John Eaton Elementary School is an

elementary school A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...

in the

Cleveland Park Cleveland Park is a residential neighborhood in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. It is located at and bounded approximately by Rock Creek Park to the east, Wisconsin and Idaho Avenues to the west, Klingle and Woodley Roads to the so ...

neighborhood of

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

. It is part of the District of Columbia Public School system. John-eaton-elementary-school-sign

It opened as John Eaton Public School # 160 at 3301 Lowell Street NW on October 24, 1910. The interior followed the standard

Adolf Cluss Adolf Ludwig Cluss (July 14, 1825 – July 24, 1905) also known as Adolph Cluss was a German-born American immigrant who became one of the most important, influential and prolific architects in Washington, D.C., in the late 19th century, respons ...

design long used by DC public schools, and the exterior of red brick and yellow brick trim was designed by architect Appleton P. Clark, Jr. It was named for recently deceased General

John Eaton John Eaton may refer to: * John Eaton (divine) (born 1575), English divine *John Eaton (pirate) (fl. 1683–1686), English buccaneer *Sir John Craig Eaton (1876–1922), Canadian businessman *John Craig Eaton II (born 1937), Canadian businessman an ...

, a Union Army veteran who founded some 74 schools for

freedmen A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), abolitionism, emancipation (gra ...

and was later a college president. Within less than a decade, the school was overcrowded, prompting the construction of an addition in 1922 designed by Arthur B. Heaton. An auditorium/gymnasium was added in 1930. The Cleveland Park branch of the

District of Columbia Public Library The District of Columbia Public Library (DCPL) is the public library system for the District of Columbia, in the United States. The system includes 26 individual libraries including Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library (the DCPL's central libra ...

began as a single room in the Eaton School in 1910. Library services remained there, interrupted by World War I and II, until the construction of a library that opened in 1953. The school was one of 18 DC schools selected for integration following ''

Brown v Board of Education ''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the segrega ...

'', beginning with 10 African-American students in the fall of 1954.

References

{{DC High Schools Cleveland Park Schools in Washington, D.C.