The Heyday of Four-and-A-Half Street
w as on ce Wa s h i n g t on’s answer to New York’s Lower East Side. Fourth Street,known until as ½ Street,and nearby Seventh Street were Southwest’s shopping centers. Around , ½ Street was the dividing line between a mostly African American community living to the east and mostly Irish, Italian, and Jewish communities to the west.Yet blacks and whites came together over life’s necessities in the small shops along ½ Street. Grocers, butchers, cobbl ers, and merchants supplied flour and sugar, fresh meat, clothing, and dry goods. German Jewish immigrants moved in during the Civil War, living above their small businesses alongside Irish shopkeepers. A larger wave of Eastern European Jews began arriving after . This street was the cen ter of Jewish life in Southwest,but it was never exclusive.The Jewell Theater,showing movies to African American audiences,once sat on this block across from today’sAmidon Elementary School.Children of all backgrounds played together in the alleys and schoolyards,and roamed to the National Mall to visit the Smithsonian museums or play ball on the open fields. Southwest’s Jewish community produced a civic leader for the entire city. Attorney Harry S. Wender worked to make DC streets safer and to create playgrounds. In he brought black and white citizens together to persuade the city to tear up the worn-out cobblestones of ½ Street, modern- ize it,and re-name it Fourth Street to symbolize its rebirth.The entire neighborhood celebrated the new street with the first integrated parade in the city’s history.
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