xa.yimg.comxa.yimg.com/kq/groups/21096035/575274245/name/gap…  · Web viewCollection of Judy, Fran, ... Jr., and Stevie Wonder played the Harambee House’s Supper ... 138 [HU

Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail

[Draft Boilerplate — this copy appears on the back of every sign, along with credits and the map.]

How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue!

South of Florida Avenue, where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here sweet aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium: the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country’s African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life.

Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activists, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington’s oldest thoroughfares.

Pleasant Plains once was the Holmead family estate, spreading from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today’s Pleasant Plains neighborhood occupies a portion of the old Holmead land. While most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, crosses into Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, enters Park View at Harvard Street, and ends in Petworth.

Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. A free booklet capturing the trail’s highlights is available in both English and Spanish language editions at businesses and institutions along the way. To learn about other DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.

Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is produced by Cultural Tourism DC in collaboration with District Department of Transportation, Washington Convention and Sports Authority, U.S. Department of Transportation, and Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail Working Group. Special thanks to Heritage Trail Historian Sarah Shoenfeld, Working Group Co-chairs Isa Angulo, Darren Jones, and Sylvia Robinson, and to Working Group Members Athena Angelos, Jason Berry, Kelvin Esters, Lynn French, Roland Gardner, Franky Hemingway, Berlene Jackson, Reginald Kelley, Patrick Nelson, Ernest Quimby, Ayize Sabater, Shana Sabbath, Maybelle Taylor-Bennett, and Naomi Washington.

Thank you also to ANCs [need this info from Sylvia/Darren] Donald Benjamin, Kent Boese, Yvonne Carignan, Dana Coelho, Joellen ElBashir, John Gartrell, Mark Greek, Faye Haskins, Alan Heymann, Margot Hoerner, Edward Holloway, Kevin Johnson, Timothy Jones, Brian

Kraft, Nicole Manuel, Susan McNeill, Romeo Morgan, Eddy Palanzo, Kim Roberts, Howard University Professor Ernest Quimby’s sociology students (spring 2008), Ayize Sabater II, Joshua Sabater, Shalom Sabater, Ashley Simpkins, Kai Smith, Kathryn S. Smith, and Thomas Smith.

Cultural Tourism DC staff: Linda Donavan Harper, Alisha Bell, Laura Brower, Mara Cherkasky, Maggie Downing, Sarah Fairbrother, Helen Gineris, Elizabeth Goldberg, Carmen Harris, Pamela Jafari, Jane Freundel Levey, Jessica Marlatt, Leon Seemann, Frank Stewart, and Pat Wheeler. Map by Larry Bowring, Bowring Cartographic.

© 2010, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

[logos are, in order:] CTdc, DDOT, FHWA, DC flag

Sign 11968[7th & S at Shaw/Howard Metro]

Thursday evening, April 4, 1968. The news that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has been assassinated in Memphis makes its way like lightning through the city. Not far from this sign, at 14th and U Streets, a traditionally African American section where hundreds change buses or stop to shop, faces register first shock and then anger. People demand that businesses close out of respect for Dr. King. Then individuals begin breaking windows, looting some places, burning others. The violence spreads along U Street to this intersection, where, over the next three days, almost every white-owned business on Seventh between S Street and Florida Avenue is destroyed. 1

A United Planning Organization leader tells the Washington Post that day, “Black Americans feel more divided from white Americans than at any time in this century.”2

The 1968 riots were, in large part, a response to inequities in housing, jobs, and schools, and to the city’s neglect of black neighborhoods. “We’re burning the rats and roaches along with everything else,” proclaimed a youngster who had just set fire to a store here on Seventh Street.3 The rubble and crime left behind scarred this neighborhood for years, and those who once enjoyed its restaurants and clubs stayed away. While officials and activists worked on rebuilding plans almost immediately — a playground opened in summer 1969 where Waxie Maxie’s had stood at 1836 Seventh Street, to your [direction] — it would take many long years and the 1991 opening of this Metro station to make substantial progress.

1 Frank Love interview. Love has worked at Gregg’s Barber Shop, at 1909 7th Street, since 1961. 2 Washington Post, 4/4/68, A13 Ten Blocks from the White House, 223.

Images:

1-1A view through the ruins of Dox Liquors, which once stood on this corner, of businesses across Seventh Street, April 16, 1968.Library of Congress

1-2, 1-3, 1-4 Phil Rosen, pharmacist, opened Dox Liquors on this corner [northeast corner] in 1950, and welcomed boxer Joe Louis, who was promoting Joe Louis Kentucky Bourbon, direction. At direction, the store lies in ruins, April 1968.Collection of Judy, Fran, and Arthur RosenHistorical Society of Washington, D.C.

1-5, 1-6A looter vaults the counter at Manhattan Auto, Seventh and R, direction, before the building bursts into flames. A few days later, soldiers stand guard outside the burned-out showroom.[both] The Washington Post

1-7A soldier guards smoldering wreckage at the southwest corner of Seventh and Florida, near today’s CVS parking lot.Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

1-8, 1-9In February 1969, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development George Romney and President Nixon, direction, presented to Mayor Walter Washington, right, and other Washington leaders plans for a park to replace the still-standing ruins of Waxie Maxie’s, direction.[both]Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post

Sign 2Seventh and T[Seventh and T Streets, NW]

Back in the day, Seventh and T was the place to go for a good time. Once the Howard Theatre opened to your right in 1910, restaurants, nightclubs, and businesses serving the diverse African American communities followed. As Marita Golden wrote in Long Distance Life, “Seventh Street, dressed in neon, scented with the hungry perfume of passion, hummed and whistled and scatted its way into the night.”

Seventh Street inspired. DC native Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington based his first composition, “Soda Fountain Rag,” on the nearby Poodle Dog Café, where he worked after school as a soda jerk around 1915.4 In the 1960s under-aged fan and neighbor Reggie Kelly “delighted in hanging outside the doors” of Mike’s New Breed at [direction] “listening to the house bands.”5

In 1938, at 1836 Seventh, Max Silverman started what became the Waxie Maxie’s chain of 28 record stores. Fans of Sarah Vaughn, Buddy Rich, and rising local black artists flocked to Silverman’s jam sessions and live radio broadcasts held in the storefront’s window, the “goldfish bowl.”6 The teen-aged Ahmet Ertegun, son of Turkey’s ambassador to Washington, was a frequent customer. Inspired by the R&B of Seventh and T, Ertegun founded Atlantic Records in 1947, eventually recording DC’s Clovers, and Ray Charles, the Rolling Stones, and many others.7

To your [direction] is the Southern Aid Society Building and Dunbar movie house, which opened in 1921. African American architect Isaiah T. Hatton designed the building, and Lewis Giles, Sr., just starting a long career as a Washington architect, was chief draftsman.

4 Mark Tucker, Ellington: The Early Years (1991), 33-345 Email to Sarah Shoenfeld from Reggie Kelly, 6/1/20096 Silverman’s store at 1836 7th St. was originally named Quality Appliance and Merchandise Company and opened in 1938. Stuart L. Goosman, Group Harmony: The Black Urban Roots of Rhythm & Blues (2005), pp.111-120, 214-220; Juan Williams, “14th and U,” Washington Post, 2/21/88; Paul Williams, p. 44 (don’t know what publication this was pulled from); Fitzpatrick and Goodwin, The Guide to Black Washington, 124.7 AAHT Database: Seventh and T Streets, NW

Images

2-1Seventh and T Sts. in 1939. Scurlock Studio Records, National Museum of American History

2-2The Off Beat Club, a Seventh and T destination of the 1940s.Collection of Henry Whitehead

2-3Grand re-opening of Quality Music (later named Waxie Maxie’s), 1836 Seventh St., 1948.Afro-American Newspapers

2-4Greeting shoppers at the Quality Music re-opening were, from left, DJ Harold Jackson, Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughan, and owner Max Silverman. Afro-American Newspapers

2-5Max Silverman welcomes Duke Ellington to Quality Music, around 1948.Photograph by Scurlock Studios, courtesy, The Washington Post

2-6Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records.The Washington Post

2-7Page one of Duke Ellington’s “Soda Fountain Rag.”Library of Congress, with permission by the Duke Ellington Estate

2-8Draftsman, later architect, Lewis W. Giles, Sr., checks on construction of the Southern Aid Building.Collection of Lewis W. Giles, Jr.

