DC Heritage Trails: Cultural Convergence: Columbia Heights Heritage Trail:
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon
underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
- 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.
- Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 18.224.149.242 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
- Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
|
[1]
 TRCH_190111_01.JPG
|
[2] TRCH_190111_04.JPG
|
[3]
TRCH_190111_07.JPG
|
[4]
TRCH_190111_11.JPG
|
[5]
TRCH_190111_14.JPG
|
[6]
TRCH_190111_17.JPG
|
[7]
TRCH_190111_19.JPG
|
[8]
TRCH_190111_22.JPG
|
[9]
TRCH_190111_24.JPG
|
[10]
TRCH_190111_27.JPG
|
[11]
TRCH_190111_30.JPG
|
[12]
TRCH_190111_34.JPG
|
[13]
TRCH_190111_36.JPG
|
[14]
TRCH_190111_38.JPG
|
[15]
TRCH_190111_42.JPG
|
[16]
TRCH_190111_47.JPG
|
[17]
TRCH_190111_50.JPG
|
[18] TRCH_190111_56.JPG
|
[19]
TRCH_190111_57.JPG
|
[20]
TRCH_190111_60.JPG
|
[21]
TRCH_190111_65.JPG
|
[22]
TRCH_190111_69.JPG
|
[23]
TRCH_190111_72.JPG
|
[24]
TRCH_190111_75.JPG
|
[25]
TRCH_190111_77.JPG
|
[26]
TRCH_190111_80.JPG
|
[27] TRCH_190111_83.JPG
|
[28]
TRCH_190111_89.JPG
|
[29]
TRCH_190111_91.JPG
|
- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- TRCH_190111_01.JPG: Cultural Convergence
Columbia Heights Heritage Trail
More than 200 years ago, city planner Pierre Charles L'Enfant designed a new capital city on the low coastal plain at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, bordered on the north by a steep hill. Today the hill defines Columbia Heights.
Cultural Convergence: Columbia Heights Heritage Trail takes you on a tour of the lively neighborhood that began as a remote suburb of Washington City. Over time, transportation innovations, starting with streetcars, made Columbia Heights accessible and desirable. Soon, men and women of every background populated the neighborhood, people who changed the world with new technology, revolutionary ideas, literature, laws, and leadership. From the low point of the civil disturbances of 1968, Columbia Heights turned to resident leaders and rose again. Metrorail's arrival in 1999 provided a boost, reviving the historically important 14th Street commercial corridor. Experience both the new and old Columbia Heights, with all its cultural and economic diversity, as you talk this walk.
- TRCH_190111_07.JPG: Cultural Convergence
Columbia Heights Heritage Trail
16 Mansions, Parks, and People
On your right is Josephine Butler Parks Center, home of Washington Parks & People, a network of groups devoted to DC and its parks. The network's 1927 mansion, which once housed the Hungarian delegation, was part of an embassy row envisioned by Mary Foote Henderson for this area. Henderson built a "castle" across 16th street for her family, and commissioned important architects to create an enclave worthy of important residents. Meridian Hill Park was also a result of her influence. In the 1980s, the park (by then also called Malcolm X Park) had become forbidding and dangerous, and the mansion was vacant. Then Friends of Meridian Hill came together in 1990. By the end of the decade, when Parks & People bought the mansion, the park again thrived. The first phase of the National Park Service's restoration of the park to its original design was completed in 2009.
The Parks Center, housing nonprofit groups, memorializes Josephine Butler (1920-1997), a union and political activist and educator who led Washington Parks & People at the time of her death. Just ahead at the corner of Euclid Street is the Embassy of Ecuador, formerly the Netherlands Embassy. Please proceed through the park and turn right on 16th Street to reach Sign 17. Along the way you'll see Warder-Totten House at 1633 16th. George Oakley Totten Jr. architect of the Parks Center, salvaged most of a house designed by his teacher renowned architect H.H. Richardson, and rebuilt it here in Washington.
- TRCH_190111_11.JPG: Two views of the Wander House in its original k St. location, before George Totten moved portions to 16th Street.
- TRCH_190111_14.JPG: Mary Henderson's castle as seen from Meridian Hill Park.
- TRCH_190111_17.JPG: Students dance before a banner of Malcolm X during a 1971 cultural fair shortly after activist Angela Davis suggested renaming the park.
- TRCH_190111_19.JPG: Stokely Carmichael center, participates in an African Liberation Day March to Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park, May 1978.
- TRCH_190111_22.JPG: Children participate in a celebration of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, January 15, 2000.
- TRCH_190111_24.JPG: Friends of Meridian Hill volunteers clean the reflecting pool in the lower part of the park, early 1990s.
- TRCH_190111_27.JPG: Advertising a 1990 Friends of Meridian Hill concert.
- TRCH_190111_30.JPG: Cultural Convergence
Columbia Heights Heritage Trail
15 College Hill
Wayland Seminary opened in Foggy Bottom just after the Civil War to train formerly enslaved people and others as "preachers and teachers for the South" and as missionaries to evangelize Africa. In 1875 it moved here, later merging with Richmond Theological Seminary to become Virginia Union University in Richmond. Among Wayland's distinguished alumni was Booker T. Washington.
Just two blocks up the hill is the former site of George Washington University's predecessor, Columbian College. Founded by Baptist missionaries in 1821, Columbian gave the area the nickname "College Hill."
Some 24 years before Wayland Seminary's arrival, landowner Col. Gilbert Livingston Thompson and his wife, Mary Ann Tolley Thompson, attended, attended a Prince George's County slave auction and purchased Emily Saunders Plummer and three of her children to serve them here. After Emancipation, Plummer's son Henry returned to attend Wayland Seminary.
