Cultural Convergence columbia heights Heritage Trail
This lively city neighborhood began as an elite suburb on the high ground overlooking Washington City. Follow this trail to experience both the old and new Columbia Heights and meet people who changed our world with new technology, revolutionary ideas, literature, laws and leadership.
Welcome.
Washington’s historic neighborhoods are rich in stories that reflect our nation’s history and describe how we became who we are as communities. This self-guided walking tour is the tenth in a series that invites you to discover and enjoy a good walk through a great place. Columbia Heights has welcomed every group to ever leave its mark on the city. This keepsake guide summarizes their stories, taken from the 19 signs of Cultural Convergence: Columbia Heights Heritage Trail.
Youngsters enjoy the heavy equipment as work begins on Columbia Heights Village at 14th and Harvard Sts. in 1976. The Washington Post
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Design by side view/Hannah Smotrich Map by Bowring Cartographic
O n the cover: “Malcolm X,” detail from Allen Uzikee Nelson’s weathering steel and stained glass sculpture, “Marcus Garvey/Malcolm X,” installed at 1 44 0 Belmont Street, NW.
A s you walk this trail, please keep safety in mind, just as you would while visiting any unfamiliar place.
Cultural Convergence Columbia Heights Heritage Trail
Brian D. Kraft Lead Historian
Jane Freundel Levey Editor and Historian Mara Cherkasky Writer and Historian Sarah Fairbrother
Project Director Carmen Harris, Terry Restivo, Erinn Roos Project Staff
A original project of Cultural Tourism DC, Linda Donavan Harper, Executive Director, and staff members Alisha Bell, Laura Brower, Elizabeth Goldberg, Valerie Hillman, Pamela Jafari, Courtney MacGregor, Yillah Rosenfeld, Leon Seemann, Reshma Sinanan, and Pat Wheeler, in collaboration with the Columbia Heights Heritage Trail Working Group, Anne Theisen, Chair. Funding provided by District Department of Trans- portation, Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, and U.S. Department of Transportation.
Introduction
In May 1 86 1 a Union so ldier named Theodore Winthrop sat writing near the site of today’s Cardozo High School. His company occupied an estate called “Mount Pleasant,” which, he noted, sat “upon the pretty terrace commanding the plain of Washington.” Columbian College, farms, and estates—often used as Civil War barracks and hospitals—dominated the landscape. About 7 0 years earlier planner Peter C. L’Enfant had laid out the capital on the coastal plain where the Potomac and Anacostia rivers met. He ended the city at the foot of the steep hill below Win- throp’s “pretty terrace.” Boundary Street (today’s Florida Avenue) separated Washington City from Washington County. In the early 1 8 00 s farmers drove their horse- drawn produce wagons down the hill to city markets. City folks made their way up the hill to bet on horses at John Tayloe’s racetrack, located near today’s 1 4th Street and Columbia Road. Columbian College (George Washington University’s prede-cessor) opened to educate young men, giving the area the nickname “College Hill.”
William James Howard, circled, Wayland Seminary, class of 1886, later pastored Zion Baptist Church and co-founded Stoddard Baptist Home.
A quiet moment at the Arcade, 1913.
Soon after the Civil War, new settlements arose, including Mount Pleasant Village near 14th Street and Park Road, settled by white newcomers, and a predominantly African American community on College Hill, where the new Wayland Seminary trained formerly enslaved men and women to be teachers and preachers. In 1892, a new electric streetcar line scaled the 14th Street hill for the first time. When another line came to 11th Street the easy transportation led to a residential building boom. Soon fashionable homes covered the hill. Senator John Sherman laid out his subdivision, Columbia Heights, around the site where years earlier soldier Win- throp had admired the view. Eventually Sherman’s development gave its name to an entire neighborhood. At its western edge an embassy district grew, thanks to landowner Mary Henderson, the resident of a castle-like mansion at Florida Avenue and 16th Street. Henderson also pushed the U.S. Congress to establish the formal Meridian Hill Park, in the process displacing the old College Hill settlement and its working- class residents. The new residential developers restricted commer- cial activities to the streetcar routes. Soon the 14th Street corridor became an important, large- scale business district. In addition to small shops, a huge indoor market/sports arena/amusement palace called the Arcade drew customers from across the city. The arrival in the mid-1920s of the
The Tivoli just after it opened in 1924.
grand new Riggs Bank building and the 2,500-seat Tivoli Theater sealed the area’s future. These imposing buildings reflected the status of Columbia Heights’s new residents, who were mostly white and upper-middle class. Among them were senators, Supreme Court justices, and an enclave of successful Jewish business owners. Some builders wrote race-restrictive covenants into deeds to keep residential areas west of 13th Street white. In the 1920s upper-crust African American families, many of them associated with Howard University, began moving onto the blocks just east of the “divide.” Columbia Heights’s Central High School, at 13th and Euclid Streets, was considered the gem of DC Public Schools’ white division. But by 1949 the neighborhood’s complexion had changed and Central’s student population had dwindled. At the same time, nearby “colored” schools were practi- cally bursting at the seams. After intense lobbying by African American parents, and despite strong
Dr. W. Montague Cobb of Girard St., second from left, and the St. George’s String Quartet, 1939.
Central High School students of the 1920s learned auto mechanics.
Odessa Madre, known as the Al Capone of Washington.
