BGuthrie Photos: DC Heritage Trails: Civil War to Civil Rights: Downtown Heritage Trail

DC Heritage Trails: Civil War to Civil Rights: Downtown Heritage Trail:

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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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:
1. TRCWCR_160218_01.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail w.3 Asbury United Methodist Church "... watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen..." Stories of slavery and freedom, of struggle and achievement, are woven through the history of this African American congregation. Founded in 1836, by the time of the Civil War Asbury United Methodist Church was the preeminent black church in the city, its membership of 600 making it the largest of 11 African American congregations in Washington. Today, Asbury counts among its members descendants of District slaves who tried a dramatic escape to freedom in 1848 aboard the ship Pearl. Churches were centers of community life for African Americans, who had represented more than one-quarter of the population of the nation's capital since 1800. By 1830, a majority had gained their freedom. Despite "Black Codes" that severely restricted their movements and activities, free African Americans practiced a variety of trades, ran their own businesses, and set up schools. By 1860, free blacks owned property in every quadrant of the city. Asbury United Method Church is the oldest black congregation in the District of Columbia on its original site. The current sanctuary dates from 1915. Since its founding, Asbury's members have played leading roles in the life of the city, and its spiritual, educational, and humanitarian activities have symbolized the efforts of black congregations throughout Washington D.C., to attain equality for the city's many African American communities.
2. TRCWCR_160218_07.JPG: Worship services, above, engage young members with their own Children's Message.
3. TRCWCR_160218_10.JPG: The sculpture at left by Erik Blome honors Asbury Church members Mary Jane and Emily Catherine Edmonson and their brave attempt to escape from slavery in 1848. It was installed in 2010 on Duke St. in Alexandria, Va.
4. TRCWCR_160218_13.JPG: Rev. Matthew Wesley Clair, Sr., left, pastor from 1902 to 1919, became one of the first two African Americans elected bishop in the Methodist Episcopal Church. Rev. Robert Moten Williams, right, increased Asbury's membership from 1,800 to 4,700 during his tenure (1931-1955).
5. TRCWCR_160218_19.JPG: The modern church is politically active, including demanding Civil Rights during the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
6. TRCWCR_160218_22.JPG: "... teach them to your children and to their children and to their children after them." -- Deuteronomy 4:9 Acclaimed African American photographer Addison Scurlock captured the Asbury congregation on its front steps in 1931.
7. TRCWCR_160218_25.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail The Civil War (1861 - 1865) transformed Washington, DC from a muddy backwater to a center of national power. Ever since, the city has been at the heart of the continuing struggle to realize fully the ideas for which the war was fought. The 25 signs that mark this trail follow the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Clara Barton, Frederick Douglass, and others, famous and humble, who shaped a nation and its capital city while living and working in historic downtown DC. Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour consists of three distinct loops: West, Center, and East. Each one-mile loop offers about an hour of gentle exercise. A free booklet capturing the trail's highlights is available at local businesses and institutions along the way. To download the free Civil War to Civil Rights Audio Tour, and learn about other DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CuturalTourismDC.org.
8. TRCWCR_160218_28.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail The Civil War (1861 - 1865) transformed Washington, DC from a muddy backwater to a center of national power. Ever since, the city has been at the heart of the continuing struggle to realize fully the ideas for which the war was fought. The 25 signs that mark this trail follow the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Clara Barton, Frederick Douglass, and others, famous and humble, who shaped a nation and its capital city while living and working in historic downtown DC. Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour consists of three distinct loops: West, Center, and East. Each one-mile loop offers about an hour of gentle exercise. A free booklet capturing the trail's highlights is available at local businesses and institutions along the way. To download the free Civil War to Civil Rights Audio Tour, and learn about other DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CuturalTourismDC.org.
9. TRCWCR_160218_33.JPG: A streetcar races past elegant Franklin Square homes at the corner of 14th and I Streets in the 1880s.
10. TRCWCR_160218_36.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail w.2 Franklin Square "Going into the country" This urban oasis exists because President Andrew Jackson needed water. The site of excellent springs (a rare commodity in the early city when everyone was dependent on private wells), this square was purchased by the federal government in 1832 so that it could pipe fresh water to the White House. It was an arrangement that lasted until 1898, well after the city had a piped water supply from above Great Falls on the Potomac River. In July of 1861, as the nation prepared for war, soldiers of the 12th New York Regiment moved in on the square, still a somewhat lightly settled place on the northern edge of the city. Their flimsy barracks were typical of the temporary quarters thrown up all around the city as northern troops poured into the capital. President Lincoln frequently passed this way going or returning from Anderson Cottage, his summer house on the grounds of the Soldiers' Home. His Secretary of War Edwin M Stanton lived on the northern side of the square at 1323 K Street, and the president was sometimes seen in his open carriage parked in the street conversing with Stanton. Now and then, the president's eye was drawn to Union troops playing baseball in the square across the street. With the rapid growth of the population after the war, Franklin Square continued to attract the city's elite. Mrs. John Sherman, wife of the Secretary of the Treasury in the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881), described her move to a new house in the area as "going into the country." Future president James A. Garfield lived in a house on the northeast corner of 13th and I Streets while serving in the House of Representatives. Franklin School, completed in 1869, stands as the only remaining vestige of this fashionable community. Designed by prominent architect Adolph Cluss, its elegant combination of Gothic, Romanesque Revival, and Second Empire styles is testimony to the pride the city took in its public school system. Its design and the city's educational programs won prizes in Vienna in 1873, in Philadelphia in 1876, and in Paris in 1878. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone who lived in Washington, transmitted the first wireless message from Franklin School to his nearby laboratory on L Street in 1880. It was an experiment whose potential went unrealized until today's telecommunications revolution.
