DC Heritage Trails: A Fitting Tribute: Logan Circle 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:
- TRLOG_170325_01.JPG: A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
The Logan Circle Neighborhood began with city boosters' dreams of greatness. The troops, cattle pens, and hubbub of the Civil War (1861-1865) had nearly ruined Washington, and when the fighting ended, Congress threatened to move the nation's capital elsewhere. So city leaders raced to repair and modernize the city. As paved streets, waster and gas lines, street lights, and sewers reached undeveloped areas, wealthy whites followed. Mansions soon sprang up around an elegant park where Vermont and Rhode Island Avenues met. The circle was named Iowa Circle, thanks to Iowa Senator William Boyd Allison. In 1901 a statue of Civil War General (and later Senator) John A. Logan, a founder of Memorial Day, replaced the park's central fountain. The circle took his name in 1930. The title of this Heritage Trail comes from General Logan's argument that Memorial Day would serve as "a fitting tribute to the memory of [the nation's] slain defenders."
As the city grew beyond Logan Circle, affluent African Americans gradually replaced whites here. Most of them moved on during World War II, and their mansions were divided into rooming houses to meet a wartime housing shortage. By the 1960s, with suburban Maryland and Virginia drawing investment, much of the neighborhood had decayed. When civil disturbances erupted after the 1968 assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it hit bottom. Ten years later, however, long-time residents, newcomers, and new city programs spurred revival. A Fitting Tribute: Logan Circle Heritage Trail takes you through the neighborhood's lofty and low times to introduce the array of individuals who shaped its modern vitality.
- TRLOG_170325_04.JPG: Trew Motor Company, moved into its newly constructed building at 14th and P Streets in 1920. The Studio Theatre took over the old showroom in 1987.
- TRLOG_170325_07.JPG: A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
15 Treading the Boards
The Studio Theatre, on the corner of 14th and P Streets since 1987, anchors the Logan Circle/14th Street artistic community. The theatre, founded by director and educator Joy Zinoman and set designer Russell Metheny in 1978, originally rented space in wood sculptor Margery Goldberg's Zenith Square Gallery complex of rowhouses nearby on Rhode Island Avenue. An array of artists worked (and sometimes lived) at Zenith, finding inspiration among their peers until the city forced them out in 1986, citing zoning violations. But Studio Theatre had left six years earlier for affordable space in a former car dealership nearby at 1401 Church Street. Another showroom, across 14th Street from this sign, was the first of three adjoining buildings renovated by the theater.
In 1980 the pioneering Source Theatre, founded by Bart Whiteman three years earlier, moved into a former auto supply store at 1809 14th. A few years later Source took over a one-time Oldsmobile showroom at 1835.
Although Washington never had the manufacturing activity of other cities, it developed a stock of industrial spaces. Here they came in the form of auto showrooms and service shops as well as printing shops and other light industry. By the 1970s, with the car showrooms long gone, these spacious, affordable buildings beckoned. Among the institutions that took root here are Woolly Mammoth, Horizons, Church Street and Keegan theaters as well as art galleries. Over time these blocks grew into an important arts district, and its risk-taking theaters gained renown in the regional theatre movement.
To return to the Metro Red line, walk one block north on Q Street and turn left. The Dupont Circle Station is six blocks west on Q Street.
- TRLOG_170325_13.JPG: A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
15 Treading the Boards
The Studio Theatre, on the corner of 14th and P Streets since 1987, anchors the Logan Circle/14th Street artistic community. The theatre, founded by director and educator Joy Zinoman and set designer Russell Metheny in 1978, originally rented space in wood sculptor Margery Goldberg's Zenith Square Gallery complex of rowhouses nearby on Rhode Island Avenue. An array of artists worked (and sometimes lived) at Zenith, finding inspiration among their peers until the city forced them out in 1986, citing zoning violations. But Studio Theatre had left six years earlier for affordable space in a former car dealership nearby at 1401 Church Street. Another showroom, across 14th Street from this sign, was the first of three adjoining buildings renovated by the theater.
In 1980 the pioneering Source Theatre, founded by Bart Whiteman three years earlier, moved into a former auto supply store at 1809 14th. A few years later Source took over a one-time Oldsmobile showroom at 1835.
Although Washington never had the manufacturing activity of other cities, it developed a stock of industrial spaces. Here they came in the form of auto showrooms and service shops as well as printing shops and other light industry. By the 1970s, with the car showrooms long gone, these spacious, affordable buildings beckoned. Among the institutions that took root here are Woolly Mammoth, Horizons, Church Street and Keegan theaters as well as art galleries. Over time these blocks grew into an important arts district, and its risk-taking theaters gained renown in the regional theatre movement.