Cardozo students Jerome Barbe and Barbara Henderson learn data processing from teacher Margaret G. Saxon, 1968.
Federal troops in gasmasks approached from Hiatt Pl. as fire fighters set up to battle a blaze on Irving St. during the 1968 disturbances.
resistance from white citizens and Central alumni, the school board transferred Central’s students else- where, and moved the African American Cardozo Business High School into Central’s building. A few years later legal school segregation ended. Soon most of the neighborhood’s remaining white residents, and much of the white business capital, had left for the Virginia and Maryland suburbs. Hard times followed, compounded by the riots that began at 14th and U Streets in response to the 1968 assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Many businesses were looted and burned; others closed as their customers fled the neighborhood. The 14th Street corridor was devastated.
Radical activist Angela Davis, right, speaks from the pulpit at All Souls Church, 1974. The Chilean exile group Inti Illimani performed at All Souls in 1974, a year after a coup d’état brought in the Pinochet dictatorship.
CARECEN Co-director Joaquin Dominguez Parada in the original Mt. Pleasant St. office, 1982.
City Councilmember Frank Smith and first-time homebuyers celebrate the opening of Nehemiah housing, 1994.
But from despair grew hope. Dozens of commu- nity-based arts, social services, and political orga- nizations developed. Over time new immigrants, attracted to the affordable rents, found shelter in the neighborhood and built strong communities. Drummers and soccer players found a home in Meridian Hill Park, which also became known as Malcolm X Park. Four decades after the 1968 riots, shoppers once again crowd 14th Street. A Metrorail station connects the neighborhood to the rest of the city. New residents join old in the cultural convergence that marks today’s Columbia Heights. And the neighborhood still spreads over the hill, com- manding the city below.
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J. Willard Marriott (in doorway) and his first employee, Robert Smice, pose at the first Hot Shoppe, 1927. Marriott Corporation
Main Street 14TH and IRVING STREETS NW
Fourteenth Street has always been the busi-ness backbone of Columbia Heights. Beginning in the 1890 s, electric streetcars dropped passengers at nearly every corner, attracting commerce. By 1925 storefronts occupied the blocks between Euclid and Otis Streets. Most stores, often less than 02 feet wide, were family run and offered one line of products. In 1 9 52 on 1 4th Street between Irving Street and Park Road alone, you could find hats, bicycles, men’s clothing, ladies’ clothing, automobiles, hardware, musical instruments, candy, cigars, paint, meats, baked goods, and real estate. Larger establishments included drug stores, restaurants, movie theaters, and the Arcade, a granddaddy to the modern shopping mall, with food stalls and family enter- tainment. After World War II, nightspots featured “hillbilly” music and catered to migrants from rural states. In 1 9 2 7 J. Willard and Alice Marriott, a young couple from Utah, chose a storefront on the west side of 1 4th Street for their first business. They opened an A&W Root Beer franchise at 3 21 8 1 4th Street, added spicy Southwestern style food, and dubbed the enterprise Hot Shoppe. It grew into the Hot Shoppes chain, and by 1 9 5 7, Marriott food services and hotels. The riots following the assassination of the Rev- erend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in April 1 968 devastated 1 4th Street. Most of the businesses that weren’t actually burned out closed, setting off a downward spiral. While immigrants and activists brought some new enterprises in the 1 98 0 s, it took the opening of the Columbia Heights Metrorail station in 1 999 to begin the latest revival.
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Upstairs at the Arcade: a bowling alley. The Washington Post
Amusement Palace 14TH and KENYON STREETS NW
The intersection o f 1 4th Street and Park Road has been the center of community life since at least 1871 , when the neighborhood was called Mount Pleasant and storekeeper George Emery made his living on the northwest corner. Emery’s emporium, the first on upper 1 4th Street, marked the end of the line for the horse-drawn omnibus (coach) that carried residents to and from down-town.“Its stock ranged all the way from mowing machines to dry goods,” wrote Emery’s son Fred. In 1892 the Washington and Georgetown Railroad Company began running electric streetcars up 1 4th Street to Park Road, and built a Romanesque car barn on the west side of 14th. After the line was extended in 1 9 0 7, investors, including gramophone inventor and neighbor Emile Berliner, transformed the car barn into the Arcade, a combination market and amusement park. Best known for its street-level vendor stalls, the Arcade over time boasted a movie theater, sports arena, bowling alleys, skating rink, and dance hall upstairs, not to mention carnival fun in the Japanese Maze and the House of Trouble. “The big Arcade building was crowded from end to end with one of the happiest throngs imaginable,” wrote the Washington Post about opening night. In November 1 9 52 the newly organized American Basketball Association inducted DC’s Palace Five. The Five (also called the “Laundrymen” for their first sponsor, Palace Laundry) played their first home-court, Big League game at the Arcade. Some 2,500 fans watched them beat the Brooklyn Five, 1 8 to 1 7.
