BGuthrie Photos: DC Heritage Trails: Top of the Town: Tenleytown Heritage Trail

DC Heritage Trails: Top of the Town: Tenleytown Heritage Trail:

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1. TRTEN_110116_04.JPG: Top of the Town Tenleytown Heritage Trail 18 Live on Our Stage! When NBC radio and television and its local affiliate, WRC, moved to these new headquarters in 1958, the average TV screen measured 12 inches. The facility opened with six studios -- three TV and three radio. Soon history happened here. On October 7, 1960, some 70 million viewers watched as NBC broadcast the second televised presidential debate, with candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy facing four reporters. It was widely reported that Nixon used makeup to cover his 5 o'clock shadow, better to compete with the tanned and telegenic young Senator Kennedy. Also in these TV studios, former University of Maryland student Jim Henson introduced a green puppet named Kermit to the world, leading to a regular show on WRC called Sam and Friends. Over the years, high school whiz kids have competed to answer Mac McGarry's questions on WRC's It's Academic. Here the much-imitated Meet the Press got its start. The radio studios launched "the Joy Boys," former American University students Ed Walker and Willard Scott, whose antics were beamed regionally and to armed forces stationed around the world.
2. TRTEN_110116_15.JPG: Top of the Town Tenleytown Heritage Trail 2 A Country Road Step back into the 19th century with a walk down Grant Road, ahead and to your left. This winding byway recalls Tenleytown's farming past. In fact Grant Road's undisturbed quality earned it National Historic District and DC Historic District designations. By the late 1800s, huge linden trees shaded modest, one-room-wide houses here. Cows, mules, horses, and chickens roamed the surrounding fields. Most families were working class, but two generations of Tenleytown physicians, John and Sidney Chappell, lived among the storekeepers, stonemasons, and policemen. General Sidney Chappell, who served as the head of psychiatry for the U.S. Army, was a friendly man whose large, elegant house was run by a white-coated butler. As one of the few roads through the farmlands, Grant Road attracted outsiders. Burrows family members still recount the regular visits to their part of Grant Road (behind you) by President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909). Roosevelt had a hunting lodge nearby and enjoyed riding through the woods. The president even treated little Edna Burrows of number 4426 to horseback rides. In earlier days, Grant Road was the southern edge of the Civil War-era Fort Reno, and became part of the "military road" linking the city's ring of forts. (Today's Military Road takes a different route.) Perhaps this was the quiet, meandering path poet (and Civil War-era Washingtonian) Walt Whitman took when he walked "on fine moonlit nights over the perfect military roads, hard and smooth."
3. TRTEN_110116_24.JPG: Top of the Town Tenleytown Heritage Trail 3 Suburban Style Until 1890 Tenleytown was a rural crossroads. Then the electric streetcar arrived, followed by the Permanent Highway Plan. Real estate men promoted new houses at the top of the town: city conveniences, country charm, and great views, with a 25-minute streetcar ride to downtown. Developers Ernest M. Pease and Colorado Senator Thomas M. Patterson snapped up the promising high ground here between the Wisconsin Avenue and Connecticut Avenue streetcar lines. In 1904 they promoted their subdivision, "Colorado Heights," to middle-income white workers, promising that homes would cost not less than $2,500. "Never again," predicted the Washington Post " will land anywhere near Connecticut Avenue be sold so cheaply as this." Despite Tenleytown's modern amenities – police and fire protection, electric lights, water and sewers – growth dragged until after World War I (1914-1918). Then the Warren brothers bought many of Senator Patterson's lots. They built three blocks of battleship gray, two-bedroom bungalows, many with front porches or sleeping porches. A walk around these blocks is a step back into the 1920s. Note the striking contrast with the upright brick Colonials that came into vogue in the 1940s. In Tenleytown the Permanent Highway Plan took its cues from real estate developers, who had laid a grid over the old picturesque, curving streets. Years of changes to the area have erased portions of Grant Road and other country lanes, and the plan renamed others. The introduction of Nebraska Avenue (1930s) and Brandywine Street (1950s) led to the demolition of the old Nebraska Market, once situated behind you at Brandywine Street and Grant Road.
