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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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. TRCWCR_190118_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 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.
2. TRCWCR_190118_08.JPG: Civil War infantrymen march around the Pension Building, now the National Building Museum, in a 1,200-foot-long terra cottage frieze that surrounds the red brick structure.
3. TRCWCR_190118_12.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail e.7 The National Building Museum The nation's only museum dedicated to American achievements in architecture, urban planning, construction, engineering, and design is appropriately housed in one of the most extraordinary structures in the nation's capital. Constructed between 1882 and 1887 in the style of an Italian Renaissance palace, the building was designed to house the Pension Bureau. The bureau, forerunner to today's Veterans Administration, managed thousands of pensions owed to Civil War veterans and to the families of those who died. It was designed by an engineer, Major General Montgomery C. Meigs, who had served the Union cause as Quartermaster General. General Meigs himself lost his son, John Rogers Meigs, in the Civil War. Some have called this building, with its symbolic parade of Union Forces, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial of the Pension Building's day. Although modeled on Rome's Palazzo Farnese, its provisions for light, air circulation, and fireproofing made it the federal government's first modern office building. Built in red brick rather than the white sandstone and marble of other federal buildings, it was ridiculed by many at the time. "It's too bad the damn thing is fireproof," said General William Tecumseh Sherman. A 1,200-foot-long terra cotta frieze encircles the entire building, depicting all the Union forces in the Civil War -- infantry, cavalry, and artillery troops, and naval, quartermaster, and medical personnel. Inside, massive 75-foot-tall columns, made of brick and finished to look like marble, punctuate a 300-foot-long Great Hall. A favorite venue for presidential inaugural balls, the Great Hall hosted its first for Grover Cleveland in 1885, even before the building was completed. Threatened with demolition in the 1960s, the building was saved by citizen action. It became home to the National Building Museum by an act of Congress in 1980.
4. TRCWCR_190118_23.JPG: Major General Montgomery C. Meigs, above, designed and built the Pension Building with a great hall reminiscent of a Renaissance palace. He use 15-1/2 million bricks. A recent view of the finished Great Hall, lower right.
5. TRCWCR_190118_29.JPG: A recent view of the finished Great Hall, lower right.
6. TRCWCR_190118_32.JPG: The Great Hall decorated for the inaugural ball of President William McKinley in 1901.
7. TRCWCR_190118_36.JPG: A portion of the terra cotta frieze which encircles the building and honors the Union forces in the Civil War. Frieze by Casper Buberi.
8. TRCWCR_190124_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 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_190124_07.JPG: Crowds throng F Street near "Woodies" (left) at holiday time in the 1940s.
10. TRCWCR_190124_20.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail .7 Woodies Comes to F Street "Alvin, Washington, D.C., is the place for us." So wrote Samuel Walter Woodward to his business partner, Alvin Lothrop, in 1879. The young entrepreneurs were looking for a new location for their innovative dry goods store near Boston, Massachusetts. Unhappy with the bargaining common in stores of the day, they were the first to charge a fixed price and to allow returns. Woodward recognized the new vitality and promise of the nation's capital. Since the end of the Civil War just 14 years earlier, Washington had new importance as the center of a strong federal government. It had been thoroughly modernized, with broad paved streets and avenues, sewers, gaslights, and thousands of new trees. Americans were flocking to the newly important capital to take government jobs and start businesses. Woodward and Lothrop joined them in 1880 and opened their store near Seventh and Pennsylvania Avenue. In 1887, they moved their establishment, now enlarged to a modern "department store," to this location, spearheading the development of F Street as the city's premier downtown shopping boulevard. Affectionately known as "Woodies," the store was a Washington tradition until its closing in 1996.
11. TRCWCR_190124_29.JPG: Samuel W. Woodward, left, and Alvin M. Lothrop, right, about 1880.
12. TRCWCR_190124_40.JPG: Woodward and Lothrop's first store at 705 Market Space.
13. TRCWCR_190124_43.JPG: The soda fountain and main aisle of "Woodies" await customers, while an advertisement, right, places the store among the city's major attractions.
14. TRCWCR_190126_11.JPG: There used to be a Civil War to Civil Rights marker here -- probably the one "Ceremony at the Crossroads" -- but it has been removed. Apparently they don't remove very easily.
15. TRCWCR_190129_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 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.
16. TRCWCR_190129_05.JPG: A streetcar races past elegant Franklin Square homes at the corner of 14th and I Streets in the 1880s.