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Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians performed at the Tivoli’s 1924 opening. Collection of Payette family
A City in Itself 14TH STREET and PARK ROAD NW
Co lumbia Heights by the mid- 1 9 20 s was a center of white elite activity and commerce. The elegant, Neoclassical style Riggs Bank branch and the Italian Renaissance style Tivoli Theater opened to great acclaim. Soon after, radio station WRC moved into the bank building, its rooftop tower advertising the wondrous new technology. Harry Crandall’s Tivoli was among the largest and grandest theaters in Washington. People literally danced in the streets the day it opened. The 2,500 -seat theater hosted live shows as well as films. It was Washington’s first movie house equipped for "talkies," movies with sound. With these two anchors, Columbia Heights in 1928 was “practically independent of downtown Washington,” proclaimed the Washington Post. Then the housing demands of the Great Depression and World War II led some people to subdivide the larger houses. New residents in the 1950s demanded more affordable goods and services. Soon the discount department store Morton’s arrived, and the number of night spots increased. Like many other DC theaters, the Tivoli was segregated until forced by the Supreme Court in 1953 to desegregate. In the 1960s its programming shifted to attract local audiences in the now- predominantly African American community. Children enjoyed Saturday matinees for 25 cents, with 15-cent popcorn and 10-cent sodas. Despite the civil disturbances of 1968, the Tivoli remained a neighborhood anchor until it closed in 1976. Thanks to preservationists and area residents, the landmark was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and was carefully restored in 2006.
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Four days after Dr. King’s assassination, firefighters continued to battle smoldering buildings along 14th St. Library of Congress
After the Hard Times 14TH and MONROE STREETS NW
When the smo ke cleared after the civil disturbances of April 1 968, Columbia Heights lay devastated. Many residents and businesses simply left. Others remained to pick up the pieces. But who would help rebuild? Citizen groups, church leaders, and the federal government—which controlled the city’s purse- strings—initially answered the call. The Cardozo Heights Association for Neighborhood Growth and Enrichment (ch ange), Inc., also responded with housing programs, a health clinic, a “street academy,” and other assistance. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development bought, or took by eminent domain, hundreds of properties, giving some to the city for public housing. Some damaged buildings, and many rowhouses that were simply old, were razed. Soon, on this block, only the Tivoli Theater remained. In 1 976–77 change came. All Souls Housing Corp. built the Columbia Heights Village complex along 1 4th Street. However most of the land between Irving and Monroe Streets sat vacant for decades as city officials and community groups argued, and inves-tors looked elsewhere. Though damaged, the grand Riggs-Tompkins Building escaped demolition, thanks to neighbor- hood preservationists. The Kelsey Temple Devel- opment Corp. added apartments for seniors above the original building. The largest enterprise to survive the disturbances was the Giant Food store, then located at 346 0 1 4th Street. It had opened in 1 966 as a model facility after citizens complained that “inner-city neighbor- hoods” had inferior stores. In the difficult days after the riots, Giant joined Sacred Heart Church and St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church in distributing needed provisions.
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Joseph Danzansky speaks at the 1977 dedication of the Urban League’s new offices. The Washington Post
Community Builders 14TH STREET and OTIS PLACE NW
Harry Wardman, Washington’s prolific devel- oper, built nearly all of the 3 00 houses around this sign between Monroe Street and Spring Road. The English immigrant and self-made millionaire became known for his rowhouses, whose front porches allowed neighbors to visit easily. These date from 1 9 0 7 to 1 9 11 . Adjoining Wardman buildings at 3 –105 3 05 3 1 4th Street once housed the Danzansky Funeral Home, originally opened in 1 9 12 by Bernard Danzansky on Ninth Street, NW, as DC’s first Jewish funeral home. Soon after, he moved his residence and business here, as affluent Jews moved uptown from the old city. The Jewish Social Service Agency as well as a mikvah—a ritual purification bath—were nearby. Danzansky helped found the Hebrew Home for the Aged and the Hebrew Academy of Washington. His wife Nettie was a leader in charitable work, and his son Joseph was president of Giant Food and headed the city’s Board of Trade. When the funeral home relocated to Maryland, the Washington Urban League moved in, remaining for 3 0 years before moving to 1 4th and Harvard Streets. Across 1 4th Street is Hubbard Place apartments. Long known as the Cavalier, the originally ritzy building was constructed by Morris Cafritz, a top DC developer. It was later converted to low-income housing, and in 002 9 was renamed to honor the late community activist Leroy Hubbard. In the 1 98 0 s growing crime led to the formation of the “red-hat” Citizen Organized Patrol Effort ( COPE ) to walk the neighborhood and alert police to loitering, vacant properties, burnt-out streetlights, and other conditions that contributed to crime.
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Holmead descendants built this house in 1883, which can be seen at 3517 13th St. The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
Holmeads’ Legacy MONROE and 13TH STREETS NW
This s po t o nce w a s the center of the Holmead family estate, “Pleasant Plains.” The property stretched from today’s Spring Road to Columbia Road, and from Georgia Avenue to Rock Creek. In 1 74 0 the Holmeads built a house near here. In 1 8 20 , two years after Congress arrived in Washington, Col. John Tayloe leased land from the Holmeads to open the city’s second racetrack (the first was walking distance from the White House where the Organization of American States is today on Constitution Avenue, NW). Congress regularly recessed to make post time at the one- mile track, which extended from today’s 01 th to 1 6th Streets, bordered on the south by Tayloe’s Lane, now Columbia Road. During the 1 8 00 s Holmead descendents gradually sold off Pleasant Plains. In 1 883 William and Mary Holmead laid out Holmead Manor, with 50 -foot-wide building lots. For themselves they built a large house at 3 51 7 1 3th Street. That struc- ture remains today, adapted for apartments. Its original carriage house remains, as well, tucked into the alley behind the house. In 1 9 0 9, shortly after 11 th Street was built, the Anacostia & Potomac River Railroad’s 11 th Street line ended at Monroe Street. Added to existing lines on Georgia Avenue and 1 4th Street, the new line made this DC’s best-served “streetcar suburb.” At 11 th and Monroe is a small park where, until 1 96 1 , streetcars turned around to head back downtown.
