Anzac Avenue
Anzac Memorial Avenue was officially opened for traffic on 5 December 1925 by the acting Premier William Forgan Smith. A floral arch was erected in Petrie for the occasion, with the Mayor of Redcliffe, J.B. Dunn and Pine Shire Chairman, W Bradley, providing welcome speeches and thanking the government for its assistance. The party, in a long procession of cars, continued on to Redcliffe which was "en fete" for the occasion. The avenue was proclaimed as the best road to a tourist resort yet conducted in Queensland.
In the week the road was opened, Rothwell wrote to the Brisbane Courier to draw attention to the tree-planting aspect of the memorial avenue. Rothwell noted the road was already utilised by hundreds of motorists on Sundays and public holidays. He called on the public to assist financially in making the road an avenue from Kedron Brook in Brisbane to Redcliffe, "a glorious asset to the State of Queensland". The first plantings were to be concentrated on the Anzac Memorial Avenue section between Redcliffe and Petrie.
Anacostia Historic District
The first house erected in the new subdivision was a two-story brick building on Harrison Street (on the southwest corner of Harrison and Monroe Streets), and next to it on Monroe Street (on the site of the former Enoch Tucker farmhouse) rose a brick structure which held George F. Pyle's grocery store. In 1855, Van Hook himself built "Cedar Hill", a lavish mansion on Jefferson Street near the Fox Mansion. Dr. Arthur Christie, a wealthy Englishman, purchased 50 acres (20.25 hectares) of land on the north side of Harrison Street and named his estate Fairlawn. Lewin Talburtt built a spectacular 21-room mansion, "Mont View," on what is now Mount View Place SE; his son, George Washington Talburtt, lived there for many years (although it is an apocryphal story that John Howard Payne composed the song "Home! Sweet Home!" there). The first church in the area, the Episcopalian "Ryan's Chapel," opened in 1862.
Van Hook had hoped to attract Navy Yard workers to buy and build in the Uniontown development. But although most of the lots had sold by 1860, the Panic of 1857 and the Civil War hindered building and few houses were constructed. The Civil War itself brought many changes to the area encompassed by the Anacostia Historic District. After the First Battle of Bull Run, Northern military leaders realized Washington, D.C., was relatively undefended and quickly began building a ring of forts around the city. The first of these forts was Fort Stanton, which began construction in September 1861, was completed on October 22, and fully armed and staffed by December 25. Fort Stanton was built on "Garfield Heights" (now Fort Stanton Park), and a military road (now Morris Road SE, Erie Street SE, Fort Place SE, Bruce Place SE, and Ainger Place SE) constructed from Monroe Street to provide better access to the river and Navy Yard Bridge (11th Street Bridges) and to link Fort Stanton with its subsidiary batteries, Fort Ricketts and Fort Snyder, and nearby Fort Wagner (now the site of Stanton Elementary School). The area was officially named Uniontown in 1865, but there was so much confusion between the village and Uniontown, Pennsylvania that the name of the area reverted to Anacostia on April 22, 1866. Fort Stanton closed in April 1866, and the land it occupied was turned back over to private ownership. The structures of the fort itself remained, falling into decay.