17. TRCWCR_190129_14.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.
18. TRCWCR_190129_18.JPG: The elegant Franklin School provided a grand setting for the experiments of Alexander Graham Bell.
19. TRCWCR_190129_24.JPG: The elegant Franklin School provided a grand setting for the experiments of Alexander Graham Bell.
20. TRCWCR_190129_29.JPG: In 1866 Franklin Square was the setting of an Emancipation Day celebration.
21. TRCWCR_190129_32.JPG: The corner of 14th and I Streets at Franklin Square in the 1880s, then a fashionable residential neighborhood.
22. TRCWCR_190129_36.JPG: Franklin Square provided a campground for the 12th New York Infantry Regiment during the Civil War.
23. TRCWCR_190224_05.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail e.4 Sitting in Judgment This imposing, Greek Revival style structure was designed by George Hadfield as Washington's first City Hall/Courthouse. Throughout its history, the building has housed the local and federal courts for DC, presided over by judges appointed by the U.S. president with the consent of the U.S. Senate. In 1874 Congress took over city operations, ending home rule. DC lost the right to elect a mayor and city council. The courts and municipal offices remained in the mayor-less City Hall. For nearly a century, until limited home rule was restored, three commissioners appointed by the U.S. president ran the city. As part of steps to return home rule to the city in 1970, Congress reorganized DC's judicial system. It removed local cases from federal jurisdiction and created the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to hear everything from traffic violations to criminal matters. The Superior Court's Family Division moved into the Old City Hall/Courthouse. An expanded DC Court of Appeals became the District's court of last resort. In 1999 the worn-out courthouse closed to await rehabilitation. Ten years later, after extensive renovation, the building re-opened as the DC Court of Appeals. Some of the most noteworthy trials in our city's history have taken place here. In 1867 John Surratt faced trial for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to kill President Lincoln. Surratt was acquitted after testifying that, when the assassination occurred, he was in New York on a Confederate spying mission. Charles Guiteau fared worse. In 1882, despite evidence of insanity, Guiteau was convicted of mortally wounding President James Garfield. He received the death penalty.
24. TRCWCR_190224_12.JPG: Lott Flannery's Lincoln statue, originally atop a 35-foot pedestal, was paid for by DC residents and dedicated in 1868 as the nation's first public Lincoln memorial.
25. TRCWCR_190224_17.JPG: Abolitionist and U.S. Marshall Frederick Douglass receives visitors in his City Hall office. He also served here as the appointed DC recorder of deeds.
26. TRCWCR_190224_19.JPG: The scene at the Baltimore and Potomac train station on the Mall where Charles Guiteau morally wounded President James Garfield, 1881.
27. TRCWCR_190224_21.JPG: In the foreground of this post-Civil War photo of Old City Hall is a platform for the boarding a horse-drawn carriage. The street was still unpaved.
28. TRCWCR_190224_24.JPG: Lott Flannery's Lincoln statue, originally atop a 35-foot pedestal, was paid for by DC residents and dedicated in 1868 as the nation's first public Lincoln memorial.
29. TRCWCR_190224_29.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.
30. TRCWCR_190224_34.JPG: These buildings once stood on Indiana Ave., at the corner of John Marshall Pl., where today's Moultrie Courthouse stands.
31. TRCWCR_190312_01.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail .2 Ceremony at the Crossroads "Imagine a great avenue [with] solid ranks of soldiers, just marching steady all day long, for two days. ..." -- Walt Whitman. As described by the great American poet Walt Whitman, the grand parade of 200,000 Union soldiers took two days to complete their victory march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House for President Andrew Johnson's review. Whitman might have been standing right here on May 23 or 24, 1865. This had been the ceremonial and commercial crossroads of the city since the federal government moved to the banks of the Potomac River in 1800. Pennsylvania Avenue has been an inaugural parade route for every President since Thomas Jefferson. For 130 years, this triangular space before you was the city's town square and home of the Center Market where Cabinet secretaries, government clerks and laborers alike might be seen toting a live chicken destined for the dinner table. All around you are reminders of the Civil War. A statue of Major General Winfield Scott Hancock, a hero at Gettysburg, commands a small park across Seventh Street. In the plaza across Indiana Avenue stands a memorial to Dr. Benjamin F. Stephenson, who founded a veterans organization called the Grand Army of the Republic. It was dedicated by a few hundred grizzled veterans in 1909. The building where Civil War photographer Matthew Brady had his studio, its exterior only slightly altered, remains around the corner at 627 Pennsylvania Avenue. And the three little buildings at 637-641 Indiana Avenue -- built in the 1820s -- were witness to it all. Today, some of the history made here is preserved in the great neoclassical National Archives building just across Pennsylvania Avenue. Washington DC's physical expansion after the Civil War led to a decline here, its historic downtown. The end of the 20th century brought a revival, with the return of theaters and restaurants, museums, shops, and places to live.