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This Safeway once occupied the southwest corner of 11th and Kenyon Sts. The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
Nob Hill KENYON and 11TH STREETS NW
For nearl y 50 years this corner was home to Nob Hill Restaurant, one of the nation’s first openly gay bars for—and run by—African Americans. Started in the 1 9 05 s as a private social club, Nob Hill went public in 1 9 5 7. Patrons enjoyed enter- tainment ranging from male dancers to weekly “Gospel Hours” with local church choirs. One regular called the low-key club “a house party that charged a cover.” When Nob Hill closed in 0 02 4, it was considered DC’s longest-enduring gay bar. Across Kenyon Street are the playing fields of Harriet Tubman Elementary School. The school opened in 1 97 0 amid controversy over whether it would destroy the neighborhood’s essential character. Despite resident s' efforts to block the school, construction went ahead, displacing 1 7 long-standing businesses along 11 th Street and fine, three-story rowhouses on 1 3th, Irving, and Kenyon Streets. The remaining single-story commercial strip between Kenyon and Lamont streets dates back to the early 1 9 10 s, shortly after the 11 th Street streetcar line arrived and increased foot traffic here. On the way to Sign 8 is Columbia Road, where Ralph Bunche lived at number 1123 in the early 1 93 0 s. Bunche later founded Howard University’s Political Science Department and served as a U.S. diplomat. For his work on establishing the state of Israel, Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1 9 50 , the first African American so honored.
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Educator and lifelong Girard St. resident Dr. Paul Phillips Cooke in his D.C. Teachers College office. Collection of Anne Cooke
Girard Street Elites 11TH and GIRARD STREETS NW
The 1100 and 1200 bl ocks of Girard Street once were home to a “Who’s Who” of African American leaders. This and nearby “double-blocks” are the heart of John Sherman’s Columbia Heights subdivision. By placing houses 30 feet from the street’s center, Sherman created a gracious and inviting street- scape. The elegant rowhouses, built mostly between 1894 and 1912, echoed the social and economic class of their first, white residents. By the 1920s black families began arriving. Many had ties to Howard University. Dr. W. Montague Cobb of 1221 Girard, a foremost physical anthro- pologist, headed Howard Medical School’s Anatomy Department and helped lead the NAACP. Dr. Roland Scott, of 1114 Girard, chaired Pediatrics and led the fight against sickle cell disease. Dorothy Porter Wesley, of 1201 Girard, developed the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, the eminent library of the African Diaspora. Educa- tor Paul Phillips Cooke, former president of D.C. Teachers College and leader of the American Veterans Committee, lived at 1203 Girard from 1928 until 2006. Across Girard Street is Carlos Rosario Public Charter School, originally the white Wilson Normal School (teachers college) and later part of the University of the District of Columbia. One block away is Fairmont Street, where jazz pianist, composer, and educator Billy Taylor grew up at number 1207. Music teacher Henry Grant, mentor to both Taylor and Duke Ellington, once lived at 1114. Home rule activist Rev. Channing Phillips lived at 1232 Fairmont before becoming, in 1968, the first African American nominated for U.S. president at a major party convention.
Columbia Heights Heritage Trail
The Columbia Heights Heritage Trail, Cultural Convergence, is an official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The 2.9-mile route is defined by 19 illustrated historical markers, each capped with an .
Sign 1 is found at the southeast corner of 14th and Irving Streets, just across from both entrances to the Columbia Heights station on Metrorail’s Green line, but you may begin your tour at any sign. The walk offers two hours of gentle exercise.
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French teacher Mary Hundley, in white blouse at left, poses with her Dunbar High School students on the school steps, 1937. Library of Congress
Justice vs. Injustice EUCLID and 13TH STREETS NW
Thes e elegant 1 3th S tree t ho us es were constructed at a time when racial separation was legal and widely accepted. In 1 9 01 the deeds for many houses on the west side of 1 3th Street included covenants banning “any negro or colored persons.” By the 1 93 0 s, 1 3th Street divided black from white. Then, in 1 94 1 , African American educator Mary Hundley and her husband Frederick bought 25 3 0 1 3th Street, on the white side, despite its restrictive covenant. (Hundley was the granddaughter of William Syphax, founder of the nation’s—and Washington’s—first public high school for African Americans.) White neighbors successfully sued the Hundleys for breaking the covenant, but a higher court overturned the ruling. In 1 948 the U.S. Supreme Court cited the Hundley case as precedent when it decreed that racially restrictive covenants were unenforceable. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan once lived at 1 4th and Euclid Streets. In 1 896 Harlan was the only justice to dissent when the Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional. That ruling helped justify the covenants that Hundley helped neutralize. Economic discrimination spurred further activism in the 1 97 0 s. Protesters rallied for low-income tenants who faced eviction by speculators seeking to convert their homes into condominiums. Across Euclid Street, at number 12 36, once was the Afro-American Institute for Historic Preservation and Community Development. Established in 1 97 0 by Robert and Vincent DeForest, the institute helped obtain National Historic Landmark status for more than 6 0 African American historic sites across the nation.