Sign 3Howard TheatreSixth and T

The legendary Howard opened in 1910 as the nation’s first major theater built for African Americans.8 Audiences came for plays, variety shows, concerts, and movies.9 In the 1930s, under manager Shep Allen, the Howard became part of the segregation-era “Chitlin’ Circuit” of venues featuring African American musicians, comedians, and other performers. Allen’s amateur night contests launched Billy Eckstine, Pearl Bailey, and Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots. As a young child Chuck Brown shined shoes outside the Howard. In the 1960s he “hustled gigs” there, before inventing go-go, which became DC’s own brand of R&B.10

As the neighborhood went, so did the Howard. Although the theater escaped damage in the riots of April 1968, audiences avoided the riot-scarred neighborhood. The Howard closed in 1970, reopened in 1974, and closed again. Rehabilitation started in 2010.11

For years, the stage doors of the Howard opened to Wiltberger Street near the Continental (Wonder Bread) Bakery, formerly Dorsch’s White Cross Bakery. Fans would linger amid the aroma of fresh bread and the promise of stardust, watching for performers bound for U Street night spots or an after-show soiree at Cecilia’s.1213 This area’s bakeries included two others near Howard University: Corby (later Continental) and Bond Bread. Baseball fans leaving Griffith Stadium remember stopping for fresh doughnuts on the way home.1415

Near the Howard Theatre at 614 S Street was Jean Clore’s Guest House and after-hours club.16 “Well-known dignitaries from every walk of life” stayed at Clore’s “swanky homey hotel,” according to the black press of the 1930s. In 1982 the New Community Church occupied the former Guest House.17

8 National Register application, Section 8, p. 1 says the Howard is the oldest surviving theater in the country built expressly for African Americans during the era of segregation.9 Gardner and Thomas, “The Cultural Impact of the Howard Theatre on the Black Community, Journal of Negro History vol. 55, no. 4, Oct. 1970, 253-55.10 Jacqueline Trescott, “Bringing It On Home, Singer Chuck Brown’s ‘There’ After 11 Years,” TWP 3/22/79, B1&B7; Robin Rose Parker, “Chuck Brown’s Long Dance,” Post Sunday magazine, 10/4/0911The Howard was hosting amateur nights on Wed. and Fri. as early as Sept 1933 (Washington Tribune, 3/21/33).The Apollo opened in Jan. 1934. Eckstine obituary, Washington Post, 3/9/93.The Supremes performed in 1962. National Register application, Section 8, p. 812 Juan Williams, “14th and U,” Washington Post, 2/21/88. Could instead use this as a caption for a 1975 photo of Redd Foxx performing at the Howard Theatre (image listed in Sign 2).13 Spraggins says they would wait to see the performer come out during intermission. Remembering U Street: Interview with Alice Spraggins, http://www.pbs.org/ellingtonsdc/interviewsSpraggins.htm; Marc Fischer makes the following reference to clubs along Wiltberger St in “D.C. Proved a Cradle for Young Duke and His Gift,” Washington Post, 4/11/1999, B1: “Integration brought the demise of the clubs along the alley, Wiltberger Street, that abuts the Howard Theater.”14 Darren Jones interview. Note that Corby Brothers had become Wonder Bread by the time he would have gone there. Miniature loaves of bread mentioned in Arthur Hecht, “Marching Up Georgia: A Tour of Historic Georgia Avenue.” 15 White Cross Bakery’s owner, Peter Dorsch, was a Washington native. The owner of Corby Brothers Bakery was from New Hampshire. Continental Baking Co., makers of Wonder Bread, purchased White Cross in 1937, and continued baking at this facility until 1988. (Historic Preservation Review Board, Staff Report and Recommendation, White Cross Bakery [available online]; Paul Williams, White Cross Bakery, 641 S Street)16 Have not checked city directory to confirm location but Jim Dickerson says this is the building. It had become a flop house and unofficial homeless shelter and location for illegal drug use by the time he began cleaning up the building in the 1980s. 17 New York Amsterdam News, 1/13/45, p. 11. Old Rose Social Club is mentioned several times in Stuart Goosman’s Group Harmony as a popular after-hours venue for musicians.

Images3-1Crowds gather at the Howard Theater, around 1940.Photograph by Robert H. McNeill [Susan McNeill, HSW] need

3-2Searching for interior of Howard.

3-3Howard Theatre manager Shep Allen with Fats Waller at the Howard, 1939, as Waller presents a check to a Police Boys Club representative.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

3-4, 3-5, 3-6, 3-7, 3-8, 3-9Live at the Howard Theatre: [3-4] Redd Foxx, [3-5] James Brown, [3-6] Ruth Brown, [3-7] Billy Eckstine, [3-8] LaVern Baker, [3-9] Chuck Brown

[4]Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post[5] Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post[6] Moorland-Spingarn Research Center [7]The Washington Post[8]The Washington Post[9] The Washington Post

3-10Dramatic actor Leigh Whipper performed at the Howard. Collection of Carole Ione Lewis

3-11A delivery truck for Dorsch’s White Cross Bread, forerunner of Continental Bakery, in the alley on the building’s west side, 1926.Library of Congress

3-12Hotelier and society figure Jean Clore, 1938.Afro-American Newspapers

3-13Cecilia Scott’s Cocktail Restaurant and rooming house, across Wiltberger Street from the Howard.18

Collection of Henry Whitehead

18 Cecelia’s was a bar and restaurant at 618 T St NW from 1958 to 1969 (had opened at 12th and U in 1953), and was owned by Cecelia Scott. There was rooming house on the second floor. (AAHT Database: 7th and T Streets, NW; Washington Post, 3/20/1980, DC4; Interview with Cecelia Scott in Juan Williams, “14th and U,” Washington Post, 2/21/88)

Sign 4Armed Resistance[Seventh Street and Florida Avenue, NW]

Shortly after midnight on July 22, 1919, James Scott, a black Army veteran, boarded a streetcar at this corner and nearly lost his life.19

A few days before, a white mob, including many veterans of World War I, had terrorized Southwest DC, randomly attacking black people in retaliation for an alleged assault on a white

woman.20 Spurred by rumors and newspaper headlines, attackers targeted other black neighborhoods. But Scott didn’t know this. Boarding the streetcar here, he was stunned to hear white passengers yell, “Lynch him!” As he attempted to flee, the conductor shot at and nearly killed him.21

That summer race relations were tense nationwide. In Washington black men who fought bravely overseas came home to a city more segregated than the one they left. President Woodrow Wilson’s administration had established separate facilities for black federal employees. Unemployment was high. African Americans who had been respected as soldiers came home determined to fight U.S. racism. Most whites were determined to keep them “in their place.”

As mobs raged, some 2,000 black Washingtonians rallied here to defend their neighborhood.22 Veteran sharpshooters manned the Howard Theatre’s roof and others patrolled Seventh Street.23 Clergymen called on President Wilson to protect the community. By the time U.S. troops quelled the violence, seven people were dead and hundreds were injured. But African Americans took pride in the successful defense of their neighborhoods.24

Among those decrying the violence was William A. Taylor,25 founding pastor of the Florida Avenue Baptist Church, at 623 Florida Avenue, a half block to your right. The original 1913 church building was replaced in 1964.

19 David Krugler, “A Mob in Uniform: Soldiers and Civilians in Washington’s Red Summer, 1919” (unpublished), p. 16. Krugler notes that Scott boarded the streetcar shortly after midnight, so not in the heat of the day.20 Krugler, 821 Peter Perl, “Race Riot of 1919 Gave Glimpse of Future Struggles,” Washington Post, 3/1/99, A1; Green, Secret City, 190-96; Krugler, 16.22 Krugler, 12-13; Green, 19223 Washington Post, 3/1/99, A1; Interview with Alice Spraggins, Duke Ellington’s Washington (http://www.pbs.org/ellingtonsdc/interviewsSpraggins.htm); Krugler, 13 (doesn’t mention snipers)24 Krugler, 1; Perl wrote in the Post that in addition to those killed during the riots, “an estimated 30 more would die eventually from their wounds.” (WP, 3/1/99, A1).25 “Negro Pastors and Citizens Call on the President and Officials for Protection,” TWP, 7/22/1919, p. 2.

Images

4-1The separate Welcome Home parade for African American soldiers who served their nation in World War I, Pennsylvania Avenue, February 1919.National Archives

4-2For the duration of the disturbances, the Washington Post ran inflammatory headlines including this one from July 22, 1919.The Washington Post

4-3 This Washington Times map shows areas of the city hit by “rioting” on July 21. “Zone 1” was the area around where this sign is today.Washingtoniana Division, DC Public Library

4-4After the riots ended, copies of this handbill appeared throughout DC’s black neighborhoods.Newberry Library

4-5Rev. William A. Taylor, center, founding pastor of Florida Avenue Baptist Church, and family at his 2119 13th St. home, 1930s. At upper left is grandson Billy Taylor, later the influential jazz musician and educator.Collection of Rudy Taylor

4-6, 4-7The Florida Avenue Baptist Church, direction, celebrated its mortgage burning in 1944.Historical Society of Washington, D.C.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Sign 5Griffith Stadium[Southeast corner of Georgia and V Streets]

“I used to come home every night, get a quarter from my mother, run to Griffith Stadium, and sit in the bleachers,” Abe Pollin once said, “I would look out at these good seats and say, ‘someday maybe I will get a good seat.’ ”26 When Pollin’s MCI Center opened downtown in 1997, the respected real estate developer and arena builder got himself — and gave his city — thousands of good seats.

