Pleasant Plains is a neighborhood in central Washington, D.C. largely occupied by Howard University. For this reason it is also sometimes referred to as Howard Town or, less frequently, Howard Village. It is situated in the Northwest quadrant of the city and bordered by 2nd Street, and McMillan Reservoir to the east; Florida Avenue and Barry Place to the south; Sherman Avenue to the west; and Harvard Street to the north. It is flanked on the eastern side by the Washington Veteran Affairs Medical Center and Washington Hospital Center, and by the Columbia Heights and Park View neighborhoods on the west and north sides. Pleasant Plains, Howard University notwithstanding, is a residential neighborhood. A large portion of its residents are Howard affiliates, either students or employees. 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 adjacent Benjamin Banneker Academic High School has ranked among the 100 best public schools in the United States. Pleasant Plains is in Ward 1. History The neighborhood is a small portion of a large colonial estate named "Pleasant Plains," owned by the Holmead family. The property stretched from today’s Spring Road to Columbia Road, and from Georgia Avenue to Rock Creek. The estate was apportioned and sold off over the course of the 19th century and divided into suburbs until it was annexed by the city of Washington in 1878 and became neighborhoods of the city. Essentially, the Pleasant Plains neighborhood is the area of the Holmead estate that was not settled as part of Columbia Heights. (In 1918, the city returned the name "Pleasant Plains" to the entire area of the original estate, but this is a semi-formal name for the section of town and not a neighborhood in and of itself.) The 1879 Hopkins real estate map shows the Pleasant Plains subdivision being located south of Park Road, east of 14th Street, west of Sherman Avenue, and north of Florida Avenue. From Howard down to Florida Avenue was a black-only neighborhood known as Howard Town. Residents of the adjacent LeDroit Park neighborhood built fences to keep black Howard Town residents out, and the black residents then tore down the fences in protest. The fences largely came down in 1901, and blacks began moving into LeDroit Park, effectively ending the segregated Howard Town section. Howard Town Center In