Architect Lewis Giles, Sr., and craftsman Randolph Dodd designed and built the first two houses from the right (5007 and 5011 Lee St.), photographed in 1950.
An auto race at Benning Racetrack.
Wes Ponder Postcard Collection
An auto race at Benning Racetrack.
In 1921 the train—and by then the streetcar— brought Washingtonians from all over to Subur- ban Gardens, the city’s first and only amusement park. The park served African American families excluded from such segregated facilities as Glen Echo in suburban Maryland. For nearly two decades, patrons thrilled to the roller coaster and the strains of Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway in the popular dance pavilion. Then, as the specter of World War II brought thousands of newcomers to work in the rapidly expanding federal government, the amusement park closed. Housing and a school rose on its site. A few years earlier, garden apart- ments had filled the racetrack site. Just inside the front gate of Suburban Gardens around 1935.
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