4. TRTEN_110116_32.JPG: Top of the Town Tenleytown Heritage Trail 4 Three R's The red-brick School ahead and to your left is Alice Deal Junior High, honoring the mathematics teacher and union leader who launched Washington's first junior high school in 1919 at Seventh and O Streets, NW. Architect Albert Harris's Colonial design for Deal Junior High represented the finest in modern school construction. From its opening in 1931, Deal's student body included diplomatic children, giving it an international flavor typical of Washington. On a remnant of old Howard Road behind Alice Deal is the Jesse Reno School, designed by municipal architect Snowden Ashford and opened nearly 30 years before Deal to serve the neighborhood's African American children. Before Reno opened, they had walked either to a "colored" school at the site of today's Murch Elementary or to one on Foxhall Road. Reno School served 160 elementary pupils, and offered adult education at night. But between 1928 and the early 1950s, the city razed Reno City, home to most of Tenleytown's African American families, in order to create a water reservoir, Fort Reno Park, and school campuses. As a result, the "colored" school lost its students and closed. The building survives, however, along with a few fire hydrants amid the lawns of Fort Reno Park and some houses in the 4800 block of 41st Street, as the only visible reminders of Reno City. Woodrow Wilson High School, across Nebraska Avenue opened in 1935, honoring our intellectual 28th president, a past president of Princeton University, and the only U.S. president to have earned a PhD. Princeton's "tiger" came, too, to serve as Wilson's athletic mascot. A community swimming pool, long promised to the citizens of Tenleytown, was added in 1978 and rebuilt in 2008.
5. TRTEN_110116_40.JPG: Some notable Wilson High School grads, DC Councilmember Kwame Brown ‘89 and Radio One's Alfred Liggins ‘83 did not sit for a senior picture. Olympic Rower: Aquil Adbdula ‘91; DC Councilmember: Yvette Alexander ‘79; Investor: Warren Buffett ‘47; Developer: Oliver Car ‘43; PEPCO CEO: John Derrick ‘57; Arena Stage's Zelda: Diamond Fichander ‘41; DC Council Chair: John Hechinger ‘37; efferson Airplane's: Jorma Kaukonen ‘59; Broadcaster: Melvin Lindsay ‘73; Broadcaster: Derek McGinty ‘77; DC Councilmember: Harry Thomas ‘78; Virginia Senator: John Warner ‘45
6. TRTEN_110116_44.JPG: Top of the Town Tenleytown Heritage Trail 5 Fort Reno To your right is "Point Reno" the highest point in Washington -- 409 feet above sea level, to be exact. This unsurpassed vantage brought the Civil War (1861-1865) to Tenleytown. After the Union defeat at Bull Run in July 1861, northern troops took the Dyer farm here to establish Fort Pennsylvania. Soldiers cleared the farmhouse, orchards fields and, as neighbor Ann Forrest Green noted with alarm, "every particle of poultry." The fort, renamed in 1863 to honor Major General Jesse Lee Reno, was one of 68 built to protect the city. In the summer of 1864 Confederate forces knew it was one of the city's strongest defenses, with long-range cannons and a signal tower visible for miles. On the morning of July 11, 1864, President Lincoln visited Fort Reno. Later that day, lookouts spied the dust of Confederate troops advancing from the north. Some headed this way on Rockville Road (Wisconsin Avenue), but most took the Seventh Street Road (Georgia Avenue), homing in on the apparently weaker Fort Stevens, three miles to the northeast. Luckily, the broiling heat delayed Confederate General Jubal Early's attack. giving defenders time to reinforce Fort Stevens. Fort Reno cavalry meanwhile engaged the advancing enemy only a few block north of here, with both sides suffering casualties. The fort's cannons shelled the enemy nearly four miles away. Early's forces lost the ensuing Battle of Fort Stevens, the only Civil War engagement fought in the District of Columbia. Some 30 years later the city erased any remnants of the fort when it constructed an underground water reservoir. The reservoir's red-brick tower -- actually a water tank -- became a tenleytown landmark visible from Virginia.
7. TRTEN_110116_52.JPG: Top of the Town Tenleytown Heritage Trail 6 Reno City Before the Civil War (1861-65), the land behind you was part of the 72-acre farm of Giles Dyer. As a Southerner, Dyer depended on enslaved people to work his fields. Because of its elevation, Dyers land was taken by the Union Army in 1861 for a fort and observation post. After the war, the Dyer family recovered the property, then sold it to developers. Soon "Reno City" lots sold for $25 with a $5 down payment. Frederick "Fritz" Bangerter, a young Swiss immigrant, bought several lots to establish a dairy farm, raise a family, and build houses to rent. African Americans who had sought safety and work at Fort Reno during the Civil War also bought lots or rented Reno City houses, as did other white and black families. Many worked nearby as laborers and domestics. By 1900 Reno City was 75 percent African American with three black churches, a black Masonic lodge, and a black school among its 100 buildings. Generally black and white families lived side by side. In 1902 the U.S. Senate Park Commission suggested preserving the city's historic ring of Civil War forts, including Reno, as parks. The plan was shelved, but as land around Reno filled in with new housing for whites, federal planners again eyed Reno City as a good spot to create a park, schools, and reservoirs. Doing so would also satisfy those desiring to remove the aging, racially mixed enclave. Thus, between 1928 and the early 1950s, the federal government bought or condemned Reno City houses and razed them, dispersing the 80-year-old community and its businesses and institutions.