Griffith Stadium occupied this block until it was razed in 1965. (Howard University Hospital opened here ten years later.)27 During the 1940s, Griffith crowds cheered batting superstar Josh Gibson of the Negro League Homestead Grays, the country’s most successful baseball team. Here ace pitcher Walter Johnson led the white Washington Senators to their only World Series victory in 1924. While Griffith was one of DC’s few public venues open to all during segregation, the races sat separately. 2829

Griffith also hosted student cadet competitions, Boy Scout jamborees, National Negro Opera Company performances, and mass baptisms conducted by Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux, whose Church of God still stands just across Georgia Avenue. 3031 The charismatic Michaux organized affordable housing, has his own radio show, and served bargain meals at the Happy News Café.32

In 1946 impresario David Rosenberg hired prominent African American architect Albert Cassell to design a music hall at 815 V Street. Soon after, Duke Ellington lent his name to a nightclub there. By 1952 WUST Radio occupied the facility, hosting evangelical broadcasts, jazz, and later, reggae and go-go concerts. After WUST moved to Virginia, the 9:30 Club relocated there from 930 F Street. 3334

26 Abe Pollin interview with Libby Richman, 8/3/2007 [check date], 5:30)27 AAHT-33-Griffith28 Brad Snyder has written that Griffith Stadium was not officially segregated, but that Clark Griffith set aside an area behind right field for black fans. According to Griffith’s son, this was done early on at the request of the black community. Black baseball player and sports reporter Sam Lacy, who grew up near the stadium during the 1920s, recalled that “they required you to sit in the right-field pavilion up against the fence almost, and [there was] no being able sit anywhere else in the stadium.” (Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators, 2003, 2); In a 2005 interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Alean Gardner, who is black, spoke of working as a nanny for the family of one of the Senators, but not being able to sit with the family during games. (“Memories of Washington’s Griffith Stadium,” All Things Considered /NPR, 4/14/05)29 This was also where 23,000 fans watched Joe Louis defend his heavyweight championship against Buddy Baer in 1941 and where the Negro National Opera Company performed. (Georgia Ave. tour, Chamber of Commerce30 Reggie Kelly says the Scout jamborees were attended by 20-30 thousand people. (GAPP Working Group interview, 39:30)31 AAHT Database: Church of God; Constance McLaughlin Green, The Secret City (1967), p. 239, says first mass baptism at Griffith was in 1938. See Webb, p. 111 for details.32 Lillian Ashcraft Webb, About my Father’s Business: The Life of Elder Michaux (1981), 52; Green, p. 222; AAHT Database: Church of God. Michaux also ran the Happy News/Industrial Bank at 11th & U. His wife Mary founded “Purity Clubs” with the motto, “Be a Peach Out of Reach.” (Georgia Ave. Tour, Chamber of Commerce)33“A Big Hand for the New 9:30,” Washington Post, 1/5/1996

Images

5-1This bird’s-eye view of Griffith Stadium shows Georgia Avenue with its streetcars at the upper edge of the ball park.National Archives

5-2Homestead Grays power hitter Josh Gibson at bat.Library of Congress

5-3, 5-4Walter Johnson photographed in 1924, the year the Senators won it all. One year later, fans crowd the ticket line at Griffith as the Senators qualified for another World Series, which they lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates.[both] Library of Congress

5-5Western High School’s Cadet Company H won the 1942 white division’s competitive drill at Griffith.The Washington Post

[will add cadets from the colored division]

5-6, 5-7, 5-8Elder Solomon Michaux’s Church of God, 1949, across from Griffith Stadium. At direction, a baptism begins at Griffith Stadium. At direction, Elder Michaux welcomes diners in his Happy News Café, 1727 Seventh Street, 1937.Historical Society of Washington, D.C.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American HistoryLibrary of Congress

5-9, 5-10WUST Radio DJ Steady Eddie was a Howard University senior and member of the Howard Players, 1952, direction. The WUST building became the 9:30 Club in 1996.Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard UniversityThe Washington Post

34 Building permit database (re: Rosenberg and Cassell). “Duke Ellington to Open “Duke Ellington’s” Dance Emporium, Washington Afro-American, 10/23/1948 p. 7, also stand-alone photo on same page: “Duke Opens Ellington’s Nitery.” “Billy Eckstine starts a 6-day stand at Duke Ellington’s,” 10/30/1948, p. 8, Washington Afro-American. “Mercer Ellington to Duke Ellington’s for 7 night stand” Washington Afro-American, 11/13/1948, p. 8.

Sign 6Medical Care for All500 block of Bryant St.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), thousands of formerly enslaved people came to Washington in search of new lives. They needed work, education, shelter — and health care. In 1862 the U.S. government responded with Freedmen’s Hospital, located at 12th and R Streets, NW.

Freedmen’s moved near Fifth and W Streets in 1869 and became the new Howard University’s teaching hospital. 35 At a time of strict segregation, Freedmen’s, like the university itself, was open to all, offering high-level care and education.36

Because black doctors were needed to care for African Americans, Freedmen’s focused on training physicians, but also became a top research institution.37 Pediatrician Roland Scott pioneered studies on sickle-cell anemia, the genetic blood disorder that primarily affects African Americans.38 Washingtonian Charles R. Drew, who developed life-saving methods for mass blood banking during World War II, headed Freedmen’s Surgery Department from 1941 until his death in 1950.39 From 1908 until 1975, Freedmen’s operated in the building across the lawn from this sign, closing when Howard University Hospital opened on Georgia Avenue.

The list of Howard-associated physicians caring for their community is long. Graduate Dr. Ionia Whipper sheltered unwed mothers in her home/clinic nearby at 511 Florida Avenue during the 1940s. Former faculty member Simeon Carson opened a private hospital at 1822 Fourth Street.

Just east of here is the edge of what oldtimers called Howardtown, an area of wood-frame houses that grew from a settlement of formerly enslaved people during and after the Civil War (1861-1865).40 The Kelly Miller Dwellings replaced much of Howardtown in the early 1940s.41

35 “After the Civil War, it became the teaching hospital of Howard University Medical School, established in 1868,while remaining under federal control.” (http://nlm.nih.gov/hmd/medtour/howard.html). “Since 1869 the hospitalhas been the teaching facility of Howard Medical School.” (Jacqueline Trescott, “Freedmen’s: New Home andName, Continuing Commitment,” The Washington Post, 3/2/1975)36 Andrew H. Beck, “The Flexner Report and the Standardization of American Medical Education,” (Journal of theAmerican Medical Association, 2004, 291: 2139-2140, http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/291/17/2139); “For Negroes More Schools of Medicine Are Sought,” Washington Post 3/13/1948, B2; Kelly Miller, “He Would Have Government Aid for Negro Medical Students,” letter to the editor, Washington Post, 1/7/1934, 8.37 Trescott (see footnote Error: Reference source not found)38 Adam Bernstein, “Roland B. Scott Dies; Sickle Cell Researcher,” The Washington Post, 12/12/2002, p. B06) Note that Scott is mentioned as a sickle cell researcher in Columbia Heights trail, sign 8.39 Trescott (see footnote Error: Reference source not found)40 For references to a contraband camp on or near current site of Howard U., see Elizabeth Brownstein, Lincoln’s Other White House (2005), 132-33 and Jennifer Fleischner, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly (2003), 264. Black migrants often settled near Army hospitals and encampments (https://ncrcms.nps.gov/cwdw/historyculture/living-contrabandformer-slaves-in-the-capital-during-and-after-the-civil-war.htm). Harewood Hospital, on the 7th St Rd near the Old Soldiers’ Home, provided care for black Civil War soldiers (Washington History 8: 2, 65; http://www.paroot’s.com/pacw/hospitals/dchospitals.html [see website for published sources]; photos at Lib. of Congress show black patients. See also AAHT Database (Seventh and T Streets, NW).41 For biographical information on Kelly Miller, see City of Magnificent Intentions (1997), 325; Ida Jones at Moorland-Spingarn is writing a book about him.

Images6-1In a men’s ward at Freedmen’s Hospital, 1939.Scurlock Studio records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

6-2 out

6-3, 6-4A 1930 class of nursing students stood for a Scurlock portrait on Freedmen’s hospital’s front steps, direction. At direction a Freedmen’s orderly pushes a convalescent, 1930s.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American HistoryNational Archives

6-5Dr. Charles R. Drew poses with the Red Cross’s first mobile blood collecting unit during World War II.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

6-9Dr. Roland Scott receives an incubator for Freedmen’s Hospital’s premature babies, 1941.Afro American Newspapers

6-10Dr. Ionia Whipper lived, practiced medicine, and sheltered unwed mothers at 511 Florida Ave. Collection of Carole Ione Lewis

6-11, 6-12 Surgeon Simeon L. Carson, M.D., direction, left Freedmen’s Hospital in 1918 to open Carson’s Private Hospital direction.Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

6-6A portion of old Howardtown, direction. DC Housing Authority

6-7, 6-8By 1941 federal government planners had wiped out deteriorated housing for the substantial buildings in the center of this photo (Griffith Stadium is at the top). The brick houses at direction, completed on V Street between Fourth and Fifth in 1938, can also be seen as the horseshoe-shaped development just below the stadium in the large picture.DC Housing AuthorityWashingtoniana Division, DC Public Library

Sign 7Nightlife[2200 block of Georgia Ave., corner of Bryant and Georgia]

Back in the ‘60s, everyone came to Murph’s.

Ed Murphy’s Supper Club, that is, located at [direction] across Bryant Street [CK]/ from 1966 to 1972..42 In the beginning suits and ties were mandatory for the club’s high-powered male patrons. But as the Black Power movement grew, the dress code relaxed to include dashikis or turtlenecks for the civil rights and DC statehood activists who gathered there.43 “His standard was to do everything first class,” remembered Murphy’s son Keith.

In 1978 Murphy built the ambitious Harambee House Hotel, and reopened the supper club on its second floor. “Harambee House came into my father’s spirit during the height of the 1968 riots,” recalled Keith Murphy. “We had to do a nationwide search for upper level [hotel] managers because there were so few black people in the business.” With African décor and high-end amenities, the hotel attracted guests such as Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan. Stevie Wonder, Nancy Wilson, and other top entertainers performed in the supper club. The downstairs Kilimanjaro Room hosted press conferences by Muhammad Ali, Coretta Scott King, Carl Stokes, and John Conyers.44 After two years of punishing debts, however, Murphy sold the hotel to Howard University.

