BGuthrie Photos: DC Heritage Trails: Midcity at the Crossroads: Shaw Heritage Trail

DC Heritage Trails: Midcity at the Crossroads: Shaw 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:
1. TRSHAW_160516_001.JPG: Midcity at the Crossroads Shaw Heritage Trail 11 Seventh Street Develops In 1864 St. Patrick's parish opened an Immaculate Conception Church for Catholics living far from its downtown F Street home. This imposing Gothic style building was completed a decade later. Renowned actress Helen Hayes was baptized here in 1900. Immaculate Conception's community work included its Washington Catholic Hour radio show on WOL (1921-1962). For 99 years, until 1964, the church operated Immaculate Conception School for boys at 711 N Street. It is now an elementary school. Girls attended Immaculate Conception Academy nearby at Eighth and Q streets until 1954. After much of this area was destroyed in the 1968 riots, Monsignor Joshua Mundell worked to stabilize the neighborhood, encouraging church and federal government collaborations to build modern apartments. The Seventh Street Savings Bank building is a remnant of the block's business era. The combination bank/residential building opened in 1912. After many mergers, it closed for good in 1983. Seventh Street developed as a business street because of good transportation. Back in 1810, Congress chartered the Seventh Street Turnpike from Pennsylvania Avenue to Rockville, Maryland. At first omnibuses (horse-drawn wagons) carried passengers along Seventh. Then in 1862 Congress chartered street railways, with a Seventh Street line. Leading abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner made sure that the charter prohibited segregation on the streetcars. The first electric streetcars (1888) ran along New York Avenue to Seventh, but in 1962 were replaced by buses. The latest innovation, Metro's Green and Yellow subway lines, opened in 1991 after seven years of construction
2. TRSHAW_160516_005.JPG: Renowned actress Helen Hayes was baptized in 1900 at Immaculate Conception Church, where her parents married.
3. TRSHAW_160516_009.JPG: A Church of the Immaculate Conception altar boy, 1937
4. TRSHAW_160516_013.JPG: Shooting hoops across N St. from the church, 1972.
5. TRSHAW_160516_015.JPG: Father Joshua Mundell and Immaculate Conception School children
6. TRSHAW_160516_018.JPG: Wooden decking covered the excavation here for Metro's Green and Yellow lines, 1985.
7. TRSHAW_160516_022.JPG: This machine, photographed below, Seventh and L Sts., bored subway tunnels.
8. TRSHAW_160516_025.JPG: National Bank of Washington was the last bank to occupy the Seventh Street Bank building.
9. TRSHAW_160516_033.JPG: The Brightwood Railway, one of Seventh Street's many trolley lines, ca. 1890.
10. TRSHAW_160516_035.JPG: Midcity at the Crossroads Shaw Heritage Trail 7 Safe Havens The building across the street at 901 Rhode Island Avenue is the city's first Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) for African Americans. It honors Phyllis Wheatley (1753-1784), considered America's first published black author. The Wheatley YWCA was organized in 1905 by the Booklover's Club, a black women's literary club, to provide housing, recreation, and vocational and Christian guidance to women. It opened at the Miner Institution Building in Southwest Washington. With hundreds of young women migrating to Washington, the YWCA needed a larger facility, opening this one in 1920. Carter G. Woodson frequently lectured and took meals here. The Julia West Hamilton League, organized by Mary Church Terrell to promote philanthropy, education, and character, met here. During World War II, Civil Rights leader Dorothy Height worked at the YWCA, which became a social center for black service men and women. Recently renovated, the building provides accommodations for women, day care, and meeting spaces. The original rowhouses at 901 R Street housed the Clef Club (later Lewis Thomas Cabaret). The facade of the current house recreates the look of the original. The popular nightspot presented Duke Ellington and Bricktop and, despite its residential location, proudly advertised that it was open from dusk to dawn. At 913 R Street, just beyond the site of the club, is the former Engine Company No. 4 fire house. In 1919 Company 4 became Washington's first all-black company after fire fighters seeking career advancement requested a separate facility. The company was captured at work in January 1943 by noted photographer Gordon Parks.
11. TRSHAW_160516_042.JPG: Dance class in the YWCA, 1940
12. TRSHAW_160516_045.JPG: Business High School for whites, and then Cardozo Business High School for African America students, once occupied this block. Cardoza moved to 13th St. in 1950. Cadets of the white Business High School, right, posed in 1928.
13. TRSHAW_160516_048.JPG: Washington's first all-black company of fire fighters, photographed by Gordon Parks in 1941, respond to an alarm.