8. TRTEN_110116_59.JPG: Top of the Town Tenleytown Heritage Trail 1 Beer, Popcorn, and Penny Candy Suburban shopping arrived in Tenleytown when Sears, Roebuck & Co. erected a Moderne style store here in 1941. The sleek fa�ade demonstrated the latest in department store design. Sears was the second Tenleytown business -- after Giant Food -- to offer rooftop parking. The aromas of popcorn, half smokes, and doughnuts led customers to Sears' entrance/penthouse snack bar. Attracting shoppers from the city and nearby Maryland, Sears ushered in Tenleytown's modern commercial era. Sears replaced the three-story former Tenleytown Inn, which, beginning in the mid-1800s, was a stopping point for farmers and merchants traveling on the Georgetown-Frederick (Maryland) Pike. When William Achterkirchen ran the inn for owner Christian Heurich in the early 1900s, Tenleytowners arrived with their growlers -- tin buckets with lids -- to carry out the inn's popular brew. By 1918 innkeeper Howard Crandall had adapted the inn for his Hilltop Service Station, Tenleytown's first gas station. While Tenleytown celebrated the arrival of Metrorail in 1984, it came at a cost. The east station entrance replaced the Burrows-Mostow building, built in 1900 as commercial space with an apartment upstairs. It also replaced Joe's Variety Shop. Generations of Tenleytown children had flocked to Joe Gould's narrow store, packed floor to ceiling with toys, games, penny candy, and school supplies. The William R. Singleton Masonic Lodge has occupied 4431 Wisconsin Avenue since 1909. Its members follow Freemasonry, an ancient fraternal organization rooted in the building trades and dedicated to good works and fellowship.
9. TRTEN_110116_68.JPG: Top of the Town Tenleytown Heritage Trail 14 On the Circle In the 1930s city engineers created Tenley Circle where commuters heading cross-town or downtown changed streetcars. Across the street and to the left of Tenley Circle, a surviving strip of historic Grant Road meets Wisconsin Avenue. In the 1890s, the two-story, stucco structure on that corner was John and Rebecca O'Day's feed store, stocking everything from hay to kerosene for area farmers. After 1915 it became "Doc" Scholl's pharmacy, a popular spot for soldiers training nearby at Camp American University during World War I. When "Doc" Gauley took over during the roaring '20s, the "Tenleytown Special" sundae was a soda fountain favorite. Since the 1940s restaurants on this spot have served everything from corned beef to cannolis. The stucco building remains the oldest commercial building still standing in Tenleytown. Directly across the circle is Wisconsin Avenue Baptist Church. Founded as Mount Tabor Baptist Church in 1880, it first occupied land donated by parishioner Mary Burrows at 4620 Wisconsin Avenue. When the city widened the avenue in 1924, nearly erasing its lot, the church moved. This building is its third home. The handsome stone structure on the rise behind you was the Seminary of Our Lady Immaculate, established in 1905 by the Sisters of Providence. Immaculata offered a first-rate education to a "select" female student body. After 80 years, as girls increasingly rejected religious single-sex education, the sisters announced the school's closing. Immaculata sold this campus to nearby American University in 1987.
10. TRTEN_110116_75.JPG: Top of the Town Tenleytown Heritage Trail 16 Winning the War The U.S. Navy arrived at 3801 Nebraska Avenue during World War II, taking the Colonial style red-brick campus of Mount Vernon Seminary for secret "essential wartime activities." Soon more than 5,000 workers occupied the campus. Among them were WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) responding to President Roosevelt's call for women to tackle non-combat duties. Most WAVES at this site operated cryptoanalytic equipment designed to break German and Japanese communications codes. Discussing the top-secret work with outsiders was considered an act of treason, so WAVE Elizabeth Butler could only write her family that her work was "very secret, one of the most in the Navy." Jennifer Wilcox later said that "Breaking the Japanese code was our finest hour." Meanwhile Mount Vernon Seminary held classes nearby at Garfinckel's department store on Massachusetts Avenue, and students boarded with local families. After the war ended, the Navy retained the facility, so the seminary moved to Foxhall Road. In 1999 it became a campus of George Washington University. Before the seminary arrived in 1917, this was Nathan Loughborough's 250-acre estate, Grassland. In 1820 Loughborough, then comptroller of the U.S. Treasury, brought a lawsuit arguing "no taxation without representation." Like most of his neighbors of means, Loughborough owned slaves. Thus it is ironic that in 1946, Georgetown Day School, the first consciously integrated private school in Washington, rented Grassland for its second location. The Grassland house was razed for NBC's studios in 1956.
