Langston Terrace was the first federally funded housing project in Washington, D.C., and one of the first four in the United States.

[2] It was part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration and was named in honor of John Mercer Langston, a 19th-century American abolitionist and attorney who founded Howard University Law School, and served as a U.S. congressman from Virginia.

[6] Unlike Techwood Homes, the first public housing project in the U.S., Langston was open to African American families.

Daniel Gillette Olney's The Progress of the Negro Race is a terra-cotta frieze located in the central courtyard.

Concrete animal sculptures located in the courtyard also serve as climbing structures for children.