One of its major community anchors is the Banneker Recreation Center on Georgia Avenue, which reopened in July 2007 after a year of renovations.

The neighborhood is a small portion of a large colonial estate named "Pleasant Plains," owned by the Holmead family.

Essentially, the Pleasant Plains neighborhood is the area of the Holmead estate that was not settled as part of Columbia Heights.

The fences largely came down in 1901, and blacks began moving into LeDroit Park, effectively ending the segregated Howard Town section.

[7] In 2005, a judge in the D.C. Superior court found in the city's favor, and in December 2006, D.C. Councilmember Jim Graham introduced legislation (which passed the Council) to at last initiate the construction of Howard Town Center in Pleasant Plains in 2007.

[8] The neighborhood is a rectangle, narrow east to west, positioned on the boundary between NW and NE Washington, about halfway between the center of DC and the Maryland border.