11. TRCWCR_160218_45.JPG: The elegant Franklin School provided a grand setting for the experiments of Alexander Graham Bell.
12. TRCWCR_160218_48.JPG: The elegant Franklin School provided a grand setting for the experiments of Alexander Graham Bell.
13. TRCWCR_160218_54.JPG: In 1866 Franklin Square was the setting of an Emancipation Day celebration.
14. TRCWCR_160218_60.JPG: The corner of 14th and I Streets at Franklin Square in the 1880s, then a fashionable residential neighborhood.
15. TRCWCR_160218_72.JPG: Franklin Square provided a campground for the 12th New York Infantry Regiment during the Civil War.
16. TRCWCR_160323_01.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail The Civil War (1861 - 1865) transformed Washington, DC from a muddy backwater to a center of national power. Ever since, the city has been at the heart of the continuing struggle to realize fully the ideas for which the war was fought. The 25 signs that mark this trail follow the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Clara Barton, Frederick Douglas, and others, famous and humble, who shaped a nation and its capital city while living and working in historic downtown DC. Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour consists of three distinct loops: West, Center, and East. Each one-mile loop offers about an hour of gentle exercise. A free booklet capturing the trail's highlights is available at local businesses and institutions along the way. To download the free Civil War to Civil Rights Audio Tour, and learn about other DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CuturalTourismDC.org.
17. TRCWCR_160323_05.JPG: All but the tallest of these buildings stood in the 600 block of F Street (site of today's Verizon Center) at the time of Abraham Lincoln. This photograph was taken about 1900.
18. TRCWCR_160323_12.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail .4 The Roots of Freedom and Equality "It is known to you that events have transpired within the last few days, deeply affecting the peace and character of our community." With these words, city officials tried to calm the angry mobs gathering on this corner in April 1848. The crowds blamed the National Era, an abolitionist newspaper located near this sign, for the attempted escape of 77 African American slaves on the ship Pearl. They threatened to destroy the Era's printing press. The editor, Gamaliel Bailey, was one of many anti-slavery activists who made Washington, D.C. a national center for abolitionist activity. He wrote of the irony of slavery in the capital of a nation dedicated to liberty and equality. Tragically, most of the captured slaves were sold and taken south. The mayor and others quelled the potential riot, and the National Era survived. In 1851 and 1852, in a new location just a block and a half south of here, the paper serialized a novel by a little known author named Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, sold 300,000 copies in its first year. The dramatic story intensified sectional rivalries and, many believe, made war inevitable. One hundred years later, on this same block, Charles Hamilton Houston continued the struggle for freedom and equality for African Americans. Houston, a practicing attorney at 615 F Street, and a professor of law at Howard University, taught Thurgood Marshall the legal strategies that led to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education that racial segregation in the schools was unconstitutional. Marshall, later a Supreme Court justice, credited Houston as the person who laid the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement.
19. TRCWCR_160323_18.JPG: Charles Hamilton Houston, left, mentor to the future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, below, had an office on this block.
20. TRCWCR_160323_28.JPG: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was first published near this spot in serialized form in the National Era.
21. TRCWCR_160323_36.JPG: In 1848 city officials urged an angry mob protesting on this corner to remain calm.
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC Heritage Trails: Civil War to Civil Rights: Downtown Heritage Trail) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2020_DC_Trails_CW2CR: DC Heritage Trails: Civil War to Civil Rights: Downtown Heritage Trail (23 photos from 2020)
- 2019_DC_Trails_CW2CR: DC Heritage Trails: Civil War to Civil Rights: Downtown Heritage Trail (126 photos from 2019)
- 2018_DC_Trails_CW2CR: DC Heritage Trails: Civil War to Civil Rights: Downtown Heritage Trail (44 photos from 2018)
- 2015_DC_Trails_CW2CR: DC Heritage Trails: Civil War to Civil Rights: Downtown Heritage Trail (69 photos from 2015)
- 2014_DC_Trails_CW2CR: DC Heritage Trails: Civil War to Civil Rights: Downtown Heritage Trail (17 photos from 2014)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Heritage Trails] [Neighborhoods]
2016 photos: Seven relatively short trips this year: two Civil War Trust conference (Gettysburg, PA and West Point, NY, with a side-trip to New York City), my 11th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including sites in Utah, Nevada, and California), a quick trip to Michigan for Uncle Wayne's funeral, two additional trips to New York City, and a Civil Rights site trip to Alabama during the November elections. Being in places where people died to preserve the rights of minority voters made the Trumputin election even more depressing. Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Number of photos taken this year: just over 610,000.
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