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On March 12, 1967, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke at Cardozo to a public meeting on urban renewal plans for the Shaw neighborhood. Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post
On the Heights CLIFTON STREET EAST OF 13TH STREET nw
In the days o f legally s egregated public education ( 1 86 1–2 9 5 4), this school building was Central High, the gem of the School Board’s white division. But by 1 949, it had few students, as the post-World War II suburban housing boom had drawn whites away. Consequently African Ameri-can families outnumbered whites around Central. Nearby “colored” high schools—especially Cardozo at Ninth Street and Rhode Island Avenue —struggled with overcrowded, outdated facilities. When activists pressed the city to move Cardozo’s black students to Central, the white community resisted. But the School Board could not justify the waste of space. So in September 1 9 05 , with white students relocated to other schools, Central became Cardozo, the business high school for black students. Four years later, with Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court nominally integrated all DC schools. Long before there was a school here, though, this fabulous view was enjoyed by a sculptor and engraver named William J. Stone. In 1 83 5 Stone moved into the Federal style “Mount Pleasant” house, once the centerpiece of the prominent Peter family’s thousand-acre estate here. In 1 88 1 Senator John Sherman bought 121 acres, then laid out a subdivision between 11 th and 1 4th Streets, naming it Columbia Heights. His contemporary, Senator John A. Logan of Illinois, a Civil War general, co-founder of Memorial Day, and future vice presidential candidate ( 1 884), bought the old mansion and renamed it Calumet Place. Later, Logan’s widow Mary rented it to Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan.
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The library of Amzi Barber’s Belmont, photographed around 1890. Photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston, Library of Congress
Views of Justice CLIFTON STREET WEST OF 13TH STREET nw
On the sou thwest co r ner of this intersection once stood Belmont, an impressive stone mansion built in 1 883 by entrepreneur Amzi L. Barber, “America’s Asphalt King.” Barber, who was white, headed the Education Department at Howard University at the time of its founding in 1 867. He soon bought land from the university to build the exclusive LeDroit Park neighborhood. Next he entered the asphalt paving business, and came to dominate it nationwide. Barber also helped develop the Columbia Heights subdivision. For years Belmont was a landmark that greeted streetcar riders cresting the 1 4th Street hill. Justice William R. Day was one of the powerful men who lived nearby. After Barber’s death, developer Harry Wardman bought Belmont, only to replace it in 1 9 51 with Wardman Courts, then the city’s largest luxury apartment complex. In 1 9 12 new owners named it Clifton Terrace. The once-glamorous complex did not age well, and succeeding owners deferred maintenance and crowded more tenants into the units. By the 1 96 0 s, the situation was so bad that, with help from Ch ange, Inc. and others, tenants organized and stopped paying rent. When the landlord tried to evict them, the tenants sued. In a landmark 1 97 0 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals, Javins v. First National Realty Corporation established the right of tenants to withhold rent payments when conditions violate housing codes. Social activist Rev. Channing Phillips’s Housing Development Corporation renovated Clifton Terrace in the late 1 96 0 s. In 2003 the complex, once again named Wardman Courts, reopened as condominiums and rental units.
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Owner Larry Rosen posed in front of Smith’s Pharmacy on 14th St. between Chapin and Clifton, around 1960. Collection of Larry Rosen
1968 14TH and CLIFTON STREETS NW
Following the April 4, 1 968, assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., rioting broke out when angry crowds gathered at 1 4th and U Streets. The disturbances, here and around the city, lasted four days. At least 01 people were killed with hundreds injured, and property dam-age was extensive. Across 1 4th Street was Smith’s Pharmacy, owned by Larry Rosen. The pharmacy’s staff and customers were predominantly African American, “and everyone got along,” Rosen recalled. So he was stunned when, on April 4 and 5 , Smith’s was looted, then burned. “We merchants had nothing to do with Dr. King’s murder,” Rosen reflected later.“Why were we being attacked?” Smith’s never reopened. A few weeks after the disturbances, Howard University historians interviewed people who had participated in the violence. One 21 -year-old explained that, upon hearing the news of Dr. King’s death, he headed out, looking for friends who shared his horror and outrage. But the streets were filling with angry people breaking into businesses. Looting seemed a way to strike back at a system in which “the white man can come in here and set up stores..., take his money, and then go out to the suburbs and deny the black man the opportunity to come out there.” For 52 years afterward, private developers shunned this and many riot-damaged areas. In 1 993 the Nehemiah Group, a coalition of nonprofits led by the Development Corporation of Columbia Heights, broke ground on retail spaces and afford- able housing.
