General Description
This iron fence runs along the western edge of the Home's property from the intersection of Rock Creek Church Road and Park Place to the intersection of Irving Street and Park Place at the southwest corner of the campus. This fence, together with the earlier masonry and iron fence along the northwest and northeast property lines, form an intact western boundary. Board of Commissioners meeting minutes indicate that a "wire fence" was constructed at this location in 1869, coinciding with the Home's purchase of Whitney's property to the west and the construction of the Park Road Gate House that same year. However, by the end of the century, the Home had acquired additional land to the south (Corcoran, 1872) and to the east (Woods, 1876), and a new fence was needed. The Home's Annual Report from 1899 states: "A substantial and ornamental wire fence has been erected on the eastern and western boundaries of the grounds and will be extended along the southern boundary, on Michigan Avenue, as soon as the Commissioners of the District of Columbia shall have completed the grading of the avenue and the ground shall have become sufficiently solid thereafter to sustain the fence posts. The entire length of this wire fence will be 15,788 feet, i.e., very nearly 3 miles." The western portion of the fence is what can be seen on the Home's grounds today. Although the southern portion of the fence was taken down when the Home sold its agricultural fields in the 1950s, the portion of the fence along the former eastern boundary of the Home, deaccessioned by the Home to the Catholic University of America in 2004, is still extant. To accommodate the construction of Park Place in 1933, a small section of land was transferred to the City of Washington, moving the Home's western boundary and fence slightly to the east. The fence features iron pickets with a serpentine shape at the top.

Fence/Entry/Perimeter (is contained within / contains)