Gallaudet University was founded in 1856 on land donated by former U.S. Postmaster General Amos Kendall.
During the mid-1800s enduring institutions such as St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church, Gonzaga College High School, the Little Sisters of the Poor’s Home for the Aged, and the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (later Gallaudet University) opened north and east of the Capitol to serve the community. In 1871 a horse-drawn streetcar line opened along H Street, running to and from downtown. New housing and commercial buildings soon followed. Union Station’s arrival in the early 1900s displaced many Swampoodle dwellings, and led to an expanded commercial/industrial corridor. With more jobs but less housing, families found shelter to the east along H Street, where brick rowhouses, stores and churches replaced farms, a brickyard, a brewery, and a ballpark.
Another new streetcar line soon ferried workers south along Eighth Street to the Navy Yard, long Washington’s biggest industrial employer. Two large banks opened at the streetcar transfer point of H and Eighth Streets, lending an air of dignity and permanence to the neighborhood. A 1949 view of the intersection of Eighth and H Sts. looking east with the Northeast Savings Bank at left.
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