32. TRCWCR_190312_07.JPG: Union troops march in review on Pennsylvania Ave., May, 1865.
33. TRCWCR_190312_10.JPG: Sergeant Major Christian Fleetwood served with Union fighting forces in the Fourth U.S. Colored Troops and was awarded the Medal of Honor. Yet African American combat troops were barred by General William Tecumseh Sherman from marching in the May 1865 review.
34. TRCWCR_190312_18.JPG: Civil War photographer Matthew Brady who captured battlefield scenes like this, had a studio around the corner. He invited Lincoln to come and sit for a portrait.
35. TRCWCR_190312_24.JPG: These Federal style commercial structures have stood at 637-641 Indiana Ave. since the 1820s.
36. TRCWCR_190312_37.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.
37. TRCWCR_190312_43.JPG: Pedestrians share Pennsylvania Avenue at Seventh Street with streetcars and horse-drawn wagons in 1901.
38. TRCWCR_190316_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 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.
39. TRCWCR_190316_07.JPG: A team of oxen lugs a Rodman gun across the intersection of 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue during the Civil War. Heavy wartime traffic like this played havoc with the city's mostly unpaved streets.
40. TRCWCR_190316_12.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail w.5 The United States Treasury Billions for the war, and a bunker for the president The grand, pillared United States Treasury building that stands before you, its first section designed by Robert Mills in 1836, was the financial command center for the Union. It was here between 1861 and 1865 that the Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase raised the unprecedented sum of $2.7 billion to finance the government and the war. Chase issued bonds, instituted internal revenue taxes, printed paper money called "greenbacks" and created the first personal income tax in the United States. He also developed the nation's first system of national banks to provide financial stability - a network that remained in place until our present Federal Reserve System was devised early in the 20th century. Activity swirled around this building throughout the war. The 5th Massachusetts camped out here, cooking in the courtyard, and the basement became a bunker for the president and his cabinet in case of Confederate attack. It was here, also, that the federal government, of necessity, hired large numbers of women for the first time. These "lady clerks," as they were called, trimmed by hand the huge sheets of paper greenbacks invented by Secretary Chase. In 1863, the Treasury Building provided the setting for an experiment devised by President Lincoln. Here all loyal slave owners in the District of Columbia were paid to free their slaves - a model never carried out anywhere else in the country.
41. TRCWCR_190316_16.JPG: Secretary Chase hired "lady clerks" to hand cut his new greenbacks.
42. TRCWCR_190316_28.JPG: Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase's restored office.
43. TRCWCR_190316_29.JPG: This 1862 political cartoon pictures Treasury Secretary Chase as "bleeding" funds from a willing United States. At this time, a common method of treating illness was to drain some of the patient's blood.
44. TRCWCR_190316_37.JPG: Treasury's north front under construction, 1867
45. TRCWCR_190316_40.JPG: Blanche K. Bruce, a U.S. senator from Mississippi, later served President James A. Garfield as the first African American Register of the Treasury. Born a slave, Bruce exemplified the civil rights gains made by African Americans as a result of the war and Reconstruction.
46. TRCWCR_190401_04.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.
47. TRCWCR_190401_11.JPG: The commercial buildings on the left of this early 1900s photograph still stand alongside this sign.
