Charles Carroll Glover (November 24, 1846 – February 25, 1936)[1] was an American banker and philanthropist who made major contributions to the modern landscape of Washington, D.C. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

National Park Service historian Cornelius W. Heine, in a 1952 study of Glover's contributions, described him as "both a businessman and a poet."

[5] Seven years later, in the wake of the Panic of 1873, during which many banks failed, Glover was promoted to chief administrative officer of Riggs, at age 27.

Glover was active in the debate that led to the eventual adoption of the Federal Reserve Act and presented a plan for economic relief to the United States Congress in 1908.

In 1881, Glover started to promote the reclamation of the Potomac mud flats that extended West and South of the National Mall, and their transformation into a great public park.

But the future use of the land was not settled before early 1897, when Glover obtained the passage of a bill establishing Potomac Park and personally persuaded President Grover Cleveland to sign it on his last full day in office.

The project of protecting the natural area around Rock Creek had emerged a generation earlier, but several bills to materialize it had failed in Congress since a first attempt in 1866.

Together with other local civic leaders including newspaper publisher Crosby Stuart Noyes and lawyer Calderon Carlisle, he successfully lobbied for bills that led to the creation of the National Zoo in 1889 and Rock Creek Park in 1890.

In 1898, Glover was one of the founding members of the Washington Board of Trade, which quickly became the city's most politically powerful civic organization.

[9] In 1896, anticipating on the avenue's extension beyond Rock Creek, he built his country house and estate, Westover, south of the present Ward Circle.

Glover was also a trustee of American University, and was instrumental in its establishment on its current main campus, immediately northwest of Westover.

[10] Fittingly, when a new bridge was built in the late 1930s to carry Massachusetts Avenue over Rock Creek, it was dedicated with Glover's name.

His children dedicated a plaque commemorating his key contribution to the construction of the Washington National Cathedral in the church's south nave.