The station was opened on November 22, 1980, and is operated by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA).

[2] In December 2012, Capitol Heights was one of five stations added to the route of the Silver Line, which was originally supposed to end at the Stadium-Armory station, but was extended into Prince George's County, Maryland to the Largo Town Center (now Downtown Largo) station (the eastern terminus of the Blue Line) due to safety concerns about a pocket track just past Stadium-Armory.

[4] In 1997, Radisson station of the Montreal Metro's Green Line was redressed to stand in for Capitol Heights in the Bruce Willis movie The Jackal.

[5] The station features the 22-coffer "waffle" ceiling vault design among Benning Road, Federal Center SW, Navy Yard–Ballpark, Shaw-Howard University, and U Street.

This article relating to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is a stub.