Just east of this location, several generations of the influential African American Webster and Horad family lived on land Charles and Jane Webster bought in April 1894 along the country road that became University Boulevard. Their farm grew to include several family homes, a barn, smokehouse, chicken house, and children's playhouse, and for many years it was a gathering place for family and visitors, with parties, baseball games, church picnics, and pig roasts. Charles Webster began a family tradition of altruism and civic engagement as a trustee for the nearby African American school and a campaigner for political candidates who supported Montgomery County's Black residents. In 1938, the brick home at 2113 University Boulevard West was built for their granddaughter, Elsie Sewell Horad, and her husband, Romeo W. Horad, Sr. Raised in the District of Columbia, Elsie Sewell Horad taught public school for three decades and held leadership positions in the Montgomery County Colored Republican Club and local women's groups. Romeo W. Horad, Sr., a graduate of the Howard University School of Law, used his real estate firm in the late 1930s and 1940s to partner with white realtors Ralph and Joseph Urciolo to sell homes to Black buyers despite restrictive covenants intended to keep neighborhoods white. He also led the Montgomery County Citizens Council for Mutual Improvement, which advocated public investment in African American communities and desegregation of public restrooms, and in 1948 he made a groundbreaking but unsuccessful run for a seat on the newly created Montgomery County Council. Later in 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court found Washington D.C.'s racial covenants legally unenforceable and struck down restrictive covenants nationwide.