Beginning in the early 1900s, the blocks across Georgia Avenue were filled with industrial activities: junk yards, plumbing shops, and bakeries. During the streetcar era (1862-1962), youngsters entertained themselves watching “the pit,” the point in the route where southbound streetcars switched from overhead electric wires to an underground power source, (and vice versa for northbound trains). Congress had banned the use of overhead wires south of Florida Avenue.45

42 Ed Murphy’s Supper Club opened in 1964. During the construction of Harambee House, it relocated to the other side of Georgia Avenue immediately north of the junkyard (diagonally across from original location). After Harambee House opened, the supper club operated inside the hotel (Keith Murphy interview).43 Trescott, ibid.; Keith Murphy interview.44 Jacqueline Trescott, “Long Pull From Hot Dogs to Harambee,” The Washington Post, 4/22/1978, p. B1; Keith Murphy interview. [In the wake of the 1968 riots, Murphy had successfully negotiated a $10 million investment by the federal government to open Harambee House.]45 Kenny Gilmore interview (says it was called “the pit”); Peter Shoenfeld interview; See also LeRoy O. King, 100 Years of Capital Traction: The Story of Streetcars in the Nation’s Capital (1972)

Images

7-1Ed Murphy, in white suit facing camera, at the successor to his Supper Club in the Harambee Hotel.© Roy Lewis Archives

7-2, 7-3The original Ed Murphy’s Supper Club, direction, and patrons, 1971 The Washington Post

7-4The Harambee House hotel shortly after it opened in 1978. The Washington Post

7-5, 7-6Oscar Brown, Jr., and Stevie Wonder played the Harambee House’s Supper Club.© Roy Lewis ArchivesStar Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post

7-7Presidential Candidate Jesse Jackson addressed the press at Harambee House’s successor, the Howard Inn. At right are DC Delegate Walter Fauntroy and Minister Louis Farrakhan.© Roy Lewis Archives

7-8A streetcar worker raises the trolley’s pole to connect to the overhead wire on Georgia Avenue here, 1947.Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

Sign 8Cleaning up Cowtown [Georgia Ave. at Barry Place]

Before 1871, this area was an Irish and German immigrant neighborhood known as “Cowtown.”

That’s because cows, pigs, and sheep roamed freely here, while those kept in Washington City, south of Boundary Street (today’s Florida Avenue), had to be penned. A stream bordering Sherman Avenue carried away the reeking refuse from slaughterhouses.46

While the livestock and slaughterhouses eventually left, the low-income, multi-ethnic neighborhood’s poor reputation remained. Odessa Marie Madre, DC’s own “Al Capone,” grew up here and later ran a Cowtown “jill joint” selling bootleg liquor. By the 1940s, juvenile gangs such as the “Bonecrushers” and “Fifth Street Tigers” committed not-so-petty crimes. Then local police officer Oliver Cowan created the Junior Police and Citizen Corps, so youth could “solve its own problems.”47 “Kids caught breaking street lights were named Inspectors of Streets and Lights,” reported the Post. Unlike the segregated Boys’ Clubs and Boy Scouts, the Corps encouraged interracial friendships and included girls.48 Juvenile arrests dropped dramatically.49

Garfield Hospital stood just west of here, serving the community from the 1880s to the 1950s. 50 Garfield Terrace, DC’s first public housing designed for elderly residents, replaced the hospital in 1965, bringing innovative wheelchair-accessible foot paths and community kitchens.51

Corby Brothers Bakery opened across the street from here [on the east side of Georgia Ave.] in 1911.52 Brothers Charles and William Colby grew very rich after inventing and patenting machines that led to mass-distribution of bread.53 Eventually Continental Baking Co. bought out the Corbys, and the factory turned to making Wonder Bread.54 Howard University then bought and adapted the old plant for offices and shopping.

46 City laws on livestock were extended to the county in 1871, but “a number of meat-processing facilities had cropped up along the stream paralleling Sherman Avenue.” (Washington Seen?, 98—see Mara’s GAPP-7 file); Proctor’s Washington (1949), 77-8047 Washington Post: 1/8/44; 3/12/44, M1; 9/27/57, A1448 Constance Green, The Secret City, 289-9049 Washington Post, 9/27/57, A1450 Washington Post, 8/3/52, S1.51 Washington Post: 8/31/65, A1; 6/9/66, A33; 12/9/62, A2552 Philip Ogilvie, “Georgia Avenue: 5 Miles of Historic Evolution of Ethnic Diversity” (People’s Involvement Corporation, n.d.); Building permit for Corby Brothers Bakery was issued Nov. 16, 1911.53 Bethesda Magazine, Nov/Dec 2008, 235.54 Mark Walston, “Summer Retreat,” Bethesda Magazine Home, Nov.-Dec. 2008, 234-35.

Images

8-1Cowtown with Garfield Hospital, photographed from atop Howard University’s Main Building, 1910. Howard University Archives

8-2Looking west on Barry Pl., the southern edge of Cowtown, around 1925.Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

8-3Officers of the Second Police Precinct kept order in boisterous Cowtown, 1878.Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

8-4Barry Place, 1941, shows industrial buildings squeezing out the old frame houses.DC Housing Authority

8-5, 8-6Police Sergeant Oliver Cowan, direction, founder of the Junior Police and Citizens Corps, surrounded by corps members, 1946. At direction two members help raise funds for the group at a local bank, 1952.Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington PostMoorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University 8-7, 8-8Garfield Hospital, direction, treated white patients primarily but not exclusively.[both] Library of Congress55

8-9Mayor Walter E. Washington dedicates Garfield Terrace, 1966.The Washington Post

8-10, 8-11The Wonder Bread bakery (formerly Corby’s), 1949. At direction, 1927 ad for Wonder Bread.Historical Society of Washington, D.C.The Washington Post

8-12Odessa Madre with an unidentified man at the time of a 1952 arrest.Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post

55 “Segregation in Washington” (1948), 53.

Sign 9Teachers and Preachers[Georgia Ave. at Howard Pl.]

As the Civil War ended in 1865, members of the First Congregational Society recognized the need to educate thousands of formerly enslaved African Americans. The following year they established the Howard Normal and Theological Institute to train teachers and preachers. Adding liberal arts and sciences, the founders renamed it Howard University in 1867. Now one of the nation’s most prestigious universities, Howard counts Toni Morrison, Vernon Jordan, Jessye Norman, and Andrew Young among its noted graduates. 56 57

During the segregation era (1880s-1950s), when white universities discriminated in their hiring, Howard was open to African Americans with PhDs. Consequently Howard assembled a faculty of extraordinary gifts and accomplishments. Its luminaries included historian Carter G. Woodson, philosopher Alain Locke, sociologists Kelly Miller and E. Franklin Frazier, artist Lois Mailou Jones, and educator Lucy Diggs Slowe. The university’s first black president, Rev. Mordecai W. Johnson, appointed in 1926, transformed Howard from a small, underfunded and unaccredited institution into “The Capstone,” a highly respected, PhD-granting university. 5859

In the early 1930s, Charles Hamilton Houston served as dean of Howard’s law school, where future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall received his training. Houston and Marshall led a team whose efforts toppled legalized segregation in America, including in public schools (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954). On that team were future Howard president James M. Nabrit and historian John Hope Franklin.60

Atop the hill to your left is Howard Hall (1869), originally home to the Civil War hero for whom the university is named. General Oliver Otis Howard led the Freedmen’s Bureau, helped found the school, and served as an early president.61

56 [Howard was established by the federal government (although conceived by a religious philanthropic organization) in 1867 as an integrated liberal arts school, with its primary goal to provide higher education for African Americans.] Rayford Logan, Howard University: The First Hundred Years (2004), 14-25, 18-2257 http://www.howard.edu/explore/history.htm58 William M. Banks, Black Intellectuals (1998), 96; Raymond Wolters, “Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” in Wintz and Finkelman, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (2004), 56659 http://www.howard.edu/explore/history.htm60 The first significant school desegregation case fought by Houston, Marshall et al was Pearson v. Murray in 1936. See website produced by HU School of Law, http://brownat50.org/brownBios, for biographies of Houston, Marshall and Nabrit. See http://www.howard.edu/newsroom/releases/2010/100311HowardUniversitytoHostSymposiumhonoringtheLegacyofDr.JohnHopeFranklin.htm on John Hope Franklin’s involvement.61 AAHT 13-Howard Hall and AAHT Database

Images

9-1Illustrious Howard University faculty of 1950: James Nabrit, Dr. Charles Drew, Sterling Brown, E. Franklin Frazier, Rayford Logan, and Alain Locke.Howard University Archives

9-2Freedmen’s Bureau Commissioner Gen. Oliver Otis Howard.Library of Congress

9-3 Students gather at Main Hall and Administration Building, Howard’s first building. . Founders Library replaced it in 1938.Howard University Archives

9-4, 9-5Students study art, around 1915, direction, and engineering, around 1925, direction.[both] Library of Congress

9-6Tennis champion and Dean of Women Lucy Diggs Slowe, around 1920.Howard University Archives

9-7 President Mordecai Johnson hosts First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt at a Howard University Art Museum opening, 1941.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

9-8Howard law professor Charles H. Houston, right, and his former student, Thurgood Marshall, left, won Donald Murray, center, the right to attend University of Maryland School of Law, 1935.Library of Congress

Sign 10“Strike!”62 [Howard Place at Sixth Street]

Howard University has a long history of student activism for civil rights, peace, and academic reform.

Students of the 1930s and ’40s focused on off-campus injustice, especially lynchings nationwide and DC businesses that wouldn’t serve or hire African Americans. In the early 1960s students organized sit-ins, registered voters, and discussed pan-African theories. In 1966 the university’s traditions merged with the Black Power movement, when students elected the Afro-sporting activist Robin Gregory as Homecoming Queen.[2]

The following spring students protested the Vietnam War, charging that black soldiers fought for “freedom they do not have” at home.[3] Students boycotted classes to pressure Howard to end required military (ROTC) training, which put many on the path to Vietnam. Howard capitulated that December, making ROTC an elective course. [4] In March 1968 students demanding a more Afrocentric curriculum seized the Administration Building, to your direction. [5][6] Writing to President James M. Nabrit, himself a civil rights icon, students demanded that Howard open to the wider black community, produce “leaders who take pride in their true identity,” and become “the center of Afro-American thought.”[7] The negotiated settlement gave students more say in curricular and disciplinary issues. One motnh later a stunned campus united in grief over the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had often spoken on campus.