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Gaston Neal, right, founder of the New School for Afro- American Thought, confers with Stokely Carmichael before a black-unity drive
in January 1968. The Washington Post
The Outer Limit FLORIDA AVENUE and 14TH STREET NW
Until 1 89 0 , to day’s Flo r id a Avenue was called “Boundary Street.” That’s because Washing-ton City planner Peter Charles L’Enfant ended his city here at the foot of this daunting hill. The rest of DC north of Boundary Street and across the Anacostia River was called “Washington County” until 1 87 1 , when it merged with Washington City to become Washington, District of Columbia. This segment of the trail follows the old city boundary. The two buildings with glass-block windows, at 1326 –46 Florida Avenue, once belonged to Manhattan Laundry. The red-brick building originally opened in 1 877 to house the streetcars and horses of the Washington and Georgetown Railroad Company. Joe Turner’s (later Capitol) Arena once stood near the corner of 1 4th and W Streets. For 3 0 years Turner’s presented boxing, wrestling, big bands, and dances. In the mid- 1950 s it hosted Jimmy Dean’s Town and Country Jamboree TV show. In 1 966 the New School for Afro-American Thought opened at 220 8 1 4th Street. Founded in the Black Power era by poet Gaston Neal and 11 others, the school was a national leader in Afro- centric education. Back in the 1 94 0 s, Club Madre occupied 220 4 1 4th Street. Owner Odessa Madre, known as the Al Capone of Washington for her involvement in bootlegging, prostitution, and numbers running, operated a legitimate nightclub there. Since 1 944 the Florida Avenue Grill has stood at the corner of 11 th Street, dishing up North Carolina-style home cooking to cabbies, notables including Dr. Martin Luther King, and all comers.
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Cornelius Pitts at the bar of his Red Carpet Lounge. The Washington Post
Pitts Motor Hotel 15TH and BELMONT STREETS NW
The Pitts Mo t o r Ho tel, f ormerly located at 1 4 15 Belmont Street, lingers in memory for two reasons. In the 1 96 0 s it was a gathering place for Civil Rights movement leaders. Later it became a “welfare hotel.” In March 1 968, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., reserved 3 0 rooms at the Pitts Hotel to house leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign he planned to lead that May. He chose the facility because it was both comfortable and black owned. Despite Dr. King’s April 1 968 assassination, the Poor People’s Campaign went ahead, demanding jobs and income as a civil right. In late May and June thousands camped in “Resurrection City” on the National Mall where, due to excessive rain, conditions deteriorated quickly. Resentful campers marched on the Pitts where the leaders were housed, demanding (unsuccessfully) that the leaders exchange their comforts for the muddy Mall. In its heyday, the Pitts Hotel housed the Red Carpet Lounge. “Everyone would be there,” remembered activist Bob Moore. But its popularity masked an unstable financial situation. Owner Cornelius Pitts and other African American entrepreneurs (and would-be homeowners) at the time often were refused bank loans or offered unfavorable terms. In the 1 98 0 s, when Reagan administration cuts to social programs led to widespread home- lessness, Pitts took the opportunity to turn around his fortunes, converting his hotel into a shelter. The city rented all 50 rooms, but the prices were so inflated that a congressional investigation resulted. In 200 4 a condominium building replaced the hotel.
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As an enslaved woman, Emily Saunders Plummer served the Thompson family of Meridian Hill. Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum
College Hill 15TH and CHAPIN STREETS NW
Wayland Seminary o p ened in Foggy Bottom just after the Civil War to train formerly enslaved people and others as “preachers and teachers for the South” and as missionaries to evangelize Africa. In 1 87 5 it moved here, later merging with Rich-mond Theological Seminary to become Virginia Union University in Richmond. Among Wayland’s distinguished alumni was Booker T. Washington. Just two blocks up the hill is the former site of George Washington University’s predecessor, Columbian College. Founded by Baptist mission- aries in 1 8 12 , Columbian gave the area the nickname “College Hill.” Some 24 years before Wayland Seminary’s arrival, landowner Col. Gilbert Livingston Thompson and his wife, Mary Ann Tolley Thompson, attended a Prince George’s County slave auction and pur- chased Emily Saunders Plummer and three of her children to serve them here. After Emancipation, Plummer’s son Henry returned to attend Wayland. The Thompson home, which stood where 16th Street is today, was built in the early 1800s by Commodore David Porter, who called his estate “Meridian Hill.” During the Civil War Union troops occupied it. By the 1870s Thompson’s land was subdivided into building lots, and a working-class community of mostly African Americans developed.“Residents depended entirely upon wells and the rain barrel for water,” wrote local historian John Clagett Proctor, who lived nearby after the Civil War. “There were no streets or sidewalks.” Around 1912 the federal government forced the residents out and razed their houses to make way for Meridian Hill Park (later also known as Malcolm X Park).
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Students dance before a banner of Malcolm X during a 1971 cultural fair shortly after activist Angela Davis suggested renaming the park. The Washington Post
Mansions, Parks, and People 2437 15TH STREET NW
At 2 437 51 th S tr ee t is the Josephine Butler Parks Center, home of Washington Parks & People, a network of groups devoted to DC and its parks. This 1 9 2 7 mansion, which once housed the Hun-garian delegation, was part of an embassy row envisioned by Mary Foote Henderson for this area. Henderson built a “castle” across 1 6th Street for her family, and commissioned important arch-itects to create an enclave worthy of important residents. Meridian Hill Park was also a result of her influence. In the 1 98 0 s, the park (by then also called Malcolm X Park) had become forbidding and dangerous, and the mansion was vacant. Then Friends of Meridian Hill Park came together in 1 99 0 . By the end of the decade, when Parks & People bought the mansion, the park again thrived. The first phase of the National Park Service’s restoration of the park to its original design was completed in spring 002 9. The Parks Center, housing nonprofit groups, honors Josephine Butler ( 1 9 20–1 997), a union and political activist and educator who led Washington Parks & People at the time of her death. At the corner of Euclid Street is the Embassy of Ecuador, formerly the Netherlands Embassy. On the way to Sign 1 7 is the Warder-Totten House at 2 633 1 6th Street. George Oakley Totten, Jr., archi- tect of the Parks Center, salvaged parts of a house designed by his teacher, renowned architect H.H. Richardson, and rebuilt it here in the 1 9 20 s. It is the only Richardson building left in Washington.
