Georgetown Day School Washington, D. C.

Georgetown Day School opened its doors in 1945 as the first integrated school in a segregated city. Private schools at the time were de facto segregated and public schools were segregated by law.

From 1946-1956, GDS was located at “Grassland,” on Nebraska Avenue. Grassland was a two-story, five-bay, brick Federal-style house built in the early 1800s as a country estate by Nathan Loughborough. (Loughborough served as Comptroller of the Treasury and was a large stockholder in the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.)  GDS moved from that rented location to several others on MacArthur Boulevard.

In 1987, GDS returned to the neighborhood, constructing a new building for its high school on Davenport and 42nd Streets.  It subsequently purchased the neighboring Safeway site and the former car dealership building on Wisconsin Avenue. In 2020, GDS opened its the lower and middle school building, consolidating the entire school on one campus for the first time in the school’s history.