Many graduates continued the struggle. In the 1960s, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure) chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, criticized the Vietnam War, and built connections with Africa.[9] Charlie Cobb and Anthony Gittens co-founded DC’s first Afrocentric bookstore, the Drum and Spear (1968-1974).[8] Former theology student Douglas Moore led the Black United Front and helped found the DC Statehood Committee. [10][11]

62 Unnamed Howard University student protester (“Flag Furled in Howard Protest,” The Washington Post, 2/17/1968, A1) A[2] Gregory’s victory was announced in a ceremony at Cramton Auditorium in the fall of 1966. (Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer, Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s, 1990, 425-48)[3] This took place at Cramton Auditorium on March 21, 1967. (“Activism Emerges on Howard Campus,” The Washington Post, 3/23/1967, D1)[4] “Thousands Quit Classes in Howard U. Boycott,” The Washington Post, 5/11/1967, A1[5] The takeover of the A Building at Howard and subsequent closure of the university was one of the early protests of its kind. HU students were called on by students elsewhere for advice during the student protest movement. (“Howard University: An Inward Look at 1968,” 35th Annual on Washington, D.C. Historical Studies, Nov. 13-15, 2008) Activist student leaders included Ewart Brown, who became Bermuda’s Premier in 2006, and Tony Gittens, a longtime promoter of arts programs in the District. “Tony Gittens to Leave Arts Commission, Stay With Filmfest DC,” The Washington Post, 6/11/2008, C1. For Ewart Brown’s biography, see http://www.plp.bm/leadership/leader.[6] The disruption of President James M. Nabrit’s Charter Day activities took place at Cramton Auditorium on March 1. (“Howard Students Disrupt Ceremony,” The Washington Post, 3/2/1968, includes photo of students surrounding Nabrit on stage) The takeover of the A Building began on March 19. (“Howard Students Sit In to Protest Charges,” The Washington Post, 3/20/1968, A1)[7] “An Open Letter Sent to Howard President James M. Nabrit,” Carson, Hine et al, The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader (1991), 462-64[9] http://www.crmvet.org/vet/cobbc.htm[8] AAHT Database.  Hodari Ali says Drum & Spear was “in decline” by the time Pyramid opened in Dec. 1981.[10] Howard Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty (1995), 154[11] Gillette, Between Justice and Beauty (1995), 177; Washington Afro-American, 4/15/1969;http://www.dcvote.org/trellis/struggle/dcvotingrightshistoricaltimeline.cfm

Images

10-1Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking in Rankin Chapel, Dec. 1956.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

10-2Homecoming Queen Robin Gregory, described as a “natural beauty” in the 1967 Bison yearbook.Moorland-Spingarn Research Center

10-3Student body President Ewart Brown presents demands at the March 1968 sit-in that shut down the university. Brown went on to become premier of Bermuda.Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post

10-4, 10-5Protesters fill the Administration Building hallway. At direction students post one of their demands.[both] Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post

10-6Student leader Anthony Gittens announces the end of the March protest. From left are trustees Percy Julian, Jr., Richard Hale, Kenneth Clark, and Myles Page, and students Ewart Brown, Adrienne Mann, Gittens, Michael Harris, and Q.T. Jackson, Jr.The Washington Post

10-7Howard students react to Dr. King’s assassination, 1968. Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post

10-8, 10-9Howard alumni Douglas Moore, direction, and Stokely Carmichael, direction, became leaders in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington PostThe Washington Post

Sign 11The Lake So Blue[Sixth and Fairmont Streets]

The body of water that inspired the line in Howard University’s alma mater, “far above the lake so blue stands old Howard firm and true,” is McMillan Reservoir, which opened in 1902 to supply water to the city.63 64 The reservoir and the Old Soldiers’ Home grounds nearby created a green oasis for Howard students and their neighbors. On summer nights before World War II, neighborhood families fled their hot rowhouses to sleep on blankets near the cooling water.6566

Howard’s neighbors, long uplifted by the university’s intellectual life, have enjoyed its campus traditions, especially Homecoming. In 1926 they joined the crowd of 16,000 to dedicate Howard’s new stadium, and cheered as the Bisons crushed Lincoln University’s Lions, 32-0. The annual Thanksgiving Day football game was the centerpiece of Classic Week’s fraternity-hosted concerts, receptions, and dinner dances. 67

Among the speakers at the 1926 stadium dedication was its designer, Professor Albert Cassell. The architect 68 oversaw Howard’s expansion in the 1930s, designing 16 campus buildings.

Lynn French, who grew up near the campus, remembered attending Howard commencements with her family in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s — not only to cheer graduating friends and relatives, but also to hear the inspirational speeches by such speakers as President Harry Truman. More recently Colin Powell and Oprah Winfrey have addressed the graduating class.69

Just a year after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the graduates, pledging to enforce equal rights for all Americans: “It is not enough to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.”

63 “Reared against the eastern sky, Proudly there on hilltop high, Far above the lake so blue, Stands old Howard firm and true.” Rayford Logan, Howard University: The First Hundred Years:1867-1967 (2004), 583. According to William H. Jones in 1927 (Recreation & Amusement Among Negroes in WDC), “Macmillan Park is now almost exclusively Negro.” (100)64 McMillan Reservoir was completed in 1902. (Scott, Pamela (2007), "Capital Engineers: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Development of Washington, D.C., 1790-2004." p. 175. Washington, DC: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Publication No. EP 870-1-67.) Surrounding park designed by Olmsted? Do silos need to be explained?65 According to Darren Jones (interviewed by GAPP Working Group, 11/27/07), the reservoir was not fenced until around WWII, and his parents used to sleep there on hot nights (10:20). Joy Jones’article in The Washington Post District Weekly (10/31/1985) says her parents who met at HU before getting married in the 1950s used to stroll around the reservoir before it was fenced.66 Berlene Jackson & Roland Gardner interview (20:40). Consider re-organizing this paragraph around Jean Toomer’s lines from Cane: “I have a spot in Soldier’s Home to which I always go when I want the simple beauty of another’s soul. Robin’s spring about the lawn all day. They leave their footprints in the grass. I imagine that the grass at night smells sweet and fresh because of them. The ground is high. Washington lies below.”67 Rayford Logan, Howard University: The First Hundred Years:1867-1967 (2004) Raymond Schmidt, “Another Football World (Part II of III),” College Football Historical Society Newsletter 18:2 (Feb 2005), 18.(http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/CFHSN/CFHSNv18/CFHSNv18n2g.pdf) The HU stadium was the “largest Negro stadium in America,” with seating for 12,000 and space for 20,000. William H. Jones, Recreation and Amusement Among Negroes in Washington, D.C. (1927), 7668 Dreck Spurlock Wilson, African American Architects, pp 93-94.69 List of commencement speakers provided by Howard U. Archives.

Images

11-1Aerial view of Howard’s campus, around 1950.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

11-2Crowds await the new stadium’s first match, the 1926 Howard-Lincoln Thanksgiving Day “Classic.”Howard University Archives

11-3Howard University Architect Albert Cassell poses with son Irvin in front of 707 Fairmont St., the home he designed for his family.Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

11-4, 11-5, 11-6, 11-7Cassell’s campus designs: Douglass Hall, direction, Founder’s Library, direction; Power Plant, direction, and gymnasium, direction.11-4 Historical Society of Washington, D.C. 11-5 Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History11-6, 11-7: Howard University Archives

11-8Members of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority participate in Howard homecoming festivities, 1939.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

11-9Students greet Sen. John F. Kennedy, speaking to an American Council on Human Rights meeting on campus during the 1960 U.S. presidential campaign.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

11-10Labor leader A. Phillip Randolph spoke at Howard during Citizenship Week, 1960.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

11-11Howard President James Nabrit, right, watches as U.S. President Lyndon Johnson greets Howard students in front of Founders Library following his June 1965 commencement speech. LBJ Library and Archives

11-12 Lynn French, holding the diploma, with her parents Carolyn Howard and David M. French after his 1948 graduation from Howard Medical School. Collection of Lynn French

Sign 12 Beyond the Basics[700 block of Euclid St., close to Georgia Ave.]

During the Civil War, thousands of once-enslaved people crowded into DC, desperate for shelter, work, and protection. Most vulnerable were orphans and children separated from their families. In 1863 a group of influential African American women -- the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children -- opened a shelter for them in Georgetown..

The National Home was the city’s only foster facility for black children. It taught children basic writing, math, and trades and worked to place them with adoptive families. Eventually the home moved to this site. Its successor donated this building to the Emergence Community Arts Collective, which opened its doors in 2006. 7071

Miner Normal School, founded in 1851 to train African American teachers, once occupied the building directly across Georgia Avenue. 7273Across Euclid Street is Banneker High School, DC’s model academic high school since 1981.74 The school borders Banneker Recreation Center, with one of the few public pools open to black swimmers before desegregation in the 1950s.75

Dolores Tucker, who grew up at 1000 Euclid, remembered a neighborhood filled with schools and teachers. After her mother Gladys Williams left teaching to raise her family, their home “was Grand Central Station. . . . [where] the teachers used to stop to have coffee with my mother on their way to school.”

