On this self-guided walking Hub, Home, tour of Greater H Street, historical markers lead you to: Heart – Swampoodle, whose residents helped build the Capitol GREATER H STREET NE and the White House. HERITAGE TRAIL – The route British forces marched on their way to burn the Capitol and White House. – Gallaudet University, recognized as the center of American Deaf Culture. – Trinidad rowhouses, built on a former brickyard and baseball field. – The small brick storefronts where hundreds of immigrant families got their toe-hold in Washington. – Union Terminal Market, purveyor to the city. – The arena where the Beatles performed their first U.S. concert and Malcolm X spoke. – The performing arts center that is spurring the neighborhood’s most recent renewal. A bustling, working-class neighborhood grew up here alongside the railroad and streetcar. Mom-and-pop businesses served all comers in the city’s leading African American shopping district. Discover how, even aἀer the devastating 1968 civil disturbances, the strong community prevailed to witness H Street’s 21st-century revival. Welcome. In 2005 the Atlas Performing Arts Center opened in a renovated Atlas movie theater. Restaurants and clubs followed, and a new chapter began for the long-neglected H Street, NE, commercial corridor. What stories do these old brick storefronts hold? Follow Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street, NE Heritage Trail to meet the entrepreneurial families who lived and ran businesses here. Along the way, learn how the neighborhood became an important transportation hub and a bustling, working-class community. This eepsakek guide summarizes the 18 signs of the city’s 13th Official Walking Tour. Tom Collins, left, grandfather of local TV personality Pat Collins, was an engineer for the Capitol Limited train that ran between Washington and Chicago. Collection of Pat Collins © 2011, Cultural Tourism DC All rights reserved. Distributed by Cultural Tourism DC Hub, Home, Heart 1250 H Street, NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 2000 5 www.CulturalTourismDC.org Greater H Street NE The following Cultural Tourism DC staff embersm contributed to the production of Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail: Heritage Trail Kyle Rahn, Director of Development Helen Gineris, Events Associate Elizabeth Goldberg, Development Associate Pamela Jafari, Membership Manager Sarah Shoenfeld Leslie Kershaw, Communications Associate – New Media Lead Historian Jessica Marlatt, Communications Associate – Media and Publication Leon Seemann, Deputy Director Jane Freundel Levey Pat Wheeler, Director of Marketing Editor and Historian Map by Larry Bowring, Bowring Cartographic. Mara Cherkasky Writer and Historian As you walk this trail, please keep safety in mind, just as you would Sarah Fairbrother while visiting any unfamiliar place. Project Director Maggie Downing and Carmen Harris Project Assistants Cortney Kreer Graphic Designer A project of Cultural Tourism DC, Linda Donavan Harper, Executive Director, in collaboration with the H Street, NE, Heritage Trail Working Group, Joseph A. Englert, Marqui Lyons, and Anwar Saleem, Co-chairs. Funding provided by the District Department of Transportation, Events DC, and U.S. Department of Transportation. On the cover: H Street rowhouse, acrylic, by Brett Busang, 2011. Introduction The Washington Post Washington The The array of railroad lines “united” at Union Station can be seen on the arrival board, 1948. The Near No rthea st H STREET neighbor- helped build the Capitol and the White House. hood is a child of early Washington’s largest trans- The settlement was known as Swampoodle, portation hubs. The railroads, streetcars, and thanks to the unruly Tiber Creek and its marshes, major roads brought industrial and distribution located between what are now North Capitol and facilities to the area, while working-class families, First Streets, NE. Later Swampoodle residents attracted by federal building projects and factory included Italian immigrant stone carvers and jobs, created a community. masons whose hands crafted the Library of Con- gress, Union Station, and the National Cathedral. Planners of the Nation’s Capital chose Maryland family MacKaye the of Collection Avenue as a primary link between the Capitol and Boundary Street (today’s Florida Avenue). At Boundary Street it joined an old farm road lead- ing to Bladensburg, Maryland. During the War of 1812, British forces traveled this route on their mission to burn the seat of U.S. government. Two decades later, the B&O Railroad laid tracks from Baltimore along I Street, NE, to a terminal near the Capitol. A settlement north of the Capi- tol provided many of the laborers — mostly Irish Photographed around 1915 were Annie O’Neill Garner, immigrants and free African Americans who had daughter of Irish immigrants, with husband George and their nine children, all of 9 K St., NW, in Swampoodle. Star Collection, DC Public Library; © Washington Post Library;Star Collection, DC Public © Washington National Archives Gallaudet University was founded in 1856 