Changing Fashions 18th street and park road nw
Around 1900 this successful suburb attracted successful business leaders, who set a grand standard for home building. Printer Byron S. Adams commissioned architect Frederick Pyle to design 1801 Park Road in the Colonial Revival style. Pyle also contributed 3303 18th Street, and developer Lewis Breuninger built 1770 Park Road for his family. Completing the luxurious landscape was the large house at 1802 Park Road (since demolished). This enclave was short-lived, however. During the Great Depression of 1929–1941, the houses at 1801 and 1802 Park Road became homes for the elderly. At mid-century, 3303 18th Street became a rooming house. Twenty years later, social service providers operated from dozens of Mount Pleasant’s houses, large and small. More recently some of these well-built, convenient buildings have gone back to single-family use by people of means returning to in-town living. After World War II, Mount Pleasant enjoyed a brief heyday as a “hillbilly” (country) music destination. Singer (and later sausage salesman) Jimmy Dean found fame hosting a local TV show, Town and Country Time, but Mount Pleasant knew him first as Jimmy Dean and the Texas Wildcats, the house band at the Starlite Restaurant (1419 Irving Street). Neighbor Fred Hays remembered delivering the Washington Daily News to Dean in his rented rooms at 3303 18th Street. Charlie Waller, founder of the Country Gentlemen bluegrass band, grew up in his mother’s rooming house at 1747 Park Road. When country gave way to rock ‘n’ roll in the 1960s, local clubs followed suit.
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