On the corner of Georgia Avenue Italian immigrant Frank Guerra ran Howard Delicatessen. In 1988 Kenny Gilmore, who grew up on the same block and was godson to Guerra’s daughter, took over the business. Gilmore had worked in the store since he was a young child.7677

70 Home moved to Euclid St. in 1930-32. Banneker JHS opened in Nov. 1939. (“Emerging Women…Unveiling the History of 733 Euclid St. NW;” AAHT-17-Merriweather; “Senator Talks at Banneker Dedication,” The Washington Post, 2/13/1940, 19)71 “Emerging Women…Unveiling the History of 733 Euclid St. NW”72 AAHT Database73 The Washington Post cites location of DC Teachers College but I can’t find the reference.74 “Opening on a Wing and a Prayer,” The Washington Post (8/26/1981), C175 Berlene Jackson interview. 19:30; William H. Jones, in Recreation and Amusement Among Negroes in WDC (1927) refers to the Howard pool being the only pool for Negroes at the time of his writing. A Negro beach operated at the Tidal Basin until whites complained it was too close to their beach, so both were shut down; Francis Pool opened in 1928, the first DC public pool built for African Americans. Whites-only Parkview pool came under fire as the neighborhood went from predominantly white to mostly black; DC officials closed the pool in the summer of 1940. The all-white Parkview playground was desegregated (i.e. became a black playground). (Wiltse, Contested Waters, 145-46) Although Wiltse says the Parkview pool never reopened, a 1969 Washington Post photo shows the pool full of African American children (sign 19).76 Kenny Gilmore interview (9:30, 38:00?, 1:00)77 Kenny Gilmore mentions Kampus Korner (9:30). For spelling and location, see “Morton Street’s Changed, but It’s Still Home.” The Washington Post (10/31/1985, DC3) This article notes that it was replaced by Blimpie’s.

Images

12-1 Local children attended Miner’s “practice” elementary school, around 1900.Library of Congress

12-2National Home founder Elizabeth Keckly.Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

12-3, 12-4Children of the Merriweather Home (successor to the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children) set the table, direction, and dress for a Brownie meeting, 1963.[both] The Washington Post

12-5Miner Teachers College football team, 1935.Photograph by Joseph Owen Curtis, Collection of DC Public Library

12-6 Students at Banneker Junior High School, 1942. The building became Banneker High School in 1981.Library of Congress

12-7Arthur Ashe, who won a 12-and-under tennis championship at Banneker Recreation Center in the 1950s, returned to hold a tennis clinic there in 1969. 78

Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post

12-8Dolores Williams leads mother Gladys and brother Theodore out of their home at 1000 Euclid on her wedding day. Collection of Dolores Tucker

12-9, 12-10Howard Delicatessen’s first owner Frank Guerra and names TK. At direction modern proprietor Kenny Gilmore, with broom, coped with construction on Georgia Ave. in 1991. NEED CREDIT, scan, names of photo of Guerra family. Collection of Kenny Gilmore?The Washington Post

78 During the 1950s, Ashe regularly competed at Banneker’s courts in tournaments held by the all-black American Tennis Association. (Washington Post, 7/30/73, D1 and 7/27/78, DC2)

Sign 13Along the “Nile Valley” [Georgia Ave. at Girard Street]

With its Afro-centric shops and connections to Howard University, this stretch of Georgia Avenue has been called the “Nile Valley.” Blue Nile Botanicals herb shop opened first at 2826 Georgia in 1980.79 Hodari Ali, a former editor of Howard’s student newspaper, followed with Pyramid Books at 2849 Georgia, where businessman Kenny Gilmore remembered finding “the whole 360 degrees of black life.” Filmmaker and Howard Professor Haile Gerima opened Sankofa café and bookstore at 2714 Georgia in 1999.

Long before the bookstores arrived, patrons flocked to the Cardozo Sisters hair salon, once across the street in Howard Manor. Founded in Elizabeth Cardozo Barker’s upstairs apartment in 1929, the salon was very refined. Barker prohibited her uniformed staff from “speaking loudly, gossiping, or calling customers by their first names.”80 For more than 40 years, the salon served customers of every ethnicity. Daughters of DC educator Francis Lewis Cardozo, Jr., the three sisters trained dozens of hairdressers. As a member of the city’s Board of Cosmetology, Barker fought successfully to desegregate the profession.

Ernest Myers began cutting hair at the Eagle Barber Shop shortly after it opened at 2800 Georgia in 1947 and eventually bought the business. In order to attract mothers and their young sons, Myers recalled, he played only Christian radio music before 2 pm. Howard University presidents numbered among the high-powered clients. Some first came under Myers’s scissors during their student days.81

Deas Delicatessen opened at 2901 Georgia, just up the hill [CK] in 1961, offering Howard students a three-meal-a-day plan,82 and serving such celebrities as comedian/activist Dick Gregory and the Urban League’s Vernon Jordan.

SIDE TRIP [sidebar]:DC native Edward “Duke” Ellington lived with his wife, Edna, and their son Mercer at 2728 Sherman Avenue — one block west of here — from about 1919 to 1921.

79 Need date of opening for Blue Nile. (Preceded Pyramid according to Hodari Ali.)80 Founder Elizabeth Barker (formerly Cardozo) said the salon was among the top three in the country in gross receipts around 1971, according to a booklet produced by the Dept of Commerce on hairdressing. In 1976, she estimated there were 24 customers who had been coming since the salon opened in her apartment in 1928. Interview with Elizabeth Barker, Dec. 8, 1976, Black Women Oral History Project, Vol. 2 (1991). Another famous hairdresser on Georgia Ave. was Grace V. Savage, owner of La Savage Beauty Clinic at 2228 Georgia who took classes at Madame C.J. Walker’s on U St and became one of DC’s most successful beauticians. Her trademark colors were black and pink; she founded La Savage cosmetics in the 1950s; and in every HU homecoming parade, she drove a pink Cadillac with a sign on the side, “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody.” Her jet-black upswept hairdo with a prominent silver streak also became known throughout Washington (Georgia Ave. Tour, Chamber of Commerce, 12-13).81 “Giving Him the Snip,” The Washington Post, 10/21/1990, SM11; “An American Patriot Makes Peace With the War,” The Washington Post, 2/12/1991, B3; Conversation with Ernest Myers, 10/22/09 (Sarah Shoenfeld, not recorded)82 Deas was open until at least 1996.

Images

13-1Owners Warren “Duku” Allen and [his wife] at the counter of the Blue Nile, 2010.Photograph by Dottie Green

13-2Pyramid Books owner Hodari Ali discusses Kwanzaa, 1986.The Washington Post

13-3This “pharaoh” marked Pyramid Books’ storefront. The Washington Post

13-4The children of Francis L. Cardozo, Jr., from left, Elizabeth Cardozo Barker, William Warrick Cardozo, M.D., Emmeta Cardozo (standing), Frances Cardozo Payne, Ed.D., Catherine Cardozo Lewis (standing), and Margaret Cardozo Holmes, late 1930s.Collection of Julia Cardozo Rouse

13-5Anita Lewis makes an appointment with Elizabeth Cardozo Barker (at the desk) and Margaret Cardozo Holmes at the sisters’ salon, 1941.Afro-American Archives

13-6Eagle Barber Shop proprietor Ernest Myers cuts Paul Gibson’s hair, 1991.The Washington Post

13-7Edward Deas discusses retiring from his deli with Allison Mitchell, 1992.The Washington Post

13-8Duke Ellington (1899-1974)Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post

13-9As his career took off, Duke Ellington lived at 2728 Sherman Ave. Photograph by Mara Cherkasky

Sign 14Urban Oasis[700 block of Hobart Place]

This quiet block was built by developer Harry Wardman, whose rowhouses, hotels, and apartments are known for elegant, solid construction. When these houses became available in 1912, buyers snapped them up.83 Among them were an electrician, a policeman, and an iron worker.84

All were working class, and all were white. Wardman followed the then-widespread practice of writing a covenant, or agreement, prohibiting sale or rental to “any Negro or colored person under a penalty of Two Thousand dollars.”85 Not everyone respected the covenants, though, and in 1930 the houses were all occupied by African Americans. The change happened partly because of the race riot that occurred near here in 1919, and partly because black residential sections near U Street and Howard University expanded.86 In 1948 the Supreme Court declared racial covenants to be unenforceable.

In 1956, when Lily Jones and her family moved to Hobart Place, she found a few white neighbors. But “when we moved in,” recalled Jones, “they moved out.” Racial change is never permanent in DC, though. In her time on Hobart Place, Jones saw Latino families come and go, and the return of whites. Recently block parties resumed here where Jones and her husband George raised eight children in their “sturdy, well-built” house.”87

This block’s best-kept secret may be the tiny “pocket parks” to your direction. Responding to requests from the Hobart Place Block Club,88 Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson, added Hobart Place to her campaign to beautify Washington. Local philanthropists Carmen and David Lloyd Kreeger funded the parks.89

83 Of the 112 Wardman houses place on the market May 11, 1912 (Hobart Pl, Columbia Rd, Harvard St), nine werepurchased by May 19. Washington Post, 5/12/12, F4 and 5/19/12, p. 1884 City directory, 191485 Original deeds for 743 Hobart Pl and for another Wardman house on Sherman Ave erected at the same time include this restriction. Wendy Plotkin notes that during the Great Depression, “white owners were less willing to restrict the market for sale of their real estate and to divert scarce financial resources to litigation.” (Plotkin, “Restrictive Deed Covenants” in Encyclopedia of American Urban History, 2006)86 1920 and 1930 census87 Interview, Lily Jones with Mara Cherkasky at 762 Hobart Place, March 11, 2010.88 Email from Darren Jones to Sarah Shoenfeld, 5/19/09: The Hobart Place Block Club and its president, ArthurBrooks of 778 Hobart Place, led the effort for the parks. The block club’s involvement was confirmed by a phoneconversation with Reby Franklin of 779 Hobart Place, 5/28/09.89 Washington Post, 7/15/07, C1; Washington Star, 10/3/1968.

