BGuthrie Photos: DC Heritage Trails: Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail

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:
1. TRHHH_170304_001.JPG: Hub, Home, Heart Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail 14 The Changing Faces of H Street The handsome church on this corner is the second to occupy this spot. The first was a small brick chapel built by John A. Douglas in 1878 for the new Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church. Soon after, it was renamed Douglas Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church to honor its builder and his wife Sidney, who donated the land. The current building replaced it in 1898 as the block filled with brick houses and stores. Douglas Memorial served a white congregation. But beginning in the 1940s, its members moved away, and the parish dwindled. In 1958 the governing Baltimore Conference assigned a young African American pastor, Forrest C. Stith, to rebuild the congregation. By knocking on doors and reaching out to youth, Stith increased the church's membership from nearly zero to 200 in three years. On 11th Street between I and K, Holy Name Catholic Church experienced the same racial makeover. As these church histories show, well before "white flight" transformed American cities in the 1950s, the face of H Street was changing. Descendants of European immigrant families, thanks to public school education, moved into better-paying professions and newer neighborhoods. African Americans had become a majority in Greater H Street by 1950. In response the DC School Board switched the white Franklin Pierce Elementary on Maryland Avenue, and other neighborhood schools, to the "colored" division. The Supreme Court's 1954 desegregation of the nation's schools accelerated white flight to exclusive suburbs. For decades, in a very divided city, Greater H Street was almost entirely African American. As the 21st century opened, though, it followed the city's trend towards a more racially diverse population.
2. TRHHH_170304_005.JPG: Teens of Youthworks, a summer mission hosted by Douglas Church, share a cookout with parishioners.
3. TRHHH_170304_008.JPG: A May Day celebration, 1941, at Logan School, the first elementary school for African Americans in Greater H Street, above. Franklin Pierce School Class of 1931, when the school was part of the white division, as seen at right.
4. TRHHH_170304_017.JPG: Stuart-Hobson Junion High School students of 1957, post-integration
5. TRHHH_170304_020.JPG: Everyday businesses here in the 1940s: Tamara (left) and Charles (second from right) Chidakel at work in their Dixie Pawnbrokers, 1100 H Street.
6. TRHHH_170304_028.JPG: Reverend (later Bishop) Forrest C. Stith, and the first two children he christened at Douglas Memorial United Methodist Church, Valynncia Patrice Brown and Roscoe "Butch" Goudeau, 1958.
7. TRHHH_170304_031.JPG: The church's stained-glass windows glow within the sanctuary, 2011
8. TRHHH_170304_034.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.
9. TRHHH_170304_043.JPG: Hub, Home, Heart Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail 15 At the Crossroads 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.
10. TRHHH_170304_047.JPG: A 1949 view of this spot looking east with the former Northeast Savings Bank at left.
11. TRHHH_170304_050.JPG: Streetcar route map to Metro Station, 1909, includes the Eighth and H crossroads.
12. TRHHH_170304_054.JPG: A 1955 ad for Dizzy Gillespie at Club Kavakos. Below, owner William Kavakos, left, hosts bandleaders Tex Beneke, center, and Tony Pastor in the club, 1940s.
13. TRHHH_170304_057.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.
14. TRHHH_170304_061.JPG: Ezras Israel, Eighth and I Sts., 1947.
15. TRHHH_170304_066.JPG: Zelda Feldman, left, and classmates after their confirmation at Ezras Israel, Eighth and I Sts., 1947.
16. TRHHH_170304_072.JPG: A 1937 Chanukah party at Ezras Israel
17. TRHHH_170304_077.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.
18. TRHHH_170304_080.JPG: Swinging to the sax at Club Kavakos, 1950
19. TRHHH_170304_083.JPG: Hub, Home, Heart Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail 16 The Fires of 1968 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.
20. TRHHH_170304_088.JPG: A futile attempt to save the building, April 5, 1968
21. TRHHH_170304_091.JPG: Morton's Department Store, seen in the 1950s, stood on the southwest corner of this intersection.
22. TRHHH_170304_096.JPG: A soldier walks through the intersection of Eighth and H Sts., with the gutted Kay Jewelers on the right.
23. TRHHH_170304_098.JPG: Two years later, the city opened a playground on the site
24. TRHHH_170304_101.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.
25. TRHHH_170304_104.JPG: Real estate broker Rudolph Taylor, left, Councilmember Nadine Winter, and Mayor Marion Barry open Taylor's second H St. office, at 421 H St., 1985.
26. TRHHH_170304_107.JPG: The H Street Festival Foundation's first event highlighting progress on H St., 1987.
27. TRHHH_170304_114.JPG: The 1990 groundbreaking for townhouses developed by the H Street Community Development Corporation.
28. TRHHH_170304_117.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.
29. TRHHH_170304_124.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.
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Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC Heritage Trails: Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail) directly related to this one: [Display ALL photos on one page]:
- 2020_DC_Trails_GreaterH: DC Heritage Trails: Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail (175 photos from 2020)
- 2018_DC_Trails_GreaterH: DC Heritage Trails: Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail (36 photos from 2018)
- 2016_DC_Trails_GreaterH: DC Heritage Trails: Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail (52 photos from 2016)
- 2015_DC_Trails_GreaterH: DC Heritage Trails: Hub, Home, Heart: Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail (19 photos from 2015)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Heritage Trails] [Neighborhoods]
2017 photos: Overnight trips this year: Civil War Trust conferences in Pensacola, FL, Chattanooga, TN (via sites in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee) and Fredericksburg, VA, a family reunion in The Dells, Wisconsin (via sites in Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin), New York City, and my 12th consecutive San Diego Comic Con trip (including sites in Arizona). Ego strokes: For some reason, several of my photos have been published in physical books this year which is pretty cool. Ones that I know about: "Tarzan, Jungle King of Popular Culture" (David Lemmo), "The Great Crusade: A Guide to World War I American Expeditionary Forces Battlefields and Sites" (Stephen T. Powers and Kevin Dennehy), "The American Spirit" (David McCullough), "Civil War Battlefields: Walking the Trails of History" (David T. Gilbert), "The Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956 — Khrushchev, Stalin's Ghost, and a Young American in Russia" (Marvin Kalb), and "The Judge: 26 Machiavellian Lessons" (Ron Collins and David Skover). 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 below 560,000.
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