To return to the Metro Red line, walk one block north on Q Street and turn left. The Dupont Circle Station is six blocks west on Q Street.
- TRLOG_170325_14.JPG: Zenith Square Gallery's Margery Goldberg, first row center, and artists posed in 1986 outside their studios at 1443 Rhode Island Avenue.
- TRLOG_170325_17.JPG: Along with Roger Brady (not pictured), Howard Shalwitz and Linda Reinisch co-founded Woolly Mammoth Theatre and in 1987 took over Studio Theatre's former space at 14th and Church Streets.
- TRLOG_170325_20.JPG: Studio Theatre co-founders Russell Metheny and Joy Zinoman inside their new space in the old Trew Motor Co. Building, 1987.
- TRLOG_170325_22.JPG: Source Theatre founder Bart Whiteman, 1987
- TRLOG_170325_24.JPG: Pat Murphy Sheehy, kneeling, and Susan Lynn Ross perform in Source Theatre's 1990 comedy Dumb Stuff by Terryl Paiste. Sheehy became Source's executive director in 1986.
- TRLOG_170325_26.JPG: Keegan Theatre's 2012 production of Spring Awakening
- TRLOG_170326_01.JPG: A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
The Logan Circle Neighborhood began with city boosters' dreams of greatness. The troops, cattle pens, and hubbub of the Civil War (1861-1865) had nearly ruined Washington, and when the fighting ended, Congress threatened to move the nation's capital elsewhere. So city leaders raced to repair and modernize the city. As paved streets, waster and gas lines, street lights, and sewers reached undeveloped areas, wealthy whites followed. Mansions soon sprang up around an elegant park where Vermont and Rhode Island Avenues met. The circle was named Iowa Circle, thanks to Iowa Senator William Boyd Allison. In 1901 a statue of Civil War General (and later Senator) John A. Logan, a founder of Memorial Day, replaced the park's central fountain. The circle took his name in 1930. The title of this Heritage Trail comes from General Logan's argument that Memorial Day would serve as "a fitting tribute to the memory of [the nation's] slain defenders."
As the city grew beyond Logan Circle, affluent African Americans gradually replaced whites here. Most of them moved on during World War II, and their mansions were divided into rooming houses to meet a wartime housing shortage. By the 1960s, with suburban Maryland and Virginia drawing investment, much of the neighborhood had decayed. When civil disturbances erupted after the 1968 assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it hit bottom. Ten years later, however, long-time residents, newcomers, and new city programs spurred revival. A Fitting Tribute: Logan Circle Heritage Trail takes you through the neighborhood's lofty and low times to introduce the array of individuals who shaped its modern vitality.
- TRLOG_170326_05.JPG: Needy Children depart for Center Camp in Virginia created by the Jewish Community Center, the Washington Community Chest, and the National Park Service, 1937
- TRLOG_170326_11.JPG: A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
1 See You at the Center
The City's Jewish Community Center opened here in 1926. Its grand presence one mile north of the White House expressed Jewish residents' prosperity and their growing contributions to the federal city and the nation. With American Jews routinely barred from social clubs, the JCC promoted Jewish identity and offered a gym, swimming pool, symphony orchestra, choral society, and basketball league. High school students thronged to dances held on the rooftop.
Housing developer Morris Cafritz, a co-founder in 1912 of the local Young Men's Hebrew Association, led a fundraising campaign to build the JCC and served as its president for eight years. The center thrived until the 1950s, when many members moved to Washington's new suburbs. In 1969 it relocated to Rockville, Maryland and sold this building to the DC Government. When later generations of Jewish Washingtonians close city living, they launched a new independent DCJCC. Cafritz' son, Calvin, helped raise funds to buy back and renovate the building, which reopened in 1996 as the Washington DCJCC.
One block north of this sign is the Church of the Holy City, the national church of the Swedenborgian denomination. Dedicated in 1896, the church was designed by Herbert Langford Warren, a Swedenborgian and founder of Harvard University's School of Architecture.
Three blocks north is the House of the Temple, headquarters of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Southern Jurisdiction, USA. Completed in 1915, it was DC's first major building by John Russell Pope, who later designed the National Archives and the Jefferson Memorial. The building's museums and library are open to the public.
