River Farms to Urban Towers
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On this self-guided River Farms to walking tour of Southwest, Urban Towers historic markers lead you to: SOUTHWEST HERITAGE T RA I L – Some of Washington’s oldest houses. – The docks where the U.S. Colored Troops returned in triumph at the end of the Civil War. – The lovely St. Dominic Church, which fended off urban renewal. – A spectacular vista that memorializes Benjamin Banneker. – Fort McNair, Washington’s first military installation. – A cooperative residential complex trimmed in aluminum. – The site of Washington’s answer to the Lower East Side. From 1791 until the 1950s, Southwest Washington was the city’s largest work- ing-class, waterfront neighborhood. Then it was almost entirely leveled by urban renewal. Follow this trail to the places that recall Southwest’s first settlement, its gritty maturity, and its rebirth as a “new town in the city.” We l co m e . Visitors to Washington, DC flock to the National Mall, where grand monuments s y m bo l i ze the nati on’s highest ide a l s . This self-guided walking tour is one of a series that invites you to discover what is beyond the monuments: Washington’s historic neighborhoods. Until the 1950s, the neighborhood known as Southwest was Washington’s largest working-class, waterfront neighborhood. Then nearly all of Southwest was razed to cre a te an en ti rely new city in the nati on’s fi rst ex peri m ent in urban ren ew a l . Ex peri en ce both the old and the new Southwest in the company of the first co l onial set t l ers ; m i grants and immigra n t s ; fishmongers, domestic workers, laborers, govern m ent cl erks and con gre s s m en : a ll passen gers on the journ ey from river farms to urban towers. The Southwest Heritage Trail River Farms to Sign 1 is found atop the Waterfront/SE U Urban Towers is composed of 17 illustrated station on Metro’s Green line. Sign 6 is h i s tor ical markers . You can begin yo u r at the corner of Seventh and E streets near journey at any point along the route. The the L’Enfant Plaza station on the Blue, walk should take about 90 minutes. Each Orange, Yellow, and Green lines. marker is capped with an H★ . © 2004 by Cultural Tourism DC All rights reserved. River Farms Distributed by Cultural Tourism DC 1250 H Street, NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20005 to Urban Towers www.CulturalTourismDC.org Design by side view/Hannah Smotrich Southwest Heritage Trail As you walk this trail, please keep safety in mind, just as you would while visiting any unfamiliar place. Jane Freundel Levey Lead Historian and Writer Richard T. Busch and J.Brendan Meyer Project Directors Lisa Bentley and Anne W. Rollins Researchers A proj ect of Cu l tu ral To u r ism DC , Ka t h r yn S. Sm i t h , Executive Director, in collaboration with Southwest Neighborhood Assembly History Task Force, Margaret Feldman, Chair. Funding provided by Washington, DC Department of Housing and Community Development, District Department of Transportation, Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, and U.S. Department of Transportation. In trodu cti o n Notley and Eleanor Young tʜɪs tʀaɪʟ takes ʏou tʜʀo u ɢ ʜ one of In the 1 7 9 0 s a group of i nve s tor s led by Ja m e s Washington, DC’s oldest — and newest — neigh- Greenleaf began to build sturdy brick houses for borhoods. For 150 years Southwest Washington congressmen and government workers. Their was a working waterf ront com mu n i t y. Th en m on e y ran out before they could finish, but a u r ban ren ewal ch a n ged the landscape forever. few of their projects can still be seen today on Today Southwest is a virtual library of Modernist Fo u rth and N street s . Af ter the 1 7 9 0 s bu i l ders a r ch i tectu re of the 1 9 6 0s with a few historic constructed individual cottages or simple row structures, some of which go all the way back to houses of wood or brick. the section’s beginnings. The city’s first military post (now Fort McNair) In 1791 nearly all of today’s So ut hwest was own ed was establ i s h ed here in 1 7 9 4 on stra tegic Green l e a f ’s by No t l