Provisions for the City 400 BLOCK OF FLORIDA AVEN UE NE
THIS HIGH GROUND near the B&O Railroad tracks has been Union Terminal Market since 19 31. at year the federal government razed Center Market on Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, to make way for the National Archives. Vendors seeking new locations clustered here. Before the market, this land was part of the Brentwood estate, and then the World War I-era Camp Meigs, an army training post. In the 1920s the Hechinger lumber yard replaced the camp. Jewish, Greek, Italian, and African American vendors dominated the original market. In the late 1950s, more arrived as urban renewal closed the Southwest wholesale market. Among them were Fred Kolker's Kolker Poultry, and Washington Beef Company, belonging to Fred’s uncle Sam. Every week Washington Beef employees unloaded and butchere d ve rail cars of beef carcasses. And each night a crew cleaned equipment to prepare for the daily federal inspector’s visit. Sam’s sons and grandsons continued the business into the late 1980s. e next wave of immigrant entrepreneurs, most from China, El Salvador, Jamaica, and Korea, succeeded the European Americans in the 1980s. Civil rights activist Nadine Winter, concerned about homeless people at the market, created Hospitality House to assist them. In 1962 she opened a family shelter at 507 Florida Avenue. Winter later helped establish a community credit union on H Street, worked for federally supported urban homesteading, and, in 1974, was elected to th e r st of four terms on the DC City Council, representing Ward 6.
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