14. TRSHAW_160516_050.JPG: Duke Ellington graced its [Clef Club] intimate stage, around 1920
15. TRSHAW_160516_053.JPG: The Clef Club (later Lewis Thomas Cabaret) advertised in the Washington Bee.
16. TRSHAW_160516_056.JPG: This portrait of Phyllis Wheatley appeared in her book, Poems on Various Subjects..., 1773. Civil Rights leader Dorothy Height worked at the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA from 1939 until 1944.
17. TRSHAW_160516_062.JPG: A Phyllis Wheatley social event, around 1940
18. TRSHAW_160516_071.JPG: Midcity at the Crossroads Shaw Heritage Trail 5 Spiritual Life Washington's first black Muslim temple opened in 1940 when the Nation of Islam established Temple No. 4 at 1525-1527 Ninth Street. The Nation of Islam's second national leader, Elijah Muhammad (1897-1975), presided over the event. Founded in Chicago in 1931 by Wallace Fard, the Nation of Islam stands for discipline, racial pride, and respect for women, Allah and the Qu'ran, justice, pacifism, and the separation of African Americans from White society. In 1960 the temple, renamed Masjid Muhammad Mosque, moved nearby to 1519 Fourth Street where Malcolm X briefly served as its leader. The story of Shiloh Baptist Church, across the street began during the Civil War. The Union Army, about to attack Fredericksburg, Virginia, offered safe passage to Washington for enslaved or free Blacks wanting to flee. Some 400 members of Fredericksburg's accepted, and in 1863 founded Washington's Shiloh Baptist Church on L Street, NW, west of 16th. In 1924 Shiloh moved here to what had been Hamline Methodist Church. When some White neighbors objected, the owner of Hamline Church's organ paid a janitor to set the organ of fire, damaging the building. Unbowed, Shiloh members repaired the church and flourished. The church was rebuilt after another major fire in 1991. Like other churches in Shaw, Shiloh, with its Family Life Center, serves as a social gathering place. Shiloh is especially known for its Civil Rights work, housing assistance, and music ministry. Soprano Marian Anderson, the Wings Over Jordan gospel singers, and many others have performed at Shiloh.
19. TRSHAW_160516_081.JPG: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, Jr. spoke at Shiloh's Men's Day in 1960.
20. TRSHAW_160516_085.JPG: Shiloh Baptist Church members Dr. Theodore George (fourth from left), Rev. Walter Fauntroy, and Julius Hobson led a civil rights march from the church to the White House, May 1963.
21. TRSHAW_160516_089.JPG: Marian Anderson performed at Shiloh in 1934. [Recital Program] "Marian Anderson, Contralto".
22. TRSHAW_160516_091.JPG: Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam, 1964. Elijah Muhammad, second leader of the Nation of Islam.
23. TRSHAW_160516_095.JPG: Rev. Earl Harrison (behind the smoke) oversaw the burning of Shiloh's mortgage in 1943 as the choir sang.
24. TRSHAW_160516_101.JPG: Shiloh Baptist Church members Dr. Theodore George (fourth from left), Rev. Walter Fauntroy, and Julius Hobson led a civil rights march from the church to the White House, May 1963.
25. TRSHAW_160516_104.JPG: Midcity at the Crossroads Shaw Heritage Trail 4 Alley Life You are standing at the entrance to Naylor Court. It was built in the 1860s as one of hundreds of intersecting alleys hidden behind DC houses. Stables, workshops, sheds, and often cheap two-story houses, built for the poor of all races, filled the alleys. While many of its old dwellings are gone, a few remain in Naylor Court. It forms half of the Blagden Alley-Naylor Historic District. During the Civil War housing crisis, builders crammed hundreds of dwellings into these tight spaces. Most lacked running water, plumbing, or electricity, and quickly became dilapidated. Yet the need for shelter was desperate. In 1908, more than 300 people filled 50 Bladgen Alley dwellings, averaging seven per household and paying $6 a month in rent. In 1900 Nochen Kafitz, a Lithuanian immigrant, opened a grocery in his house a few blocks away on Glick Alley. (The alley, now gone, once ran between Sixth, Seventh, and S streets and Rhode Island Avenue.) His son, Morris Cafritz (1887-1964), became a real estate developer and philanthropist. Alley dwelling construction was outlawed in 1934, but the buildings lingered. Some hidden alleys attracted prostitutes, gamblers, drug dealers, and speakeasies. Others, though, were tight communities, where people who happened to be poor looked out for one another. In 1990 the city moved its archives to the former Tally Ho Stables, built in 1883. Since the '70s, the small dwellings, former carriage barns, and horse stalls have housed artists' studios and residences as well as working garages.