- TRLOG_170326_14.JPG: President Calvin Coolidge tells the crowd at the 1925 cornerstone-laying of the Jewish Community Center, "They are planting a home for community service."
- TRLOG_170326_17.JPG: Washington Post Publisher Katharine Graham, front row center, philanthropist Calvin Cafritz, fourth from left, and major supporters celebrate the DCJCC re-opening.
- TRLOG_170326_24.JPG: The grand ornamentation of the House of the Temple on 16th St. at Q includes the Sphinx, which tempted a sunbather in 1993.
- TRLOG_170326_26.JPG: Swedenborgians gathered at Church of the Holy City for a national convention around 1930.
- TRLOG_171116_02.JPG: A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
12 Care for the City
Luther Place Memorial Church has been a neighborhood fixture since 1873, when the Maryland Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church established it as a "memorial to God's goodness in delivering the land from slavery and from war." It quickly established a reputation for community service. A century later, this very urban church was galvanized by civil disturbances following the 1968 assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Place offered shelter during and after the riots, and provided food, clothing and medical care for thousands of affected people.
With the 1970 arrival of the Reverend John Steinbruck, the church expanded its social justice program. New women's shelters eventually became N Street Village, a community of empowerment and recovery for homeless and low-income women. Luther Place hosted the Community for Creative Non-Violence, which operated Zacchaeus Medical Clinic, housing for offenders awaiting trial, and a group residence. Zacchaeus later merged with Bread for the City, which was organized by Luther Place in 1976. The church declared itself a sanctuary for refugees of the war in El Salvador (1979-1992).
Social justice leaders, including Harriet Tubman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dr. King, Dorothy Day, and St. Francis of Assissi are memorialized in stained-glass windows and
outdoor murals. The church building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
Just behind you, near the intersection of Vermont Avenue and N Street, is where the organizing meeting for what would be Howard University took place in 1867. Dr. Charles B. Boynton of the First Congregational Society hosted the meeting in his home (since demolished).
- TRLOG_171116_05.JPG: Children from the Luther Place Memorial Church's Head Start class played in the churchyard in 1967.
- TRLOG_171116_08.JPG: United Farm Workers President Cesar Chavez, third from left, speaks with Catholic priests after Mass, 1973. Luther Place hosted the Mass and UFW representatives during their campaign to organize migrant workers.
- TRLOG_171116_11.JPG: Luther Place members Vincent Cerf and Elvin Zimmerman in the sanctuary, with bags of groceries to distribute to the needy.
- TRLOG_171116_12.JPG: A volunteer makes the bed in a homeless shelter set up in the parish house, 1980s.
- TRLOG_171116_15.JPG: Activist Mitch Snyder speaks out on behalf of the homeless, 1983. As leader of the Community for Creative Non-Violence, he led the struggle for the DC Right to Overnight Shelter Act of 1984. His ashes and those of a number of homeless women are interned in Luther Place's church yard.
- TRLOG_171116_21.JPG: A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
The Logan Circle Neighborhood began with city boosters' dreams of greatness. The troops, cattle pens, and hubbub of the Civil War (1861-1865) had nearly ruined Washington, and when the fighting ended, Congress threatened to move the nation's capital elsewhere. So city leaders raced to repair and modernize the city. As paved streets, waster and gas lines, street lights, and sewers reached undeveloped areas, wealthy whites followed. Mansions soon sprang up around an elegant park where Vermont and Rhode Island Avenues met. The circle was named Iowa Circle, thanks to Iowa Senator William Boyd Allison. In 1901 a statue of Civil War General (and later Senator) John A. Logan, a founder of Memorial Day, replaced the park's central fountain. The circle took his name in 1930. The title of this Heritage Trail comes from General Logan's argument that Memorial Day would serve as "a fitting tribute to the memory of [the nation's] slain defenders."
As the city grew beyond Logan Circle, affluent African Americans gradually replaced whites here. Most of them moved on during World War II, and their mansions were divided into rooming houses to meet a wartime housing shortage. By the 1960s, with suburban Maryland and Virginia drawing investment, much of the neighborhood had decayed. When civil disturbances erupted after the 1968 assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it hit bottom. Ten years later, however, long-time residents, newcomers, and new city programs spurred revival. A Fitting Tribute: Logan Circle Heritage Trail takes you through the neighborhood's lofty and low times to introduce the array of individuals who shaped its modern vitality.
- TRLOG_171116_24.JPG: Choir members lead the procession to dedicate the church's new parish house in September 1951.
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
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