Massachusetts Avenue (Washington, D.C.)
major diagonal transverse road in Washington, D.C.
Massachusetts Avenue is a major diagonal transverse road in Washington, D.C., United States. The Massachusetts Avenue Historic District is a historic district that includes part of it.
Massachusetts Avenue was part of Pierre Charles L'Enfant's original plan for the development of Washington, D.C. The avenue crosses three of Washington, D.C.'s four quadrants. It intersects every major north–south street and passes numerous Washington landmarks. Massachusetts Avenue represents the northern boundary of downtown and the city's Embassy Row.
Massachusetts Avenue is tied with Pennsylvania Avenue as the widest road in Washington, D.C., at 160 feet (49 m). The two roads run in parallel through much of the city, Massachusetts about seven blocks north of Pennsylvania Avenue. Massachusetts Avenue was long considered the city's premier residential street, and Pennsylvania Avenue was its most sought-after business address. The two avenues are named Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, two states that played a leading role in securing American independence in the American Revolution and the subsequent Revolutionary War.
The historic district is an 81-acre (33 ha) area in Northwest Washington, D.C. that includes 150 contributing buildings and three contributing structures.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Massachusetts Avenue (Washington, D.C.)” as major diagonal transverse road in Washington, D.C. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3365085. VIAF identifies the subject as 315146220. The Library of Congress control number is sh88001520. Authority coordinates are 38.914, -77.052. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Massachusetts Avenue (Washington, D.C.)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.