Images

[Pull quote box takes place of a photo:]This house is a mansion . . .This house holds the key to the future and the majesty of the past . . .This house has seen its share of ups and downs, but year after year it stands stronger than before.This house is a fortress. This house is love. This house is family.— Maya Alston, granddaughter of Lily Jones

14-1While Secret Service agents watched, Mayor Walter Washington and neighborhood children enjoyed the Hobart Place pocket park on the day Lady Bird Johnson dedicated it in 1968.Washington Star collection, DC Public Library, © Washington Post[note to designer: crop boy on left]

14-2 Neighborhood Club President Eva Rumph, Carmen Kreeger, Lady Bird Johnson, David Lloyd Kreeger, and Mayor Walter E. Washington dedicated the Hobart Place community Parks in 1968. Washington Star collection, DC Public Library, © Washington Post

4-3From left, Lawrence, Darren, (front), Valorie and William (later Rashad), four of the eight Jones children who grew up at 762 Hobart Place, dressed for Easter 1968.Collection of Lily Jones

14-4Lily Jones, right, and neighbor Ruth Lawson enjoy a summer afternoon on Hobart Place, 1979. Collection of Lily Jones

14-5On your way to Sign 15, at the corner of Sherman and Irving Sts., you will pass Columbia Rd. This photo shows that intersection in 1921 after three firemen were injured there in an accident. Note the nearly new Wardman houses in the 700 block, at right in the photo.Library of Congress

14-6, 14-7 Harry Wardman’s permit and plat map for rowhouses on this block of Hobart Place.National Archives and Records Center

Sign 15“Treat Me Refined”Sherman Ave. between Columbia Rd. and Irving St.

The house at 3017 Sherman Avenue once was a boarding house for Howard University students. In 1923 a determined and talented young woman from the tiny town of Eatonville, Florida, lived here while earning an Associate’s Degree at Howard.90 In a short time she would win international acclaim as novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.

Hungry for culture, Hurston devoured Howard’s opportunities. She performed in campus theater, played violin, joined Zeta Phi Beta sorority, and co-founded the student newspaper, which she named The Hill Top. She published her first short story in The Stylus literary magazine. She attended renowned poet Georgia Douglas Johnson’s literary salon, meeting the best-known black writers of the time.91 To support herself, Hurston waited tables at the exclusive all-white Cosmos Club and cleaned houses.92 New York’s black literary leaders discovered Hurston, who soon published a story in the Urban League’s Opportunity.93 Soon Hurston left for Harlem, where she helped spur the New Negro Renaissance, a period of intense cultural productivity and racial uplift. She went on to collect folklore, and returned often to DC for professional meetings.94

As you turn right on Kenyon Street ahead, you will pass Chavez-Bruce Preparatory Public Charter School. Built as the Blanche K. Bruce Elementary School, it opened for “colored” students in 1898.95 Monroe Elementary, at Georgia and Columbia, served white children from 1889 until 1931. Four decades later Bruce and Monroe merged in a new building at Georgia and Irving.

90 1923 DC city directory, 88091 Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road, 138 [HU paper now called The Hilltop—all one word]; Valerie Boyd, Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston (2003); Jon Woodson, “Black Literary Washington, D.C.—Community and Resistance (2009, unpublished). Timeline for “Jumping at the Sun” (PBS American Masters series) mentions violin-playing during the period 1918-1924.92 Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road, 130; 1923 DC city directory, 880.93 She had her 1st story published in Opportunity in 1924 and won 2nd place in its literary contest the nextyear. Opportunity editor Charles S. Johnson encouraged Hurston to move to NY and join the nascent “New NegroRenaissance.” (Caplan, 40-41)94Valerie Boyd, Wrapped in Rainbows. Also Library of Congress American Memory website timeline; “A Brief History of the National Folk Festival,” National Council for the Traditional Arts, www.ncta.net.95 The Washington Post, 6/18/1899, 11; The Bruce school yard was one of the few play areas available to black children during the summer acc. to Wm. Jones, Recreation and Amusement Among Negroes (1927)

Images[PULL QUOTE takes the place of a photo]“What do you think I was doing in Washington all that time if not getting cultured. . . . Treat me refined.”— Zora Neale Hurston to Langston Hughes, 193196

15-1 Hurston with two Howard University girlfriends.Zora Neale Hurston Collection, Univ. of Florida

15-2Zora Neale Hurston, while a student at Howard University, at an unidentified location,1920Zora Neale Hurston Collection, Univ. of Florida

15-3, 15-4 This issue of The Stylus, direction, contained Hurston’s first published story. Its first page is at direction.[both] Alain Locke Collection, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

15-5At the 1938 National Folk Festival in Washington, this group performed southern folk songs collected by Hurston.97 Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

15-6Before the road was widened for commuters, houses like this one at 2824 Sherman Avenue enjoyed the shade of large trees.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

15-7Bruce Elementary School, around 1945. Sumner School Museum and Archives

15-8Miss Duckett’s class at Monroe Elementary, 1947.Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

15-9Lisa Nix, left, of Bruce Elementary, and Jonathan Brooks, of Monroe Elementary, help break ground for the Bruce-Monroe School, 1971. The school was demolished in 2010.Washington Star collection, DC Public Library, © Washington Post

96 Carla Kaplan, Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters (2003), p. 205. In 1953, Hurston wrote the following to longtime friend Herbert Sheen: “It is interesting to see how far we have both come since we did our dreaming together in Washington, D.C. We struggled so hard to make our big dreams come true, didn’t we? The world has gotten some benefits from us, though we had as well [sic] time too. We lived!” (Kaplan, p. 695) There may be other good Hurston quotes on DC. (SS)97 Hurston brought her Sun to Sun Singers to the National Folk Festival to perform southern work songs. Washington Post, 4/25/38. Valerie Boyd, Wrapped in Rainbows, 315, 366

Sign 16From Beer Garden to Park View[Georgia Ave. and Kenyon St.]

Back when this area was open fields, German Americans created an amusement park to your [direction]. Washingtonians flocked to Schuetzen (marksmanship) Park for target shooting, concerts, dancing, bowling, and picnics. The breezy, hilltop beer garden drew hundreds on hot summer nights. The Schuetzen Verein (marksmanship society) owned the 12.5-acre park, which stretched roughly from here south to Hobart Street.98

The fun ended in 1891, however, when Congress banned the sale of alcoholic beverages within a mile of the nearby Old Soldiers’ Home. As saloons closed and property values soared, the society sold the park. New owners eventually subdivided the acreage into small building lots. Soon rowhouses arose in “Park View,” named for the nearby park-like Soldiers’ Home grounds.

For four decades, the Modern School of Music, first at 749 Park Road and then at 3109 Georgia, offered top-notch instruction to children and adults. Founded in the mid-1930s by Arthur E. Smith, whose training included DC’s Armstrong High School, Howard University, and the Julliard School, the Modern School’s graduates included jazz saxophonist Charlie Hampton, who led the Howard Theatre’s house band in the 1960s. 99100 Across the street, from 1963 until his death in 1983, Morris Morgan served steamed crabs and spiced shrimp to neighborhood regulars and city politicians. Former DC Councilmember Charlene Drew Jarvis called Morgan “the ombudsman of Georgia Avenue” for 20 years of fostering community connections.101

John P. Murchison, Jr., opened Inter-City Mortgage at 3005 Georgia Avenue in 1968 as a pioneering full-service, federally approved African American mortgage lender. With white-owned banks still making homeownership difficult for blacks, the company helped hundreds become homeowners.

98 Washington Post, July 4, 1879 and June 1879; Proctor’s Washington (1949) 251 (HSW)99 Chicago Defender, 9/26/36; Washington Post, 7/23/84100 Washington Post, 12/16/84, K3101 Washington Post, 11/17/83, A1

Images

[PULL QUOTE takes the place of one photo:]

“Innumerable colored Chinese lanterns . . . shedding that dim uncertain light which is the delight of lovers and the poetry of beer drinking.”— Washington Post, June 1879

16-1Park View Elementary School students hosted Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy at a school assembly in 1963.Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post [designer: crop “welcome to Murch” sign on left]

16-2, 16-3A group picnic at Schuetzen Park, where German American and other organizations enjoyed the sprawling pleasure grounds. The card at direction invited a Major Vanburg to the third annual Schuetzen Fest, a German American festival.[both] Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

16-4The H.R. Howenstein Co. built 135 rowhouses in Park View – including these at 609-637 Princeton Place -- about 1919.Library of Congress

16-5Summer fun in the new Park View Playground swimming pool, 1969.The Washington Post

16-6, 16-7, 16-8Students, direction, at the Modern School of Music, direction, led for more than 40 years by Arthur E. Smith.[all three] Afro-American Newspapers

16-9Morris Morgan opened a pool room in the 1940s and, in 1963, Morgan’s Seafood in the same block.Afro-American Newspapers

16-10John P. Murchison, Jr., of Inter-City Mortgage.The Washington Post

Sign 17The Next Wave[Georgia Ave. and Morton St.]

