Monday, October 6, 2025
Longtime Georgetown resident Ann Satterthwaite, who played a major role in founding Georgetown Waterfront Park, died on Sept. 20, at age 94.
Originally from Tenafly, New Jersey, she earned degrees in American history at Radcliffe College and in city planning at Yale University. Satterthwaite had a long and successful career as an environmental planner, focusing on preserving historic resources and public green space.
In 1960, Satterthwaite came to Washington, D.C., to work at the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. which President Eisenhower established to foster the creation of parks and recreation areas throughout the nation. She also served as a planning consultant in Charleston, South Carolina, Denver and San Francisco, and spent time in the U.K. studying British park and recreation planning.
She wrote several books, including “Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences,” which describes how social, cultural, economic and moral factors can impact shopping habits, and “Local Glories: Opera Houses on Main Street, Where Art and Community Meet,” highlighting the role of local opera houses in the cultural life of communities in the early 20th century, and their creative reuse in the 21st century.
Satterthwaite is best known for her seminal role in preserving the Potomac River waterfront in Georgetown. Her belief that the waterfront should be used for water-dependent activities guided her 40-year quest to maintain public access to the river. Her tenacity through decades of citizen activism realized this vision.
In 1978, she helped found the Committee for Washington’s Riverfront Parks, which advocated for land along the Potomac that had been condemned for the ill-fated Inner Loop Freeway to be used for a park. In the 1980s, she participated in litigation against the developer of the Washington Harbour to allow public access to a walkway along the river in front of the project and along the edge of Rock Creek.
More than a decade later, in 1997, she helped establish the Georgetown Waterfront Park Commission, a coalition of local civic groups advocating for a national park on the Georgetown waterfront. Working with the National Park Service, the commission developed plans for the park, but lacked the funds to build it. To remedy this, in 2005, she joined with a small group of community members to form Friends of Georgetown Waterfront Park, a nonprofit that raised $22 million to build the park, completed in 2011 as part of the national park system.
On learning of her death, Friends President Meg Hardon said: “Making the waterfront into a national park was Ann’s vision and her passion for many years. Georgetown Waterfront Park would not exist today without her efforts.”
A memorial service is being planned for November. Friends of Georgetown Waterfront Park will hold an event in her memory later this fall.