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
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