DC Heritage Trails: River Farms to Urban Towers: Southwest 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:
- TRSW_150815_01.JPG: River Farms to Urban Towers
Southwest Heritage Trail
From 1800 until 1950, Southwest was Washington's largest working-class, waterfront neighborhood. The beginning in 1954, nearly all of Southwest was razed to create an entirely new city in the nation's first experiment in urban renewal. The 17 signs of River Farms to Urban Towers: Southwest Heritage Trail lead you through the Modernist buildings erected in the 1960s while marking the sites and stories - and the few remaining structures - of the neighborhood that was. Follow this trail to discover the area's first colonial settlers and the waves of immigrants drawn to jobs on the waterfront or in nearby federal government offices. Here Chesapeake Bay watermen sold oysters and fish off their boats. The once-gritty streets were childhood homes to singer Marvin Gaye and movie star Al Jolson. Later residents included Senator Hubert H. Humphrey and other legislators.
River Farms to Urban Towers: Southwest Heritage Trail, a booklet capturing the trail's highlights, is available at local businesses along the way. To learn about other DC neighborhoods, visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
- TRSW_150815_07.JPG: Banneker Circle and L'Enfant Promenade under construction, 1968
- TRSW_150815_11.JPG: River Farms to Urban Towers
Southwest Heritage Trail
8 Banneker Circle: Vista to the Past
This high ground serves as a monument to Benjamin Banneker, a free African American who charted the stars for the first survey of Washington, DC. Banneker was 60 years old when he hired on to assist surveyor Andrew Ellicott. A tobacco planter from Baltimore County, Maryland, Banneker had taught himself mathematics and astronomy. With these skills, he observed the stars' movements each night. Ellicott used Banneker's calculations to determine the District's boundaries. In addition, Banneker published a series of almanacs predicting the movements of the sun, moon, and stars to guide farmers in the best timing for planting and harvesting.
This vista once belonged to Notley Young. The Maryland planter owned nearly all of today's Southwest when President George Washington chose the spot, then part of Maryland, for the new nation's capital in 1791. Young's brick mansion stood close to where you are now. Young owned many farms in the new city and nearby Maryland, and reported owning 265 slaves to 1790 Census takers. Before the Revolution, Maryland's Catholics were prohibited from worshiping in public churches, so Young and his Catholic neighbors gathered for Mass in his house. In 1857 Young's grandson, Father Nicholas Young, Jr. helped establish St. Dominic Church.
The L'Enfant Promenade to your right, designed by I. M. Pei and others for New York developer William Zeckendorf, now covers the site of Young's house. Zeckendorf envisioned a dramatic expanse lined with office and cultural buildings as a link between the National Mall and Southwest's waterfront. Today's Forrestal Building blocks what was to be a view to the Smithsonian castle.
- TRSW_150815_17.JPG: In the 1880s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began dredging the Washington Channel and building up mudflats to create Hains Point, visible across the channel from this overlook.
- TRSW_150815_23.JPG: This map shows the holdings of Notley Young, seen in the dual portrait with his wife Eleanor. Young owned much of Cerne Abbey Manor.
- TRSW_150815_26.JPG: Benjamin Banneker, astronomer and mathematician
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I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
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