The school is named after Howard Dilworth Woodson (1877-1962). Woodson graduated from the university, which is now the University of Pittsburgh in 1899. He worked for the federal government as a civil/structural engineer for many years. He became a civic leader in the Far Northeast/Deanwood neighborhood. Woodson was instrumental in urbanizing that neighborhood by advocating more resources for education, redevelopment, and utility services for the area. During that time, the District of Columbia did not have elective government. Woodson testified frequently before the (federal) congressional committees for D.C. oversight.[3] Woodson was also a supervising architect for the Universal Development and Loan Company, Inc.
Woodson advocated for a high school to be built in the Deanwood area in response to parents’ demands for children to be able to attend school in their own area. Since the Deanwood area had no neighborhood high school, students had to travel to Eastern, Spingarn and/or Anacostia high schools.
Described as the first high-rise high school in the country consisting of a seven-floor tower sitting atop a plaza and a ground floor with a greenhouse on the rooftop (technically a tenth floor), and elevators and escalators that took students and faculty up and down the tower, the new school which opened in 1972 at 55th and Eads streets NE. was named Howard Dilworth Woodson Senior High School.
Initially, the size and shape for Woodson ran into obstacles with the planning boards, but H.D. Woodson’s son, Granville Woodson, who was the chief of the DCPS buildings department at the time, made convincing arguments that the size and shape of the new school was exactly the point. It was his desire to make the school the focus of the community by making the building look as significant as possible.
When Woodson finally opened, it was praised as being a state-of-the-art campus that had a new look, new equipment, and specially recruited new teachers. As the years went by, due to building deterioration and lack of funds, it was demolished in 2009 and replaced by a new three story state-of-the-art building in 2011.