Caribbean immigrants discovered this stretch of Georgia Avenue in the 1940s, bringing island culture along with jerk chicken, curry, and coco bread. Many, like Eric Williams, who later led Trinidad and Tobago to independence in 1962, came to study or teach at Howard University. Others came seeking better jobs.102 The 2000 Census showed that Caribbean-born residents formed DC’s second-largest immigrant group.

For English-speaking immigrants from the former British West Indies, transition to DC life was relatively easy. They held tightly to their traditions, opening businesses and organizing an annual festival on Georgia Avenue. [At direction, west side of Georgia, just south of Morton], Mike and Rita’s opened in 1974, specializing in roti (curried meat and potatoes wrapped in a flaky dough). Across the street, at the corner of Lamont, Brown’s Bakery opened in 1980, serving patties and spice buns.103 At that time, there were almost three dozen West Indian establishments along this stretch.104 Georgia Avenue Day and Carnival parades have featured spectacular costumes, calypso music, and dancing.

Behind you [CK] is the Park-Morton public housing complex. It was built in the early 1960s,105 shortly after thousands of African American homes in Southwest DC were demolished to make way for modern apartment and office buildings. Although the Park-Morton won an award for architectural excellence, DC’s Housing Authority came under fire for spending more to provide residents with balconies.106 In 2010 the Park-Morton was slated for demolition in favor of a larger, mixed-income development with a new park and community center.107

102 Urban Odyssey (1996), 251-52103 Washington Post, 1/3/82; Brown’s was also voted the best Jamaican bakery in the DC area in 2007. http://www.brownscaribbakery.com/about.htm104 Washington Post, 1/3/82105 Washington Post, 3/23/1960106 Washington Post, 2/25/66, C1; Washington Post, 2/27/66107 Washington Post, 3/5/09, B2

Side Trip [Sidebar]: Dr. Charles R. Drew, who developed a method for storing blood plasma on a mass scale during World War II and was head of surgery at Freedmen’s Hospital, lived with his family one block west of here at 3324 Sherman Avenue, Apartment 1.108 [see photos 17-10, 11, 12 below]

Images

17-1Dancers from the Trinidad and Tobago Association participate in the Georgia Avenue Day Parade, 1988.The Washington Post

17-2, 17-3 Neighborhood children excitedly wait for the Georgia Avenue Day parade to pass by, including dancers of the Trinidad and Tobago Association, 1992.[both] The Washington Post

17-4Ricky Hillocks owned the West Indian Record Mart on Georgia Ave. and Columbia Rd. in 1981.The Washington Post

17-5Howard’s Cramton Auditorium is among the several neighborhood venues that have hosted Caribbean entertainers. Collection of Von Martin

17-6Sam Rosen’s Lamont 5 and 10 at Georgia and Lamont became Brown’s Caribbean Bakery in 1980.Collection of Larry Rosen

17-7, 17-8, 17-9The DC Housing Authority removed the houses at left in this 1960 picture of Morton St., direction, in order to build the Park-Morton Apartments, seen in March 1961, direction, and September 1961, direction.[all] DC Housing Authority

17-10, 17-11, 17-12Direction, Dr. Drew with daughters Charlene, age three, left, and Bebe, age four, and Drew’s wife Lenore with Charlene, direction, inside their apartment building, direction.[all] Collection of Bebe Drew Price

108 AAHT-31-Drew

Sign 18 The Modern Shopper[Georgia Ave. and Park Rd.]

Braving a blizzard in February 1936, eager customers lined up to experience a modern, self-service, cash-only supermarket. Nehemiah Cohen and Samuel Lehrman’s Giant Food here on Georgia Avenue was the chain’s first. Although the Memphis-born Piggly Wiggly chain pioneered the supermarket concept, it took Giant to capture DC consumers.

Giant moved into the former Park View Market, which had opened in 1923 with 180 tiled stalls. Before the supermarket, food shopping meant stopping at stand-alone bakeries, butcher shops, and other specialty stores, or at stalls inside a market shed. In all cases, shopkeepers filled the orders. Although mom-and-pop stores offered customers credit between paydays and delivered, Giant’s efficiency and lower prices nearly made small specialty stores obsolete. 109

After the arrival of supermarkets, small corner groceries continued to serve neighborhoods. Many were owned by Jewish families who belonged to the city-wide buying cooperative District Grocery Stores (DGS for short). In the 1930s, three Jewish groceries operated on the 3300 block of Georgia, and at least 15 along the route of this trail.110

The ornate police substation at 750 Park Road (to your left) opened in 1901 as the 10th Precinct headquarters, serving 15 square miles of “suburbs” stretching north from Florida Avenue to the District line, and between Benning Road and Rock Creek.111

On your way to Sign 19, notice 3641 Georgia Avenue, formerly the York movie theater. The York was built by theater mogul Harry Crandall, who also built the Tivoli (14th Street and Park Road) and Lincoln (U Street) movie palaces.112

109 Interview with Berlene Jackson (GAPP Working Group, 1:15); Interview with Nelson Deckelbaum (Sarah Shoenfeld)110 “Almost every corner, every two or three blocks, had a DGS.” (Jerry Rosenthal); Jewish Historical Society of Washington database for “Half a Day on Sunday” online exhibit.111 “Policing the Suburbs,” TWP, July 30, 1900, p. 10.112 Crandall also built The Colony at Georgia and Farragut and The Kennedy a bit further north and west of here at 3rd and Kennedy NW. (Headley)

Images

18-1Fred Deckelbaum and his son Nathan and daughter Mildred pose inside Deckelbaum’s Meat Market at 786 Harvard St. (at Sherman), around 1940.Collection of Nathan Deckelbaum

18-2, 18-3The grandly named first Giant Food Shopping Center, 1936, and its cashiers, direction.[both] Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington

18-4, 18-5Celia and Nathan Weinreb in their 438 V St. store, next to the old Griffith Stadium, direction. Joseph and Lena Shankman, seen inside their Economy Meat Market, 2827 Georgia, were members of the District Grocery Stores buying cooperative.Gift of Ruth Compart, Jewish Historical Society of Greater WashingtonJewish Historical Society of Greater Washington

18-6, 18-7Officers of the 10th Precinct posed for the camera across the street from the station house around 1930, direction. The 10th precinct station, 1940s.Collection of Hiram BrewtonThe Washington Post

18-8, 18-9Crandall’s York Theatre: interior, direction, and viewed from Georgia Ave. at night, around 1919.Library of Congress

Sign 19Mr. Lincoln’s Ride[Georgia Ave.-Petworth Metro Station]

It’s the summer of 1862. Early morning, but already hot and dusty. You’re standing at this spot, when you see a tall man on horseback. It’s President Abraham Lincoln. You’re pleased to see him, but not surprised. After all, he rides by here often.

Georgia Avenue, then the Seventh Street Turnpike, ran between downtown Washington and Rock Creek Church Road, which led to Lincoln’s summer cottage on the grounds of the Old Soldiers’ Home (now the Armed Forces Retirement Home). Though Lincoln was required to travel with military escorts, sometimes he sneaked out before dawn or after dark to journey in solitude. The Civil War was a year old. Lincoln occasionally stopped to visit with formerly enslaved men and women or wounded soldiers at settlements and Army camps along his route. Harewood Hospital, once located close to where the Washington Hospital Center is today, was one of these. The poet Walt Whitman described Harewood as “out in the woods, pleasant and recluse.”113 In March 1865, John Wilkes Booth heard the president would attend a play at Campbell Hospital, then located at Sixth and Florida, near where this Heritage Trail begins. Booth plotted unsuccessfully to kidnap Lincoln on his way back to the cottage.114 Instead, a month later, he assassinated Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre.

For 83 years Engine Company 24, DC’s first fully motorized fire company, occupied the site of the Petworth Metro Station across Georgia Avenue. Though it relocated in 1994, its handsome façade survives, incorporated into the Metro cooling plant on New Hampshire Avenue just south of this corner. The Green line opened here in 1999.

113 Peter Coviello, ed., Walt Whitman’s Memoranda During the War (2004), 99. “Every Sunday of these months visited Harewood Hospital out in the woods, pleasant and recluse, some two and a half or three miles north of the Capitol. The situation is healthy, with broken ground, grassy slopes and patches of oak woods, the trees large and fine. It was one of the most extensive of the Hospitals–but…”114 Booth and his co-conspirators met somewhere near 7th and Florida. (Michael W. Kauffman, American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies, 2004, 185; William Hanchett, “The Ambush on the Seventh Street Road,” The Surratt Society News, Oct. 1981, 153)

Images[Pull Quote takes place of one photo]“He rode in unguarded, and often alone.”115

— Noah Brooks, journalist, 1864.

19-1The Orchid Dry Cleaner building was razed for the Metro station on this corner.The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

19-2, 19-3President Lincoln took this route from the White House to his cottage.[19-2] Library of Congress [19-3] President Lincoln’s Cottage

19-4, 19-5The tents of Harewood Hospital, direction, on the Seventh St. Turnpike south of the Soldier’s Home. At direction, military musicians posed in front of a hospital building.[both] Library of Congress

19-6Lincoln’s Cottage at the time of his visits. The cottage has recently been restored and is open to the public.Library of Congress

19-7, 19-8Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, direction, considered attacking Lincoln at Campbell Hospital, direction, near what is now the intersection of Florida and Georgia Aves.[both] Library of Congress

19-9A 1949 view of Engine Company 24, formerly on the site of the west entrance to the Metro station, across Georgia Ave. Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

115 Noah Brooks (journalist and friend of the Lincoln family), 21 July 1864, in Michael Burlingame, Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 205.