Digging Deeper: Washington Highlands

About

Washington Highlands: Where Beer Barons, Prohibition and Garden City Landscape Architecture Intersect

The property that became the Washington Highlands neighborhood was the Percheron horse and hops farm of beer baron Capt. Frederick Pabst. After his death, his sons, August and Fred, Jr., recognizing the looming threat that impending prohibition would have on the brewery business, came up with a new plan. In 1916, they hired one of the fathers of city planning, Werner Hegemann, to plot out the over 200 acres of rolling farmland for a housing development. Hegemann, in turn, hired a Harvard educated landscape designer, Elbert Peets, to assist with the design. Their model residential neighborhood was laid out with curving streets to preserve the site’s natural topographical features while minimizing through traffic, while providing an extensive private park network consistent with the community-building focus of the Garden City movement. The unique landscape architecture, along with distinctive residential architecture from the 1920s, will be featured on our walk.

The nature of the Washington Highlands is that it is hilly. The guides have designed a tour that tries to follow the contours of the land as much as possible, but, inevitably, there will be uphills and downhills during the approximately 90-minute tour.

$30 Members | $40 General

Digging Deeper Date(s): Saturday, July 19 and Sunday, July 20

Sessions at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. both days

Registrations are nonrefundable and nontransferable . Open Days are rain or shine events. Click here for FAQs.