A fun snippet from Ghosts of DC where a resident of Columbia Heights is complaining about street name changes when the city absorbed what had been a "suburb" prior to that time:

>Judge McCalmont led the opposition to the resolution. “This thing of having mathematical accuracy to everything I do not believe in,” he said, with considerable emphasis. “The scheme of naming these streets Yale, Harvard, and Princeton was a good one. They are significant of nice schools, names of colleges held in affection, and why should they not remain? I believe that the people should have something to say in the naming of their streets. Our people know enough to find the way home.” He held up for ridicule the A B C system and the lack of sentimentality which the names would possess.

From a letter to the Washington Post in 1904.

Harvard St. is still there, but the rest of the names were changed. I always wondered about Kenyon Street and Dartmouth Street. Because they were tucked in with a lot of other college names, they might have been legitimately named for those two schools as well. Columbian College (which was moved and became GW) used to be there and was the namesake of the area.