17
Members of the Columbia Heights Youth Club received help with homework, around 1960. All Souls Church organized the group as the city’s first integrated youth club in 1954. Columbia Heights Youth Club
Paths to Social Justice 2800 block 16TH STREET nw
All Souls Church, Unitarian, has long been known for its social activism, starting with abolitionism in the 1 8 02 s. During segregation, All Souls was one of the few places in DC where integrated groups could meet. During the 1 98 0 s and ’9 0 s it (and other neighborhood churches) hosted concerts by DC’s influential punk bands Bad Brains, Fugazi, Minor Threat, and others. In the early 1 96 0 s, the church launched the model Girard Street Playground Project in response to growing neighborhood crime, and after the 1 968 riots, built housing on 1 4th Street, in cooperation with CHANGE , Inc. All Souls’ first African Ameri-can senior minister, Rev. David H. Eaton, opened the church’s doors to Antioch Law School and other groups. Eaton also became president of the DC Board of Education in 1 98 2 . Others shared All Souls’ commitment. Sojourn-ers, a Christian social justice community, ran summer and after-school programs at 1 3 2 3 Girard Street and at Clifton Terrace, and helped form the Southern Columbia Heights Tenant Union. Sojourners organizes nationally for social change. The Community for Creative Non-Violence grew out of anti-Vietnam War protests at George Washington University. Later CCNV opened soup kitchens, free clinics, and shelters. Eventually the group moved its headquarters to 1 34 5 Euclid Street. Led by Mitch Snyder, CCNV won political influence for its causes. The Mexican Cultural Institute, at 2 8 2 9 1 6th Street, offers exhibits and murals on Mexican life and history. The institute succeeded the Mexican Embassy in the 1 9 11 building originally the resi- dence of Chicago socialite Emily MacVeagh.
18
Poet and novelist Jean Toomer, about age five, at 1422 Harvard St. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Literary Lights 1400 block HARVARD STREET NW
The hous e a t 1 4 22 Har v ard was built in 1 893 for P.B.S. Pinchback, a Reconstruction era politi-cian and lawyer from Louisiana. Pinchback briefly served as Louisiana’s governor, the only African American governor in the country until Virginia elected Douglas Wilder in 1 99 0 . Pinchback also won seats in the U.S. House and Senate, but white politicians prevented him from claiming them. Here on Harvard Street, Pinchback raised his grandson, future author Jean Toomer. Toomer’s time here provided material for his 1 9 2 3 master- piece, Cane. “Dan Moore walks southward on Thirteenth Street,” Toomer wrote.“The low limbs of budding chestnut trees recede above his head.... The eyes of houses faintly touch him as he passes them. Soft girl-eyes, they set him singing.” Almost four decades later novelist Marita Golden also found a rich setting in Columbia Heights for her novel Long Distance Life. The great Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, son of a diplomat assigned to the Mexican Embassy on 16th Street, relished life here in the 1930s. Wash- ington had “one of the best public school systems in the world,” he recalled, “and I profited from it.” The Drum and Spear, Washington’s first Afrocentric bookstore, operated three blocks from here, at 1371 Fairmont Street, from 1969 until the mid 1970s. From 1917 until 1972 the Hines Funeral Home occupied the former private residences at 2901– 2907 14th Street, before the buildings became home to the Greater Washington Urban League.
19
Area youth play volleyball at the Latin American Youth Center’s block party on 15th St., 1989. The Washington Post
The Latino Intelligence Center COLUMBIA ROAD and 14TH STREET NW This blo ck is home to some of the largest Latino organizations in the city, all founded as migration from Central America and the Carib- bean increased in the 1 97 0 s. Several began with a boost from Calvary United Methodist Church at 1 4 5 9 Columbia Road. Since 1 974 the Latin American Youth Center, now at 1 4 1 9 Columbia Road, has supported youth and their families with education, employment, and social services. LAYC s Art & Media House is around the corner at 3 0 3 5 15 th Street. CentroNía, in the former C&P Telephone Company building at 1 4 20 Columbia Road, emphasizes early education, and the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN ) has offered legal, housing, education, and citizenship assistance since 1 98 1 . La Clínica del Pueblo at 2 83 5 11 th Street provides affordable medical care. Most of the neighboring schools and churches offer bilingual or multilingual programs. Almost 100 years before Latino groups made this their “intelligence center,” renowned German immigrant Emile Berliner lived here. Berliner invented a microphone that proved crucial to the Bell telephone’s operation. In 1 883 he built a large house and laboratory at 1 4 5 8 Columbia Road, where he also invented the gramophone (record player). With an interest in public health, Berliner founded the Bureau of Health Education and built its headquarters at 1 46 0 Columbia Road (now CARECEN offices). The Fernwood apartments replaced Berliner’s house in 1 9 2 6. In 2000 Fernwood tenants faced eviction when the DC government condemned the building. Led by six Latinas, all named Maria, residents bought, renovated, and created Las Marias Condominiums.