26. TRSHAW_160516_111.JPG: The entrance to Naylor Court, around 1936
27. TRSHAW_160516_114.JPG: This typical alley dwelling remains today just to your left at 1326 Naylor Court.
28. TRSHAW_160516_117.JPG: This 1887 map shows "Nailors Alley" (now Naylor Court), named for grocery Dickerson Nailor, and Blagden Alley, named for Thomas Blagden of an old DC business family.
29. TRSHAW_160516_120.JPG: A neighborhood carryout operated on this corner in 1981
30. TRSHAW_160516_127.JPG: The large numerals on this 1894 map count the number of outhouses per city square, a measure of population density and also of poverty. Square 368 (Bladgen Alley) had 35 privies that year.
31. TRSHAW_160516_129.JPG: The Bladgen Alley housing photographed here in 1937 remains today
32. TRSHAW_160516_132.JPG: Lacking indoor plumbing, alley residents drew water from standpipes. These children, photographed by the Alley Dwelling Authority in the 1930s, lived in an unidentified alley like those found in Shaw.
33. TRSHAW_160516_136.JPG: The Tally Ho Stables building remains in Naylor Court
34. TRSHAW_160516_143.JPG: Midcity at the Crossroads Shaw Heritage Trail 3 Power Brokers A post-Civil War building boom brought grand new houses to this convenient area. By 1881 Blanche Kelso Bruce, the first African American to serve a full term in the U.S. Senate, and Major John Wesley Powell, pioneering director of the U.S. Geological Survey, lived on this block. Born enslaved in Virginia, Bruce (1841-1898) escaped from slavery, attended Oberlin College, then became rich buying abandoned plantations in Mississippi. The Mississippi Legislature elected Bruce to the U.S. Senate. From 1875 to 1881, Senator Bruce worked to aid destitute blacks and improve government treatment of Native Americans. Later, he served as register of the U.S. Treasury and recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C. Bruce and his wife, Josephine Willson Bruce (1852-1923), a founder of the National Association of Colored Women (1896), lived in the Second Empire French style house at 909 M Street. Major John Wesley Powell (1834-1902) and his family moved to 910 M Street (since demolished) in 1881 after he took over the U.S. Geological Survey. Powell, a scientist and war hero, lost his right arm during a Civil War battle. He led the first official survey of the Grand Canyon in 1869, and argued that Native Americans had the right to live according to their own traditions. Small houses, commercial buildings, and immigrant churches developed here after 1910. By the 1930s the rich had moved on, and landlords divided mansions into rooming houses. In the 1960s, many small buildings across Ninth Street were cleared for urban renewal construction that didn't happen. In 2003 the Washington Convention Center opened on the site.
35. TRSHAW_160516_149.JPG: By 1943 the Bruce house, left, had become a rooming house complete with fire escapes.
36. TRSHAW_160516_155.JPG: Sen. Blanche K. Bruce and Josephine Bruce.
37. TRSHAW_160516_158.JPG: The six-story apartment house once stood at 1115 Ninth St. on the Convention Center site.
38. TRSHAW_160516_160.JPG: St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church once drew parishioners to its Eighth St. church, where the Convention Center is today.
39. TRSHAW_160516_166.JPG: St. George Syrian Orthodox Church, formerly located on Eighth St.
40. TRSHAW_160516_169.JPG: This 1887 map shows the rowhouses and churches that once occupied the site of today's Washington Convention Center.
41. TRSHAW_160516_184.JPG: War hero and explorer John Wesley Powell with Tau-Gu, chief of Paiutes in Arizona, 1873. Powell and his family lived at 910 M St., since demolished.
42. TRSHAW_160516_187.JPG: Powell and his family lived at 910 M St., since demolished.
43. TRSHAW_160516_190.JPG: In 1983 the Convention Center site was a mix of cleared land and parking lots.
44. TRSHAW_160516_195.JPG: Midcity at the Crossroads Shaw Heritage Trail 13 "Sweet Daddy" Grace Along this block is the world headquarters of the United House of Prayer for All People. Founded in 1919 in Massachusetts by Charles M. "Sweet Daddy" Grace, the church moved its headquarters to Washington in 1926. Soon after, it purchased a mansion where the church is today. The mansion had housed Frelinghuysen University, a night school headed by noted African American educator Anna J. Cooper. Bishop Grace's mass baptisms were legendary. One year he baptized 208 people in front of 15,000 onlookers here on M Street, with water provided by local fire fighters. At the time of the flamboyant, charismatic evangelist's death in 1960, his church claimed three million members in 14 states and the District. Bishop Grace was succeeded by Bishop Walter McCollough, who expanded the church's political influence. Under McCollough, the church purchased and built hundreds of units of affordable housing in Shaw and Southeast, as well as in North Carolina and Connecticut. The church is also known for its Saints Paradise Cafeteria, music, community service, and outreach to the poor. Over time nearly two dozen religious congregations have settled in Shaw. Congregations often traded spaces as their numbers grew or shrank, or they followed their membership to the suburbs. As you walk the trail you will see current and former houses of worship for A.M.E. Zion, Baptist, Catholic, Christian, Christian Evangelical, Greek Orthodox, Islamic, Jewish, and other faiths.