The Thompson home, which stood where 16th Street is today, was built in the early 1800s by Commodore David Porter, During the Civil War, it was used as a hospital.
By the 1870s, Thompson's land was subdivided into building lots, and a working-class community of mostly African Americans developed. "Residents depended entirely upon wells and the rain barrel for water," wrote local historian John Clagett Proctor, who lived nearby after the Civil War. "There were no streets or sidewalks." Around 1912 the federal government forced the residents out and razed their houses to make way for Meridian Hill Park (later also known as Malcolm X Park).
- TRCH_190111_34.JPG: Wayland Seminary alumnus Booker T. Washington, center, enjoyed a Negro Business League boat ride in Baltimore, 1908. (Collection of Carolyn Howard French.)
- TRCH_190111_36.JPG: Wayland Seminary's main building, Coburn Hall, opened in 1875. (Collection of Lynn C. French.)
- TRCH_190111_38.JPG: Emily Saunders Plummer, left, served the Thompson family of Meridian Hill as an enslaved woman. All that remained of the Thompson's estate by 1900 was this brick farm house, above.
- TRCH_190111_42.JPG: These houses on Euclid Street were torn down in 1912 for the park.
- TRCH_190111_47.JPG: The corner store at Euclid and 15th Sts. once served the College Hill community.
- TRCH_190111_50.JPG: Union army hospital tents spread out alongside Columbian College during the Civil War.
- TRCH_190111_57.JPG: Cultural Convergence
Columbia Heights Heritage Trail
More than 200 years ago, city planner Pierre Charles L'Enfant designed a new capital city on the low coastal plain at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, bordered on the north by a steep hill. Today the hill defines Columbia Heights.
Cultural Convergence: Columbia Heights Heritage Trail takes you on a tour of the lively neighborhood that began as a remote suburb of Washington City. Over time, transportation innovations, starting with streetcars, made Columbia Heights accessible and desirable. Soon, men and women of every background populated the neighborhood, people who changed the world with new technology, revolutionary ideas, literature, laws, and leadership. From the low point of the civil disturbances of 1968, Columbia Heights turned to resident leaders and rose again. Metrorail's arrival in 1999 provided a boost, reviving the historically important 14th Street commercial corridor. Experience both the new and old Columbia Heights, with all its cultural and economic diversity, as you talk this walk.
- TRCH_190111_60.JPG: Wayland Seminary's 1866 graduating class. William James Howard, circled, later pastored Zion Baptist Church in Southwest and co-founded Stoddard Baptist Home.
- TRCH_190111_65.JPG: Cultural Convergence
Columbia Heights Heritage Trail
14 Pitts Motor Hotel
The Pitts Motor Hotel, formerly located at 1451 Belmont Street, lingers in memory for two reasons. In the 1960s it was a gathering place of Civil Rights movement leaders. Later it became a "welfare hotel." In March 1968 the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., reserved 30 rooms at the Pitts Hotel to house leaders of the Poor Peoples' Campaign he planned to lead in May. He chose the facility because it was both comfortable and black owned.
Despite Dr. King's 1968 assassination, the Poor People's Campaign went ahead. Demonstrators maintained that jobs and income were a civil right owed to the needy citizens by the federal government. In May and June thousands camped in "Resurrection City" on the National Mall where, due to excessive rain, conditions deteriorated quickly. Resentful campers marched on the Pitts where the leaders were housed, demanding (unsuccessfully) that the leaders exchange their comforts for the muddy Mall.
In its heyday the Pitts Motel housed the Red Carpet Lounge. "Everybody would be there" remembered activist Bob Moore. But its popularity masked an unstable financial situation. Owner Cornelius Pitts and other African American entrepreneurs (and would-be homeowners) at the time often were refused bank loans or offered unfavorable terms. In the 1980s, when Reagan administration cuts to social programs led to widespread homelessness, Pitts took the opportunity to turn around his fortunes, converting his hotel into a shelter. The city rented all 50 rooms, but the prices were so inflated that a congressional investigation resulted. In 2004 a condominium building replaced the hotel.
- TRCH_190111_69.JPG: The Pitts Hotel in 1977
- TRCH_190111_72.JPG: Cornelius Pitts, left, at the bar in his Red Carpet Lounge, below, during its heyday.
- TRCH_190111_75.JPG: Tents of the Poor People's campaign lined the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in May and June of 1968.
- TRCH_190111_77.JPG: Poor People's Campaign demonstrators marched on U Street.
- TRCH_190111_80.JPG: Muddy conditions of the Resurrection City encampment.
- TRCH_190111_89.JPG: Cultural Convergence
Columbia Heights Heritage Trail
More than 200 years ago, city planner Pierre Charles L'Enfant designed a new capital city on the low coastal plain at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, bordered on the north by a steep hill. Today the hill defines Columbia Heights.
Cultural Convergence: Columbia Heights Heritage Trail takes you on a tour of the lively neighborhood that began as a remote suburb of Washington City. Over time, transportation innovations, starting with streetcars, made Columbia Heights accessible and desirable. Soon, men and women of every background populated the neighborhood, people who changed the world with new technology, revolutionary ideas, literature, laws, and leadership. From the low point of the civil disturbances of 1968, Columbia Heights turned to resident leaders and rose again. Metrorail's arrival in 1999 provided a boost, reviving the historically important 14th Street commercial corridor. Experience both the new and old Columbia Heights, with all its cultural and economic diversity, as you talk this walk.
- TRCH_190111_91.JPG: Rev. Jesse Jackson (with bullhorn) addressed a crowd at 14th and U Sts. during the Poor People's Campaign, June 1968.
- 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.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
- Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].