eyYoung, a Maryland planter whose slave s Point, where the Anacostia and Potomac rivers c u l t iva ted his nu m erous farm s . That year the meet. In 1798 the first ferries to Alexandria City federal government included this area in its plan across the Potomac encouraged settlement. Soon, for the new seat of govern m e n t . The area was however, the affluent moved on to the more fash- ri p e for devel opm en t : a level , l ow - l ying tri a n gle i on a ble Nort hwest and Ca p i tol Hi ll , and So ut hwe s t of land de fi n ed by the Po tom a c River, An aco s ti a became home mostly to dock workers, laborers, River, and Tiber Creek. The waterways were key tradesmen, and domestic workers. The waterfront to its growth in the days before ra i l roa ds and became industrial, with warehouses, coal yards, modern transportation. a r m ori e s , i ce houses, and shipya rd s . Even tu a lly wholesale markets and Washington’s auto inspec- tion station and morgue were found here. In the 1920s the wharves operated 24 hours a day, and Washingtonians in search of a late-night meal — or more disreputable pastimes — could find them in Southwest. So ut hwest was call ed “the island” because the Tiber and James creeks separated it from the rest of the city. Beginning in 1815 the City Canal ran from the Potomac River near today’s Lincoln Memorial to the foot of Capitol Hill, then took a sharp right turn to end at the Anacostia River, Oystermen tie up at the Southwest fish wharf, 1915. The Isaac Levy family of Levy’s Busy Corner, young Gene Cherrico with his grandmother Filomina, and Lewis Jefferson, Southwest’s millionaire. further isolating Southwest. The canal was paved over in the 1870s, but by then the Baltimore and Po tom a c Ra i l roa d tracks along Vi r g inia and They wanted to close streets and put up sleek Ma r yland avenues impo s ed a new barri er, as wo u l d n ew bu i l d i n gs , c re a ting com m erc i a l , c u l tu ra l , a n d the Southeast-Southwest Freeway of the 1960s. employment centers close to residences. They considered Southwest an ideal laboratory. So did Even before the Civil War (1861–1865), migrants the D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency, empow- from rural Virginia and West Virginia, European ered to tear down Southwest in order to fix it. i m m i gra n t s — e s p ec i a lly Italians and Germ a n and then Eastern Eu rop ean Jews — and bo t h In the 1 9 50s New York devel opers Webb and enslaved and free African Americans predom i n a t - Knapp put these ideas into a formal plan for a ed in So ut hwe s t . Th e waterfront community was new Southwest, the nation’s first full-scale urban a natural for the Underground Railroad, and the renewal project. Architects Harry Weese and infamous Pearl escape attempt of 1 84 8 began here . I.M. Pei envisioned a Tenth Street Mall linking During and after the war, thousands of newly the National Mall to a rebuilt waterfront and a f reed Af rican Am ericans set t l ed in So ut hwe s t , residential area serving 4,000 families of varying a t tracted to its afford a ble housing and unskilled incomes. Offices, hotels, restaurants and shops employment. would line the new mall. A major cultural and en tert a i n m ent cen ter would com p l ete the pictu re . By 1 9 0 0 So ut hwest was fully built but deteri ora ti n g. Talk of reh a bi l i t a ti on su rf aced in the 1 93 0s . But While most of the residential buildings material- by the 1 9 40s arch i tects and planners had new ized, Webb and Kn a pp never com p l eted the Ten t h i de a s . Ra t h er than ren ova ting indivi dual stru ctu re s , S treet Ma ll , and the cultu ral cen ter was bu i l t i n fl u en tial planner Ha rland Ba r t h o l o m ew i n s te ad in Foggy Bo t tom (tod ay ’s John F. Ken n edy and arch i tects Louis Ju s tem ent and Ch l oet h i el Center for the Performing Arts). Nevertheless, Woodard Smith called for razing entire blocks. the brand-new residential areas, so convenient to Published images of rundown Southwest “in the shadow of the Capitol,” top, h e l p ed instigate urban renewal projects including Capitol Park, bottom.