Linking the “Island” to the City
, Metropolitan Street Railway car barn once commanded the northeast corner of Fourth and P streets.Trolley repair shops sat across Fourth Street.These build- ings dated from the s,and were part of Washington’s first street railway (later trolley) sys- tem.Streetcars were a lifeline for this neighbor- hood, long known as “the island” because it was cut off from the rest of Washington by creeks,a canal,the Mall, and eventually railroads and free- ways.“We had our own community here,”recalled Southwester Clarence“Chick”Jackson,“but we could also go anywhere off the island on the streetcar. It was our... connection to the city.” In the early s,Washingtonians walked where they needed to go, rode in carriages and wagons, or traveled by horseback.Later they traveled in horse-drawn wagons known as public omnibuses. By the Civil War,however,the city was booming, overwhelmed with soldiers, civilians,and supplies that needed efficient transportation. In Con gress chartered the first street railway — cars pulled by horses on steel tracks laid atop Washington’s unpaved and often muddy streets. Given the strate- gic importance of Southwest’s wharves, one of the first three rail lines ran along here, looping from Boundary Street (now Florida Avenue, NW) to Seventh Street,then back via Fourth Street. The electric trolleys of the late s came next, and the system grew to serve the entire city.In modern buses replaced the trolleys.That year most car barns became unnecessary. O.Roy Chalk, who owned D.C.Transit (which became publicly owned Metrobus in ),tore down his car barns here to build the apartment houses that now occupy these sites: Rivers i deCondom i n iumandChannel Square.
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