A bakery delivery on 15th St.
Sources
T he pro cess o f crea ting a Neighborhood Heritage Trail begins with the community, extends through story-sharing and oral history gathering, and ends in formal scholarly research. For more on this neighborhood, please consult the Kiplinger Library/ The Historical Society of Washington, D.C., and the Washingtoniana Division, DC Public Library. In addition, see the following selected works: Mara Cherkasky, Mount Pleasant (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia, 200 7).
Commission of Fine Arts, Sixteenth Street Architecture vol. 1 (Washington: 1 978).
DC Historic Preservation Office, Building Permits Database, 200 8, Washingtoniana Division, DC Public Library. James M. Goode, Best Addresses (Washington: Smithsonian Books, 1 988). Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington, 1800-1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1 96 2 ). Robert Headley, Motion Picture Exhibition in Washington, D.C. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1 999). Leroy O. King, Jr., 100 Years of Capital Traction: the Story of Streetcars in the Nation’s Capital (College Park, MD: Taylor Pub. Co., 1 97 2 ). Nellie Arnold Plummer, Out of the Depths, or the Triumph of the Cross (New York: MacMillan, 1 997, reprint of 1 9 2 7 edition). Kathryn Schneider Smith, editor, Washington at Home: An Illustrated History of Neighborhoods in the Nation’s Capital second edition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010 ).
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Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Working Group members: Anne Theisen, chair; Brian Kraft, historian; Donald S. Benjamin, Brian Yung Pau Chang, Voncie M. Cruel, Daynna Dixon, Patsy Fletcher, Lynn C. French, Ronald Grey, Brandon Griffiths, Winnie R. Huston, Tania Jackson, Jesse G. Jones, William Jordan, Reginald Kelley, Ronald Kingsbury, Nia Kuumba, Marisa Lau, Bessie Lee, Ted Loza, Elizabeth McIntire, Ali Muhammad, Allen Uzikee Nelson, Alton Poole, Julie Polter, Shane Reisman, Sylvia Robinson, the late Lucy Stokes, Farrell Tate, Dolores W. Tucker, Emma Washington, Shelore Williams, and Howard Wilson. And also to Mark Andersen, Athena Angelos, Dolores Baldadian, Callan Bentley, Sally Berk, Yvonne Carignan, Steve Coleman, Columbia Heights Village Tenants Association, Otto Condon, Anne Cooke, Paul Phillips Cooke, Rick Danzansky, Alan Darby, Marguerite Davis, José Díaz, Richard Dubeshter, Vincent DeForest, Malini Dominey, Kateri Ellison, Carol Fennelly, Brian Gober, Councilmember Jim Graham, Amelia Cobb Gray, Sharon Harley, Faye Haskins, Robert K. Headley, Norma Proctor Johnson, Dr. Ida Jones, Lori Kaplan, Carole Kolker, Mark Meinke, Robert Moore, Lauren Morrell, Jennifer Morris, Melba Moseley, Camille Nixon, Eddy Palanzo, Thomas Payette, Ruby Pelecanos, Wes Ponder, Susan Raposa, Larry Ray, Jackie Reyes, Larry Rosen, Rick Rybeck, Robert Sciandra, Ryan Shepard, Kathryn S. Smith, Rudolph Taylor, Claire Uziel, Donna Wells, Hayden Wetzel, Clarence Wheeler.
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On this self-guided walking tour of Columbia Heights, historical markers lead you to: • The place where Marriott got its start • The city’s “Latino Intelligence Center” • The blocks that once were home to a “Who’s Who” of African American leaders • The address where Washington’s “Al Capone” ran a nightclub • The site of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign headquarters • The building that housed DC’s longest-operating gay bar • The site of one of Washington’s earliest racetracks
2 COLUMBIA HEIGHTS HERITAGE TRAIL Cultural Convergence
Amusement Palace o rhood was called Mount Pleasant and storekeeper George Emery made his living on the northwest corner to your le˜ . Emery’s emporium, the ÿrst on upp Street, marked the end of the line for the horse-drawn omnibus (coach) that carried residents to the Treasury and other points downtown. “Its stock ranged all the way from mowing machines to dry goods,” wrote Emery’s son Fred. he Washington and Georgetown Railroad Company began running electric stree treet to Park Road, and built a Romanesque “car barn” just acr treet to your le˜ . A˜ er the line , investors, including gramophone inventor and neighbor Emile Berliner, transformed the car barn into the Arcade, a combination market and amusement park. Best known for its street-level vendor stalls, the Arcade over time boasted a movie theater, sports arena, bowling alleys, skating rink, and dance hall upstairs, not to mention carnival fun in the Japanese Maze and the House of Trouble. “˛ e big Arcade building was crowded from end to end with one of the happiest throngs imaginable,” wrote the Washington Post about opening night. In Nov rganized American Basketball Association inducted DC’s Palace Five. ˛ e Five (also called the “Laundrymen” for their ÿrst sponsor, Palace Laundry) played their ÿrst home court Big League game at the Arcade. Som tched them beat the Brookl treet and Park Road has been the center of community life since a
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