48. TRCWCR_190401_18.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail e.10 Chinatown dragons to bring rain, prosperity, and friendship More than 280 dragons, crowned by 700 glazed tiles, look down from the Chinatown Friendship Archway before you. Symbols of the spirits that bring rain and prosperity in China, these painted and carved dragons are fitted together like a giant jigsaw puzzle in the ancient Chinese building tradition of "gong" balancing. Seven roofs weighing nine tons each are cantilevered, with no nails, almost 50 feet above the street. This is the largest single-span Chinese archway in the world, designed by Chinese-born Washington architect Alfred Liu and erected in 1986. A joint project of the governments of Washington, D.C. and its Chinese sister city, Beijing, it marks the entrance to Washington's Chinatown in a statement of international friendship. Chinese and American craftsmen worked side by side to construct it. The Chinese community in Washington dates back to the 1880s, when immigrants settled along Pennsylvania Avenue between Third and Sixth Streets, N.W. Forced out by construction of the Federal Triangle in the 1930s, the community relocated here with the help of the On Leong Chinese Merchants Association. They moved into homes once occupied by German Christian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants. Some of the city's oldest pre-Civil War buildings, with flat fronts and sloped roofs, can still be seen beneath the neighborhood's colorful Chinese fa�ades. While many Chinese Americans have left the area for newer homes in the city and suburbs, the community is dedicated to preserving a slice of Chinese culture downtown. Calvary Baptist Church at 8th and H, the first to create a Chinese Sunday School here, is still involved with the community. St. Mary Mother of God Catholic Church near 5th and H has regular Masses in Cantonese. Chinese symbols and signs preserve the spirit of this special place, and residents of the metropolitan area flock to the annual Chinese New Year's dragon parade.
49. TRCWCR_190401_24.JPG: Because of restrictive U.S. Immigration laws, Washington's original Chinese community was all male. The men formed strong organizations, such as the On Leong Chinese Merchants Association, for mutual aid and companionship. The association was housed for many years in this building at 618 H Street.
50. TRCWCR_190401_27.JPG: Celebrating Chinese New Year
51. TRCWCR_190401_31.JPG: Calvary Baptist Church nearby at Eighth and H Streets, as photographed by Matthew Brady just after the Civil War, started the first Chinese Sunday School.
52. TRCWCR_190401_34.JPG: Calvary Baptist Church nearby at Eighth and H Streets ... Its altar is decorated for a national celebration.
53. TRCWCR_190401_37.JPG: Italianate (Mid Nineteenth Century) Queen Ann (Late Nineteenth Century) Federal (Early Nineteenth Century) Behind the Chinese embellishments in this neighborhood can be found the 19th-century building styles of an earlier residential community.
54. TRCWCR_190403_01.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail e.1 Chief Justice John Marshall A bronze likeness of Chief Justice John Marshall, visible on your way to the next Heritage Trail sign, keeps watch over John Marshall Park to your right. Marshall is remembered for molding the U.S. Supreme Court into today's authoritative body. Appointed by President John Adams, Marshall served a record 34 years until his death in 1835. He participated in more than 1,000 decisions, including the 1803 Marbury v. Madison, which defined the court's authority to declare "unconstitutional" laws passed by Congress. John Marshall Park replaced John Marshall Place (originally 4� Street), a few blocks of small shops and law offices that once linked Washington's first City Hall/Courthouse with Pennsylvania Avenue. The monumental buildings and sweeping views here along Pennsylvania Avenue are the result of city planner Peter C. (a.k.a. Pierre) L'Enfant's grand 1791 vision for the Nation's Capital. But in the early 1800s, when Congress met only a few months annually, this stretch of Washington's main street was known as "Hash Row," lined with boarding houses and hotels serving members of Congress and individuals doing business with the Federal Government. Guests at Elizabeth Peyton's boarding house on this spot included Chief Justice Marshall and Senator Henry Clay. A number of photographers recorded city business and ceremonial life here as well. C.M. Bell's studio of the late 1800s rivaled Mathew Brady's for portraits of Washington notables and distinguished visitors. Bell became known especially for photographing hundreds of American Indians in town for treaty negotiations. To reach Sign e.2 at the corner of Sixth Street and Indiana Avenue, please proceed north along the John Marshall Park walkway past the statue of Marshall by William Wetmore Story,then turn left on C Street and right on Sixth.
55. TRCWCR_190403_05.JPG: The bunting-draped hotel at left replaced a "Hash Row" boarding house on the corner of Pennsylvania Ave. and 4 � St., approximately on this spot. Sen. Henry Clay, upper right, once boarded there. The United States Hotel, once one block east of here, advertised reasonable rates around 1880.
56. TRCWCR_190403_13.JPG: Portrait of Justice Marshall, by Robert Matthew Sully. The advertisement for the United States Hotel appears to the left.
57. TRCWCR_190403_16.JPG: Portrait of Justice Marshall, by Robert Matthew Sully. The advertisement for the United States Hotel appears to the left.
58. TRCWCR_190403_19.JPG: Lawyer John Barthel, below, lived and worked at John Marshall Place, left, (now John Marshall Park) around 1906.
