DC Heritage Trails: A Fitting Tribute: Logan Circle Heritage Trail:
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- TRLOG_141105_01.JPG: Mary McLeod Bethune, seated center, works alongside staffers of the National Council for Negro Women preparing a mailing at Council House, 1947.
- TRLOG_141105_05.JPG: A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
11 Striving for Equality
This building was the headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women from 1943 to 1966. Political activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) founded NCNW in 1935 in her nearby apartment. She moved the organization here eight years later. The building, a National Historic Site, now houses a museum and archive of African American women's history. During the tenure of Dorothy Height, the Council's fourth president (1957-1998), NCNW moved to Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.
Trained as a teacher, Bethune founded a school for African American girls in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1904. (It eventually became Bethune-Cookman University.) Her advocacy work on behalf of women and children brought her national attention in the 1920s and led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to name her to the National Youth Administration in 1936. As a member of FDR's "Black Cabinet" -- prominent African Americans who helped ensure equal access to New Deal jobs, training, and economic assistance -- Bethune promoted black federal employment. During World War II she successfully lobbied President Roosevelt to allow African Americans into the Women's Army Corps. And under her leadership the NCNW led blood drives and sold bonds to demonstrate support for U.S. war efforts.
Ironically, from 1908 until 2005, Confederate Memorial Hall including a veterans' retirement home, operated quietly in 1322 Vermont Avenue, two doors down from the NCNW.
The unusually small house at 1341 Vermont Avenue predates the development of Logan Circle. Such modest structures dotted the landscape before Boss Shepherd's modernizations of the 1970s, which promoted construction of large, fashionable rowhouses.
- TRLOG_141105_10.JPG: A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
11 Striving for Equality
This building was the headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women from 1943 to 1966. Political activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) founded NCNW in 1935 in her nearby apartment. She moved the organization here eight years later. The building, a National Historic Site, now houses a museum and archive of African American women's history. During the tenure of Dorothy Height, the Council's fourth president (1957-1998), NCNW moved to Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.
Trained as a teacher, Bethune founded a school for African American girls in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1904. (It eventually became Bethune-Cookman University.) Her advocacy work on behalf of women and children brought her national attention in the 1920s and led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to name her to the National Youth Administration in 1936. As a member of FDR's "Black Cabinet" -- prominent African Americans who helped ensure equal access to New Deal jobs, training, and economic assistance -- Bethune promoted black federal employment. During World War II she successfully lobbied President Roosevelt to allow African Americans into the Women's Army Corps. And under her leadership the NCNW led blood drives and sold bonds to demonstrate support for U.S. war efforts.
Ironically, from 1908 until 2005, Confederate Memorial Hall including a veterans' retirement home, operated quietly in 1322 Vermont Avenue, two doors down from the NCNW.
The unusually small house at 1341 Vermont Avenue predates the development of Logan Circle. Such modest structures dotted the landscape before Boss Shepherd's modernizations of the 1970s, which promoted construction of large, fashionable rowhouses.
- TRLOG_141105_13.JPG: A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
The Logan Circle Neighborhood began with city boosters' dreams of greatness. The troops, cattle pens, and hubbub of the Civil War (1861-1865) had nearly ruined Washington, and when the fighting ended, Congress threatened to move the nation's capital elsewhere. So city leaders raced to repair and modernize the city. As paved streets, waster and gas lines, street lights, and sewers reached undeveloped areas, wealthy whites followed. Mansions soon sprang up around an elegant park where Vermont and Rhode Island Avenues met. The circle was named Iowa Circle, thanks to Iowa Senator William Boyd Allison. In 1901 a statue of Civil War General (and later Senator) John A. Logan, a founder of Memorial Day, replaced the park's central fountain. The circle took his name in 1930. The title of this Heritage Trail comes from General Logan's argument that Memorial Day would serve as "a fitting tribute to the memory of [the nation's] slain defenders."
As the city grew beyond Logan Circle, affluent African Americans gradually replaced whites here. Most of them moved on during World War II, and their mansions were divided into rooming houses to meet a wartime housing shortage. By the 1960s, with suburban Maryland and Virginia drawing investment, much of the neighborhood had decayed. When civil disturbances erupted after the 1968 assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it hit bottom. Ten years later, however, long-time residents, newcomers, and new city programs spurred revival. A Fitting Tribute: Logan Circle Heritage Trail takes you through the neighborhood's lofty and low times to introduce the array of individuals who shaped its modern vitality.
- TRLOG_141105_19.JPG: The Logan Circle Neighborhood began with city boosters' dreams of greatness. The troops, cattle pens, and hubbub of the Civil War (1861-1865) had nearly ruined Washington, and when the fighting ended, Congress threatened to move the nation's capital elsewhere. So city leaders raced to repair and modernize the city. As paved streets, waster and gas lines, street lights, and sewers reached undeveloped areas, wealthy whites followed. Mansions soon sprang up around an elegant park where Vermont and Rhode Island Avenues met. The circle was named Iowa Circle, thanks to Iowa Senator William Boyd Allison. In 1901 a statue of Civil War General (and later Senator) John A. Logan, a founder of Memorial Day, replaced the park's central fountain. The circle took his name in 1930. The title of this Heritage Trail comes from General Logan's argument that Memorial Day would serve as "a fitting tribute to the memory of [the nation's] slain defenders."
As the city grew beyond Logan Circle, affluent African Americans gradually replaced whites here. Most of them moved on during World War II, and their mansions were divided into rooming houses to meet a wartime housing shortage. By the 1960s, with suburban Maryland and Virginia drawing investment, much of the neighborhood had decayed. When civil disturbances erupted after the 1968 assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it hit bottom. Ten years later, however, long-time residents, newcomers, and new city programs spurred revival. A Fitting Tribute: Logan Circle Heritage Trail takes you through the neighborhood's lofty and low times to introduce the array of individuals who shaped its modern vitality.
- TRLOG_141105_24.JPG: A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
10 The Artistic Life
The Imposing Double House to Your Left, numbers 1 and 2, was built as an investment for Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., son of the 18th president. The house would later serve as the Venezuelan Legation and then a Seventh-Day Adventist nursing home.
Henry M. Letcher and his wife Evelyn purchased 1-2 Logan Circle. Henry, an artist, designer, educator, and decorated veteran of the Tuskegee Airmen, and Evelyn, a teacher opened Letcher Art Center. After receiving accreditation from the Veterans Administration, the center taught commercial art, sign painting, silk screening, and architectural drafting to returning World War II veterans. Henry brought his first cousin and best friend Duke Ellington to visit and be photographed among the students. The School, recalled his son Henry, Jr. enabled scores of service men to become "peace-time earners and family men" despite segregation.
After Letcher's death in 1967, Henry Jr., a musician, took over the mansion, populating it with fellow musicians and artists, among them musician/poet Gil Scott-Heron. The younger Letcher's band Jambo performed locally in the early 1970s and attracted audiences with jazz-inflected R&B accompanied by psychedelic light shows. In 1972, when the neighborhood "became too rough," as Henry Jr. recalled, his mother sold the house. In 1998 it was converted to condominiums.
One block east of this sign is 1316 Rhode Island Avenue, an example of the 1970s wave of rehabilitation in Logan Circle. Architect Robert B. Gordon and his wife Doll purchased the shell of 1316 in 1979. Gordon designed a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired interior within the Victorian exterior of the 1885 red-brick exterior rowhouse.
- TRLOG_141105_33.JPG: Henry M. Letcher, Jr., center, poses with bandmates on the roof of their home/studio, 1-2 Logan Circle.
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