees, reserves, board or association rules, and what the building has done about windows, elevators and mechanical systems. New construction at the Wardman Park site and the condominium conversion of the 1928 Wardman Tower added inventory next to the Metro station that behaves nothing like a rowhouse three blocks west (Source: Wikipedia).

No current sale-price or days-on-market series is published for Woodley Park on its own, so pricing here is built from comparable sales block by block and building by building rather than from a neighborhood average. District-wide, DC homes carried a 30-day median time on market and about five months of supply in July 2026 (Source: Bright MLS via UrbanTurf). That is a District figure, not a Woodley Park one.

For buyers, the work happens before the offer: inspection scope on a house a century old, the review path for any exterior change you have in mind, and, in a building on the avenue, the ownership structure and the financials behind the monthly fee. For sellers, permits, prior exterior approvals and system replacement records answer the questions buyers otherwise price for. Start with the buyer's guide or the seller's guide to see how Kelly runs the process, compare it with her Cleveland Park guide for the next stretch of Connecticut Avenue, or get in touch for a read on a specific address.

Why work with Kelly in Woodley Park

Kelly Balmer is a Vice President & Partner, Mollaan Babbington Group at Compass, with $130M+ sold and a Best-of-Zillow, 5.0-star record across 130+ client reviews over more than 13 years in DC, Maryland and Virginia. Her office at 1313 14th Street NW is a short run up Connecticut Avenue and over the Taft Bridge from Woodley Park, and she handles every deal personally rather than passing it to a team member.

In Woodley Park that means checking the things that decide outcomes here: what historic-preservation review looks like for the exterior change a buyer has in mind on a side-street rowhouse, how a building on Connecticut Avenue is owned and what its documents and financials say, what the roof, windows and systems on a house from the 1910s or 1920s actually need, and how the walk to the Red Line station from a specific block compares with the one from the listing two streets over.

Kelly Balmer
Vice President & Partner, Mollaan Babbington Group at Compass · Licensed in DC · MD · VA