59. TRCWCR_190403_22.JPG: Lawyer John Barthel, below, lived and worked at John Marshall Place, left, (now John Marshall Park) around 1906.
60. TRCWCR_190403_25.JPG: Photographer C.M. Bell's portrait of Fire Lightning, right, and his studio's logo, above.
61. TRCWCR_190403_28.JPG: Photographer C.M. Bell's portrait of Fire Lightning, right, and his studio's logo, above.
62. TRCWCR_190403_35.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.
63. TRCWCR_190403_44.JPG: This creative concept for paving Pennsylvania Ave. captures buildings that existed in 1853, including the National Hotel at left, which once occupied the corner of Sixth St. where the Newseum is today. The Capitol's original, modest dome is seen at center.
64. TRCWCR_190707_01.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail e.2 Ending Slavery in Washington To your right at the end of Indiana Avenue is Washington's first City Hall/Courthouse. Across Sixth Street is the H. Carl Moultrie I Courthouse, a successor to the original courthouse. The Old City Hall/Courthouse opened in 1822, with offices for the mayor, city administrators, and federal courts. Today it is the city's third-oldest public building, after the White House and the Capitol. The City Hall/Courthouse witnessed key events in abolition history. In 1848 abolitionist Daniel Drayton faced trial here for larceny and illegally transporting slaves. Months earlier, Drayton had been captured along with 77 African Americans attempting to escape slavery aboard his schooner, Pearl. Drayton was found guilty and served jail time, but was pardoned in 1852. The National Park Service later cited this case when it added the City Hall/Courthouse to its National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. On April 16, 1862, during the Civil War, President Lincoln signed the DC Emancipation Act, freeing DC's enslaved people. The law established an experiment called "compensated emancipation," reimbursing slave owners for their human property. Owners came to the City Hall/Courthouse, where three commissioners had the ugly task of putting a monetary value on human life (up to $300 per person). Later President Lincoln did not offer compensation when his Emancipation Proclamation declared the enslaved people of the rebellious states to be free in January 1863.
65. TRCWCR_190707_10.JPG: H. Carl Moultrie I (1915-1986), above, first African American chief judge of the DC Superior Court. At left, workmen finish the Moultrie Courthouse skylight, 1976.
66. TRCWCR_190707_11.JPG: Seen here in 1835, the slave house of J.W. Neal & Co at Seventh St. south of the National Mall was a center of the District slave trade.
67. TRCWCR_190707_19.JPG: Daniel Drayton, left, captain of the ill-fated Pearl. The Edmonson sisters (in plaid shawls) attempted to escape on the Pearl, were sold back into slavery, then rescued by family members. In this 1850 photo, above, they appeared at an abolition meeting with a young Frederick Douglass.
68. TRCWCR_190707_22.JPG: With this document, DC resident Margaret Barber requested reimbursement after freeing these African Americans from slavery, 1862.
69. TRCWCR_190707_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.
70. TRCWCR_190707_32.JPG: This drawing for architect George Hadfield's Greek Revival style City Hall/Courthouse, to your left along Indiana Avenue,includes a dome that was never built. - Library of Congress.
71. TRCWCR_190707_39.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.
72. TRCWCR_190707_46.JPG: In 1848 city officials urged an angry mob protesting on this corner to remain calm.
73. TRCWCR_190707_49.JPG: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was first published near this spot in serialized form in the National Era.
74. TRCWCR_190707_53.JPG: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was first published near this spot in serialized form in the National Era.
75. TRCWCR_190707_56.JPG: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was first published near this spot in serialized form in the National Era.
76. TRCWCR_190707_57.JPG: Charles Hamilton Houston, left, mentor to the future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, below, had an office on this block.
77. TRCWCR_190707_67.JPG: Charles Hamilton Houston, left, mentor to the future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, below, had an office on this block.