on land donated by former U.S. Postmaster General Amos Kendall. Truck farmers’ stands in the shed at Union Terminal Market, 1940s. During the mid-1800s enduring institutions such Union Terminal Market near the railroad became as St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church, Gonzaga the city’s largest food wholesaler and farmers’ mar- College High School, the Little Sisters of the Poor’s ket in 1931, when Center Market closed downtown Home for the Aged, and the Columbia Institution to make way for the Federal Triangle. A Dutch for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (later immigrant named Uline opened an ice business Gallaudet University) opened north and east of nearby and later built Uline Arena to present ice the Capitol to serve the community. hockey, basketball, and other public events. In 1871 a horse-drawn streetcar line opened along By the 1930s H Street bustled with shops, restau- H Street, running to and from downtown. New rants, and professional offices run by Jewish, Ital- housing and commercial buildings soon followed. ian, Lebanese, Greek, Irish, and African American families. Many of them lived nearby or above their Union Station’s arrival in the early 1900s displaced stores. Most businesses served all customers — many Swampoodle dwellings, and led to an unlike those in downtown DC where African expanded commercial/industrial corridor. With Americans met discrimination. more jobs but less housing, families found shelter ayo to the east along H Street, where brick rowhouses, nd Su dy Ju stores and churches replaced farms, a brickyard, a f o n io t Dr. Granville Moore, seen c e brewery, and a ballpark. l l o with his children Judith C and Granville, Jr., in 1952, treated patients on H St. for more than 50 years. Historical Society of Washington, D.C. SocietyHistorical of Washington, A 1949 view of the intersection of Eighth and H Sts. looking east with the Northeast Savings Bank at left. Another new streetcar line soon ferried workers south along Eighth Street to the Navy Yard, long Society Washington Jewish Historical of Greater Washington’s biggest industrial employer. Two Among the small large banks opened at the streetcar transfer point Jewish H St. businesses of the 1920s was the of H and Eighth Streets, lending an air of dignity Love family’s Reliable and permanence to the neighborhood. Shoe Store. Collection of E.B. Henderson III Collection of E.B. The Washington Post Washington The E.B. Henderson, seen here with students in 1947, forced The intersection of Eighth and H Sts., four days after the Uline Arena to desegregate a year later. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, with the gutted Kay Jewelers on the right. Stonecarvers working on the Library of Johnson-Photography, © 1994 Jason Miccolo Congress, 1894. Library of Congress Courtesy, Radio One Radio Courtesy, WOL owner Cathy Hughes on the air in the station’s H St. studio, 1994. H Street’s theaters and nightclubs were an excep- moved away for good. The Atlas Theater held on tion, though. The Atlas movie house opened in for a few years, then closed. Although the H 1938 for whites only. African Americans traveled Street commercial corridor declined for decades, elsewhere for movies until the Plymouth opened in its heart — the surrounding, long-standing resi- 1943 a few doors from the Atlas. The popular Club dential community — remained strong. Kavakos served only whites, and until 1948 Uline Arena admitted black audiences only for certain The 21st century has brought big changes as events. Finally, in 1953 the Supreme Court out- Greater H Street follows the city’s trend toward lawed segregation in DC’s public accommodations. greater racial and economic diversity. In addition the opening of the Atlas Performing Arts Center One consequence of the decision, and the end of in the old Atlas movie theater has signaled a legal school segregation the following year, was an revival, building evocatively on H Street’s strong increase in racial change. This shift adh started in past. Hub, Home, Heart is a bridge to carry you the 1940s as the children of H Street’s European from that past to the present. immigrants reached adulthood and moved on. Churches found new congregations, and the city switched public schools into the “colored division” to accommodate the increasing black population. By the end of the 1950s, with “white flight” in full gear, Greater H Street was almost completely Afri- Atlas Performing Arts Center can American. The business community continued to cater to its neighbors and to commuters. Then in April 1968 the assassination of the Rever- end Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., provoked civil dis- turbances across the city. More than 100 H Street In 2005 workers pause while pouring concrete for the Lang Theatre, businesses were destroyed completely, and others one of four in the new Atlas Performing Arts Center. All Aboard! 1 FIRST STREET AND MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE NE When it o pened in 1 907, Union Station was the world’s largest railroad terminal.