Sacred Heart Academy 16th street and park road nw
Set back from the street at 1621 Park Road is an elegant old house, once the all-girls Sacred Heart Academy. The Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters of Wisconsin founded the academy in 1905 and went on to operate it with Sacred Heart parish, adding a co-ed grade school in 1930. Lay educators took over in the 1990s. In addition, the school housed GALA Hispanic Theatre from 1985 to 2000. While the school always served diverse nationalities, African Americans were excluded until 1951. Wash- ington’s Catholic schools actually began desegre- gating in 1949, five years before DC Public Schools. The Park Monroe Apartments, at 3300 16th Street, occupy a site where Wisconsin Progressive Senator Robert M. La Follette lived with his family between 1913 and 1921. The senator and his wife, Belle Case La Follette, worked together for world peace and human equality. Just across 16th at 3321 was the home of movie theater mogul Harry M. Crandall. Tragedy struck Crandall in 1922, when the roof of his Knickerbocker Theater at 18th and Columbia Road collapsed during a blizzard, killing 98 and injuring scores. At the time, Crandall was planning another theater at 14th and Park Road using the Knickerbocker’s architect. In shock, he hired another designer, and the Tivoli opened in 1924. Mary Foote Henderson and architect George O. Totten built the mansion at 3224 16th Street in 1920. From 1939 until 1969 it housed the Capitol Radio Engineering Institute, teaching radio and TV electronics. CREI later became Maryland’s Capitol College.
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