Georgetown University students and community advocates on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) representing the university have started an initiative to preserve and restore the historic Foundry Branch Trestle Bridge. 

This year, Georgetown University students have joined local community advocates and neighborhood residents in a coalition that they call, “Save the Trestle.” The initiative has now become part of Georgetown University Student Association’s (GUSA) Department of City Life and Federal Affairs, which has expanded the student outreach of the project. 

Students in the team have placed posters around campus with a QR code that links to an informational document to spread awareness around campus. 

The trestle lies directly behind the McDonough Bus Turnaround in Glover Archbold Park between Georgetown’s campus and the Foxhall and Palisades neighborhoods. 

Washington, D.C. once had an extensive streetcar system, with lines running from the Car Barn in Georgetown as far as Glen Echo, Md. before the district dismantled it in 1960 amid low ridership. The Foundry Branch Trestle is among the last extant streetcar infrastructure in D.C. and is the city’s last remaining streetcar trestle. 

The trolley trestle was constructed in 1896 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as well as the D.C. Inventory of Historic Sites. 

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has moved to demolish the 127-year-old bridge multiple times. In September 2022, the D.C. Court of Appeals overruled a D.C. council decision that would have allowed WMATA to demolish it. 

The D.C. city council allocated $250,000 in May to preservation and restoration plans for the Foundry Branch Trestle Bridge for fiscal year 2024, the first allocation of municipal funds the initiative has received.  

Joe Massaua (SFS ’25), an ANC commissioner and founder of “Save the Trestle,” introduced a resolution in February 2023 urging the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) to purchase the trestle from WMATA and to fund the bridge’s restoration. 

Student advocates are focusing this semester on increasing community awareness of the trestle project and its potential, according to Chris LoPresti (CAS ’25), who has worked with Massaua on the project. 

“In the past few months, we’ve added more people to our team, we have enthusiastic people, we’re gonna be having stickers coming out soon,” LoPresti told The Hoya. 

“We added a graphic designer, we’re going to be launching a social media presence and just gaining exposure,” LoPresti told The Hoya. “Our goal was really to show people that this is something that we can do, get people involved in it, and hopefully have more people join our team,” LoPresti added. 

Massaua said that despite DDOT’s delay to take any action, significant progress and milestones have been made between now and when he initially introduced the resolution in February.

Massaua said accessibility is the main goal behind restoring the trestle. 

“I view this project as an accessibility need for students because there’s over 270 graduate students who live in the Foxhall neighborhood right behind campus, and a couple dozen undergraduate students in addition to the faculty and staff that live back there and just general people who are trying to access the university,” Massaua told The Hoya.

Christopher Murphy (LAW ’98), the previous vice president for government relations & community engagement at Georgetown University, told the ANC that the university takes no position on the proposed restoration of the trestle in February 2023, according to Massaua.  

University communication with DDOT from October 2019 indicated the school’s willingness to work with the department and other stakeholders on the trail project. Massaua said that the university has not publicly commented since.

Brett Young, a community advocate who has been involved in efforts to restore the trestle for over a decade, said the initiative can transform a previously neglected space into a functional and recreational space. 

“We’re trying to restore this one because we think it has a transportation benefit. It’s really the link between the two communities of the Palisades and to the Georgetown neighborhood,” Young told The Hoya. “It would be great for pedestrians, it would be great for cyclists, for students. It would be great for people who want to walk their dogs or push their strollers.” 

Young said he hopes the restoration of the bridge will prompt the creation of a Palisades Trolley Trail (PTT), allowing people to run along the old trolley route from Georgetown into the Palisades. 

Several hundred residents of the Palisades and Foxhall neighborhoods work in Georgetown, according to a 2019 feasibility study analyzing the viability of a potential trail.. 

“The PTT would provide a dedicated, traffic-separated facility for walking and biking to the Georgetown neighborhood, which contains over 25,000 jobs at Georgetown University and surrounding businesses,” the study reads. “Today, it is difficult for Palisades and Foxhall residents to access these jobs by walking or biking due to infrastructure deficiencies.”

Young said that despite such research and petitions from community members, WMATA continues to push for the bridge’s demolition. 

“They haven’t put a dime into fixing it. So basically, now they say, well, it’s unsafe. And it’s essentially demolition by neglect,” Young said. “They just want to demolish this and be done with it.”

Young said that having Georgetown students join his efforts has made a big difference, but he hopes to eventually gain support from the university as a whole. 

“We could always use more support. In fact, I think we need more support from the students on the inside,” Young said.