11. TRTEN_110116_77.JPG: Top of the Town Tenleytown Heritage Trail 15 For the Children From 1927 until the late 1950s, the landscaped grounds across the street were the Hillcrest Children's Center. It was founded downtown in 1814 as the Washington City Orphan Asylum by Marcia Burnes Van Ness and President Madison's wife Dolley. The center's Tudor style stone cottages created a village environment. In the 1960s changing social conditions led Hillcrest to move back downtown, this time in service to disabled children and their families. The National Presbyterian Church and School, which occupy Hillcrest's former site, trace their origins to four in-town congregations. One of these dates from 1795, when stone masons working at the White House gathered for services there in a carpenters' shed. Most presidents since James Madison -- and notables including Queen Elizabeth and Mother Teresa -- have worshipped with the congregation. President Lyndon Johnson's message for National Presbyterian's 1966 groundbreaking praised the church for forging "bonds which draw us together and which crumble the barriers that stand between us." In 1970 Duke Ellington told a reporter that he performed here to "praise God with music" and to raise money for the church's Eisenhower Memorial Arts Fund to foster harmony between religion and the arts. Along with its soaring carillon tower, the church boasts a main sanctuary that seats 1,260, and dramatic walks and gardens. It is the third largest religious center in Washington, after the Washington Cathedral and the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. It was designated the national church for its denomination in 1947.
12. TRTEN_110116_85.JPG: Top of the Town Tenleytown Heritage Trail 17 American University Beyond Ward Circle to your left is the campus of American University, chartered by Congress in 1893. Methodist Bishop John Fletcher Hurst guided the university's development as a center for training future public servants. With its schools in business, law, public affairs, communications, and more, the modern university continues Hurst's wide-ranging vision. American University's ties to the nation's capital are not just geographic. During both world wars, the U.S. military used the campus as training grounds, with soldiers and sailors adding new energy to daily life in Tenleytown. And President John F. Kennedy chose his American University commencement speech in 1963 as the moment to call on the Soviet Union to craft a historic nuclear test ban treaty. American University occupies grounds once owned by Tenleytown's largest landowners, the descendants of the Addison-Murdock families. In the early 1800s, John Murdock's hospitality attracted distinguished guests -- including George Washington -- to his country estate, "Friendship." During the Civil War (1861–1865), Murdock's tract, incorporating today's Ward Circle and Katzen Arts Center, became Fort Gaines, headquarters of the dashing French Algerian "Zouaves." When Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary dined with Colonel de Troibriand on the camp's French cuisine, Lincoln declared it "the best meal he had had in Washington," and announced, "if their men could fight as well as they could cook, the regiment would do very well indeed."
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2011 photos: Trips this year: Civil War Trust conferences (Savannah, GA, Chattanooga, TN), New Jersey over Memorial Day for my birthday (people never seem to visit New Jersey -- it's always just a pit stop on the way to New York. I thought I might as well spend a few days there. Despite some nice places, it still ended up a pit stop for me -- New York City was infinitely more interesting), my 6th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco). Ego strokes: Author photos that I took were used on two book jackets this year: Jason Emerson's book "The Dark Days of Abraham Lincoln's Widow As Revealed by Her Own Letters" and Dennis L. Noble's "The U.S. Coast Guard's War on Human Smuggling." I also had a photo of Jason Stelter published in the Washington Examiner and a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. Equipment this year: I mostly used the Fuji S100fs camera as well as two Nikon models -- the D90 and the new D7000. Mostly a toy, I also purchased a Fuji Real 3-D W3 camera, to try out 3-D photographs. I found it interesting although I don't see any real use for 3-D stills now. Given that many of the photos from the 1860s were in 3-D (including some of the more famous Civil War shots), it's odd to see it coming back. Number of photos taken this year: just over 390,000.
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