45. TRSHAW_160516_202.JPG: Bishop Charles M. "Sweet Daddy" Grace preaches from an open car on M Street, around 1950.
46. TRSHAW_160516_205.JPG: This Second Empire style mansion was the original church headquarters, 1950. The cover of the 1950 Grace Magazine, left, distilled the evangelist's message.
47. TRSHAW_160516_208.JPG: Bishop McCollough, center, leads a groundbreaking for a church expansion
48. TRSHAW_160516_211.JPG: The decorated Bishop's House, North Portal Drive, NW, a Christmas season local landmark.
49. TRSHAW_160516_219.JPG: Mourners watch as Bishop Grace's casket is removed from of sic the original United House of Prayer on this block.
50. TRSHAW_160516_226.JPG: Midcity at the Crossroads Shaw Heritage Trail This neighborhood has always been "a place between places," where races and classes bumped and mingled as they got a foothold on the city. It has attracted the powerful seeking city conveniences as well as immigrants and migrants just starting out. By 1900 the Shaw neighborhood lay just north of the downtown federal offices and white businesses, and south of the African-American-dominated U Street commercial corridor and Howard University. Longstanding local businesses took root here, and leaders flourished: Carter G. Woodson, Langston Hughes, John Wesley Powell, B. F. Saul, and A. Philip Randolph. The nation's finest "colored" schools were here too. By the 1930s the area was known as Midcity or Shaw (for Shaw Junior High School). Over time the shops of Seventh and Ninth streets became a bargain-rate alternative to downtown's fancy department stores. There were juke joints, Irish saloons, storefront evangelists, delicatessens, and dozens of schools and houses of worship. As the city expanded, Shaw's older housing became more affordable but crowded. In 1966 planners worked with local church leaders to create the Shaw School Urban Renewal District and improve conditions. Then in 1968, destructive riots followed the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Years later the community has succeeded in creating the mix of new and old that you'll experience along Midcity at the Crossroads: Shaw Heritage Trail. Midcity at the Crossroads: Shaw Heritage Trail, a booklet capturing highlights of the 17 trail markers, is available in English and Spanish at local businesses along the way. To learn about other DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
51. TRSHAW_160516_228.JPG: Bishop C. M. "Sweet Daddy" Grace and a mass baptism in the Potomac, 1934.
52. TRSHAW_160516_246.JPG: Midcity at the Crossroads Shaw Heritage Trail 6 Working for the Race Carter G. Woodson, the "Father of Black History," worked and lived at Ninth Street from 1922 until 1950. The son of formerly enslaved people, Woodson received a Ph.D. from Harvard, and became an acclaimed scholar, educator, and advocate. He founded the Association for the Study of Negro (now African American) Life and History and the Associated Publishers, and organized Negro History Week (later Black History Month). He wrote The Mis-Education of the American Negro, the landmark textbook The Negro in Our History, and other important works. Because he often walked through Shaw carrying stacks of books, local schoolchildren dubbed him "Bookman." Poet Langston Hughes briefly worked here for Woodson, and many of his poems captured local working-class African American life. In The Big Sea (1940), he wrote: "I tried to write poems like the songs they sang on Seventh Street." The house to your right at 817 Q Street was once the Washington headquarters of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Founded in 1925 by A. Philip Randolph, the IBSCP was the nation's first and largest black trade union. Some 12,000 members -- highly skilled porters, attendants, and maids - -- all worked for the Pullman Palace Car Company. In 1925 Pullman was the nation's largest employer of African Americans. The IBSCP published The Messenger, battling discrimination practiced by most American labor unions. In 1938 female relatives of union members founded the International Ladies' Auxiliary. Much of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was planned at 817 Q Street by Randolph, along with Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin.
53. TRSHAW_160516_252.JPG: Carter G. Woodson posed in his study at 1538 North St.
54. TRSHAW_160516_256.JPG: Publications from the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History
55. TRSHAW_160516_259.JPG: A. Philip Randolph, left, and Bayard Rustin helped plan the 1963 March on Washington at 817 Q St.
56. TRSHAW_160516_262.JPG: The large building on your right at Eighth and Q Sts. was the Immaculate Conception Academy, a Catholic girls school, until 1954.
57. TRSHAW_160516_267.JPG: The International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters published The Messenger.
58. TRSHAW_160516_275.JPG: Members of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
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