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.
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator