DC Heritage Trails: Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street NE 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:
- TRHHH_150701_01.JPG: Hub, Home, Heart
Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail
6 The Iceman's Arena
Uline Arena was built in 1941 by ice maker Mike Uline to present ice skating, hocky, basketball, and tennis. The Dutch immigrant, originally named Migiel Uihlein, had made a fortune patenting ice production equipment and selling ice from his plant next door. For years Washingtonians rode the streetcar here for sports, worship services, concerts, and cook-offs. Judge Kaye K. Christian recalled that during the 1950s and '60s her mother Alice Stewart Christian won the Afro-American Newspapers' cooking competition three times at Uline.
Arnold "Red" Auerbach began his professional career coaching the Washington Capitols at Uline Arena. He was hired in 1946, after having coached area high school basketball teams. Auerbach later coached the Boston Celtics to nine NBA titles.
Mike Uline segregated his audiences. African Americans could attend boxing and wrestling, but not supposedly higher-class attractions: ice hockey, the Ice Capades, and basketball. In response E.B. Henderson, a Harvard-trained health and physical education specialist and civil rights leader, protested Uline's policy. As audiences dwindled, Uline buckled to the economic pressure. In 1948 he opened the facility to all.
In 1959 Uline's estate sold the arena. The renamed Washington Coliseum soon presented the Bolshoi Ballet. In 1964, days after appearing on "The Ed Sullivan Show," the Beatles played their first live U.S. concert here. Bob Dylan, the Motown Review, Chuck Brown, and Rare Essence also performed here.
In May 1971 the Coliseum became a holding cell for many of the 12,000 protesters arrested demonstrations against the Vietnam War. Live concerts ended in 1986. For years after, the arena stored trash. As of 2012 it awaited redevelopment.
- TRHHH_150701_14.JPG: Some of the 2,000 Nation of Islam members attending a Savior's Day celebration there, 1975.
- TRHHH_150701_16.JPG: E.B. Henderson, seen with students in 1947, used these signs to picket during the successful battle to desegregate Uline Arena.
- TRHHH_150701_19.JPG: Uline Arena owner Mike Uline, center, and Washington Capitols Coach Red Auerbach, left, discuss an airline travel contract for the new basketball team, 1946.
- TRHHH_150701_23.JPG: Mary Wells led the bill at a 1979 concert at the Washington Coliseum
- TRHHH_150701_29.JPG: The Beatles play in the snow outside the Coliseum before performing their first U.S. concert, 1964.
- TRHHH_150701_32.JPG: Hub, Home, Heart
Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail
Trains and streetcars created the Near Northeast neighborhood around H Street. The B&O Railroad's arrival in 1835 made this a center of energetic, working-class life. Workmen living north of the Capitol staffed the Government Printing Office, ran the trains, stocked the warehouses, and built Union Station. When a streetcar arrived linking H Street to downtown, new construction quickly followed.
H Street bustled with shops and offices run by Jewish, Italian, Lebanese, Greek, Irish, and African American families. During the segregation era, which lasted into the 1950s, African Americans came to H Street for its department stores and sit-down restaurants. Most businesses welcomed all customers.
Then came the civil disturbances in the wake of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in 1968. Decades of commercial decline followed. Just off H Street, though, the strong residential community endured. The 2005 opening of the Atlas Performing Arts Center signaled a revival, building evocatively on H Street's past. Hub, Home, Heart is a bridge to carry you from that past to the present.
Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided, 3.2-mile tour of 18 signs offers about two hours of gentle exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English or Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
- TRHHH_150912_01.JPG: Hub, Home, Heart
Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail
Trains and streetcars created the Near Northeast neighborhood around H Street. The B&O Railroad's arrival in 1835 made this a center of energetic, working-class life. Workmen living north of the Capitol staffed the Government Printing Office, ran the trains, stocked the warehouses, and built Union Station. When a streetcar arrived linking H Street to downtown, new construction quickly followed.
H Street bustled with shops and offices run by Jewish, Italian, Lebanese, Greek, Irish, and African American families. During the segregation era, which lasted into the 1950s, African Americans came to H Street for its department stores and sit-down restaurants. Most businesses welcomed all customers.
Then came the civil disturbances in the wake of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in 1968. Decades of commercial decline followed. Just off H Street, though, the strong residential community endured. The 2005 opening of the Atlas Performing Arts Center signaled a revival, building evocatively on H Street's past. Hub, Home, Heart is a bridge to carry you from that past to the present.
Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided, 3.2-mile tour of 18 signs offers about two hours of gentle exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English or Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
- TRHHH_150912_07.JPG: Smoke rises from the still-burning 1200 block of H St. the day after the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in 1968.
- TRHHH_150912_11.JPG: The Fires of 1968
Hub, Home, Heart
-- Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail --
On Friday, April 5, 1968 the 600 block of H Street went up in flames. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been assassinated a day earlier, and grief-stricken, angry men and women had taken to the streets across the city. Some took part in looting and burning.
Helen Wooden Wood remembered watching from her home on Linden Place as flames spread. "It was horrible. You could feel the heat and couldn't open the windows for the smoke." According to a fireman, the alley behind Morton's Department Store became "a freeway for looters" carrying "television sets, clothes, everything." Yet other people supported the firefighters, bringing them chairs and coffee.
When Morton's first opened downtown in 1933, it was among the few white-owned department stores that did not discriminate in hiring or sales. In fact owner Mortimer Lebowitz was a former Urban League president who had marched with Dr. King. Nevertheless, looters ransacked and torched his store here. The destruction, Lebowitz told a reporter later, "was nothing against me personally."
"The riots did not happen in a vacuum," recalled Sam Smith of the Capitol East Gazette. In 1968, "24 percent of the [area's] labor force was unemployed or underemployed." After the smoke cleared, 90 buildings in Greater H Street, containing 51 residences and 103 businesses, were gone. Most stores that weren't destroyed closed, never to reopen.
While the city cleared land for sale, it didn't pay to repair existing businesses or develop new ones. In 1984 the H Street Community Development Corporation formed to attract investment for development. The corporation and other nonprofits built housing and commercial buildings but H Street suffered from relentless suburban competition. It took the rehabilitation of the Atlas Theater, which started in 2002, investments in nightlife, and a new appreciation for the charms of the neighborhood's close-in, 19th-century buildings for H Street's revival to take hold.
- TRHHH_150912_15.JPG: A soldier walks through the intersection of Eighth and H Sts., with the gutted Kay Jewelers on the right.
- TRHHH_150912_21.JPG: Opening the new quarters for the nonprofit Hospitality Community Federal Credit Union at 1114 H St. in 1974, the corridor's first new building since 1968.
- TRHHH_150912_27.JPG: Hub, Home, Heart
Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail
Trains and streetcars created the Near Northeast neighborhood around H Street. The B&O Railroad's arrival in 1835 made this a center of energetic, working-class life. Workmen living north of the Capitol staffed the Government Printing Office, ran the trains, stocked the warehouses, and built Union Station. When a streetcar arrived linking H Street to downtown, new construction quickly followed.
H Street bustled with shops and offices run by Jewish, Italian, Lebanese, Greek, Irish, and African American families. During the segregation era, which lasted into the 1950s, African Americans came to H Street for its department stores and sit-down restaurants. Most businesses welcomed all customers.
Then came the civil disturbances in the wake of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in 1968. Decades of commercial decline followed. Just off H Street, though, the strong residential community endured. The 2005 opening of the Atlas Performing Arts Center signaled a revival, building evocatively on H Street's past. Hub, Home, Heart is a bridge to carry you from that past to the present.
Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided, 3.2-mile tour of 18 signs offers about two hours of gentle exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English or Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
- TRHHH_150912_36.JPG: At the Crossroads
Hub, Home, Heart
-- Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail --
One year before Congress and the President arrived in their new capital city in 1800, Washington's Navy Yard opened at the foot of Eighth Street, two miles south of this sign. The yard soon became the city's biggest employer. In 1908 streetcars began connecting H Street to the Navy Yard via Eighth Street, allowing workers to commute. As the transfer point between the Eighth Street line and the H Street line to downtown, this busy spot attracted the Home Savings Bank's Northeast Branch and the Northeast Savings Bank, founded by H Street merchants, across Eighth Street from each other.
Before Prohibition closed DC's many saloons in 1917, 727 H Street housed the German-owned Beuchert Tavern. Louis Kavakos bought the place in 1929 and ran it as a lunch counter/confectionery. After Prohibition ended four years later, Kavakos and his sons William, George, and John replaced the luncheonette with Club Kavakos, a bar and grill with live music, dancing, vaudeville, and strippers. Like many DC night spots, the club thrived during World War II. After the war, patrons enjoyed evenings hosted by WMAL radio DJ Willis Conover. Jazz greats Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Dizzy Gillespie all recorded live albums here.
In 1914 Ezras Israel Orthodox congregation moved from its space above a grocery on H Street into the former Centennial Baptist Church at Eighth and I Streets, one block north. Forty-five years later it closed as most of H Street's Jewish population moved north, and eventually re-opened in Rockville, Maryland.
- TRHHH_150912_38.JPG: The Club Kavakos building on the southwest corner of Eighth and H, left, was gutted during the 1968 riots and fell into ruin as seen in this 1990 photo. It was demolished in 1999.
- TRHHH_150912_39.JPG: A 1937 Chanukah party at Ezras Israel
- TRHHH_150912_42.JPG: Club Kavakos owner William Kavakos, left, hosts bandleaders Tex Beneke, center, and Tony Pastor in the club, 1940s.
- TRHHH_150912_44.JPG: A 1949 view of this spot looking east with the former Northeast Savings Bank at left.
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