78. TRCWCR_190707_70.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.
79. TRCWCR_190707_71.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.
80. TRCWCR_190824_01.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail e.7 The National Building Museum The nation's only museum dedicated to American achievements in architecture, urban planning, construction, engineering, and design is appropriately housed in one of the most extraordinary structures in the nation's capital. Constructed between 1882 and 1887 in the style of an Italian Renaissance palace, the building was designed to house the Pension Bureau. The bureau, forerunner to today's Veterans Administration, managed thousands of pensions owed to Civil War veterans and to the families of those who died. It was designed by an engineer, Major General Montgomery C. Meigs, who had served the Union cause as Quartermaster General. General Meigs himself lost his son, John Rogers Meigs, in the Civil War. Some have called this building, with its symbolic parade of Union Forces, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial of the Pension Building's day. Although modeled on Rome's Palazzo Farnese, its provisions for light, air circulation, and fireproofing made it the federal government's first modern office building. Built in red brick rather than the white sandstone and marble of other federal buildings, it was ridiculed by many at the time. "It's too bad the damn thing is fireproof," said General William Tecumseh Sherman. A 1,200-foot-long terra cotta frieze encircles the entire building, depicting all the Union forces in the Civil War -- infantry, cavalry, and artillery troops, and naval, quartermaster, and medical personnel. Inside, massive 75-foot-tall columns, made of brick and finished to look like marble, punctuate a 300-foot-long Great Hall. A favorite venue for presidential inaugural balls, the Great Hall hosted its first for Grover Cleveland in 1885, even before the building was completed. Threatened with demolition in the 1960s, the building was saved by citizen action. It became home to the National Building Museum by an act of Congress in 1980.
81. TRCWCR_190824_07.JPG: Major General Montgomery C. Meigs, above, designed and built the Pension Building with a great hall reminiscent of a Renaissance palace. He use 15-1/2 million bricks. A recent view of the finished Great Hall, lower right.
82. TRCWCR_190824_13.JPG: A recent view of the finished Great Hall, lower right.
83. TRCWCR_190824_16.JPG: The Great Hall decorated for the inaugural ball of President William McKinley in 1901.
84. TRCWCR_190824_19.JPG: A portion of the terra cotta frieze which encircles the building and honors the Union forces in the Civil War. Frieze by Casper Buberi.
85. TRCWCR_190824_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.
86. TRCWCR_190824_31.JPG: Civil War infantrymen march around the Pension Building, now the National Building Museum, in a 1,200-foot-long terra cottage frieze that surrounds the red brick structure.
87. TRCWCR_191002_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 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.
88. TRCWCR_191002_08.JPG: The new, underground ceremonial courtroom for the DC Court of Appeals.
89. TRCWCR_191002_15.JPG: Civil War to Civil Rights Downtown Heritage Trail e.6 A Courthouse Reborn The old City Hall/Courthouse endured hard use, was abandoned, and then was transformed. In 2009 it re-opened as the DC Court of Appeals, redesigned by Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners, which modernized the interior while preserving its historic features. A graceful glass atrium defined the new main entrance, and the limestone walls gleamed. A grand new ceremonial courtroom was constructed beneath the south lawn. The Court of Appeals now stands among other dignified courthouses. But in 1822, when the mayor and council moved into the new City Hall, their neighbors were the hastily built Washington County poorhouse, the Washington Jail, and eventually the Washington Infirmary, providing medical care to the poor. The jail was especially bleak, confirming criminals and debtors together with the insane. In addition the cells held fugitives from slavery, enslaved people, and free African Americans who had broken one of the Black Codes that governed their lives until DC emancipation in 1862. For example, African Americans could not be on the street past curfew without a permit. The city required all free African Americans to register and have a white sponsor. By the 1870s the poorhouse and infirmary were long gone. The reviled Washington Jail was finally razed in 1878 after the new jail was built near the Anacostia River. In their wake, the city commissioners transformed the landscape of the tears into a beautiful city park, with curving paths, a watchman's lodge, and a marble fountain. In 1991 the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial opened where the park had been.
90. TRCWCR_191002_20.JPG: Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper published this expose of the Washington Jail in 1861
91. TRCWCR_191002_23.JPG: The same year the Washington Infirmary burned as illustrated in Harper's Weekly.
92. TRCWCR_191002_25.JPG: Today's glass pavilion is a modern interpretation of the original portico.
93. TRCWCR_191002_28.JPG: The 1908 photo at left shows the peeling City Hall/Courthouse with a north portico, which soon fell into a renovation.
94. TRCWCR_191002_31.JPG: Superior Court Building A, across E Street towards Fifth Street, opened as DC Police Court in 1938. City officials tour its new, modern holding cells.
95. TRCWCR_191002_34.JPG: Superior Court Building A, across E Street towards Fifth Street, opened as DC Police Court in 1938. City officials tour its new, modern holding cells.
96. TRCWCR_191002_37.JPG: Years before the Law Enforcement Officers Memorial was built, just north of this sign, this quiet city park occupied the site.
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