BGuthrie Photos: DC Heritage Trails: Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail

DC Heritage Trails: Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains 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: 18.223.171.12 -- 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]

Share: Facebook Twitter Digg
[1] TRGAPP_200418_02.JPG	[2] TRGAPP_200418_10.JPG	[3] TRGAPP_200418_12.JPG
[4] TRGAPP_200418_14.JPG	[5] TRGAPP_200418_17.JPG	[6] TRGAPP_200418_21.JPG
[7] TRGAPP_200418_22.JPG	[8] TRGAPP_200418_25.JPG	[9] TRGAPP_200418_29.JPG
[10] TRGAPP_200418_32.JPG	[11] TRGAPP_200418_37.JPG	[12] TRGAPP_200418_42.JPG
[13] TRGAPP_200509_001.JPG	[14] TRGAPP_200509_007.JPG	[15] TRGAPP_200509_010.JPG
[16] TRGAPP_200509_013.JPG	[17] TRGAPP_200509_016.JPG	[18] TRGAPP_200509_019.JPG
[19] TRGAPP_200509_022.JPG	[20] TRGAPP_200509_025.JPG	[21] TRGAPP_200509_028.JPG
[22] TRGAPP_200509_031.JPG	[23] TRGAPP_200509_033.JPG	[24] TRGAPP_200509_036.JPG
[25] TRGAPP_200509_042.JPG	[26] TRGAPP_200509_047.JPG	[27] TRGAPP_200509_055.JPG
[28] TRGAPP_200509_058.JPG	[29] TRGAPP_200509_061.JPG	[30] TRGAPP_200509_064.JPG
[31] TRGAPP_200509_067.JPG	[32] TRGAPP_200509_070.JPG	[33] TRGAPP_200509_073.JPG
[34] TRGAPP_200509_075.JPG	[35] TRGAPP_200509_077.JPG	[36] TRGAPP_200509_081.JPG
[37] TRGAPP_200509_085.JPG	[38] TRGAPP_200509_088.JPG	[39] TRGAPP_200509_091.JPG
[40] TRGAPP_200509_094.JPG	[41] TRGAPP_200509_097.JPG	[42] TRGAPP_200509_103.JPG
[43] TRGAPP_200509_105.JPG	[44] TRGAPP_200509_108.JPG	[45] TRGAPP_200509_113.JPG
[46] TRGAPP_200509_116.JPG	[47] TRGAPP_200509_119.JPG	[48] TRGAPP_200509_122.JPG
[49] TRGAPP_200509_127.JPG	[50] TRGAPP_200509_130.JPG	[51] TRGAPP_200509_133.JPG
[52] TRGAPP_200509_136.JPG	[53] TRGAPP_200509_141.JPG	[54] TRGAPP_200509_142.JPG
[55] TRGAPP_200509_144.JPG	[56] TRGAPP_200509_147.JPG	[57] TRGAPP_200509_152.JPG
[58] TRGAPP_200513_001.JPG	[59] TRGAPP_200513_005.JPG	[60] TRGAPP_200513_008.JPG
[61] TRGAPP_200513_011.JPG	[62] TRGAPP_200513_013.JPG	[63] TRGAPP_200513_016.JPG
[64] TRGAPP_200513_019.JPG	[65] TRGAPP_200513_022.JPG	[66] TRGAPP_200513_025.JPG
[67] TRGAPP_200513_030.JPG	[68] TRGAPP_200513_031.JPG	[69] TRGAPP_200513_033.JPG
[70] TRGAPP_200513_036.JPG	[71] TRGAPP_200513_039.JPG	[72] TRGAPP_200513_041.JPG
[73] TRGAPP_200513_044.JPG	[74] TRGAPP_200513_048.JPG	[75] TRGAPP_200513_051.JPG
[76] TRGAPP_200513_053.JPG	[77] TRGAPP_200513_056.JPG	[78] TRGAPP_200513_057.JPG
[79] TRGAPP_200513_062.JPG	[80] TRGAPP_200513_066.JPG	[81] TRGAPP_200513_069.JPG
[82] TRGAPP_200513_071.JPG	[83] TRGAPP_200513_073.JPG	[84] TRGAPP_200513_075.JPG
[85] TRGAPP_200513_078.JPG	[86] TRGAPP_200513_082.JPG	[87] TRGAPP_200513_086.JPG
[88] TRGAPP_200513_089.JPG	[89] TRGAPP_200513_092.JPG	[90] TRGAPP_200513_095.JPG
[91] TRGAPP_200513_097.JPG	[92] TRGAPP_200513_100.JPG	[93] TRGAPP_200513_102.JPG
[94] TRGAPP_200513_104.JPG	[95] TRGAPP_200513_106.JPG	[96] TRGAPP_200513_109.JPG
[97] TRGAPP_200513_111.JPG	[98] TRGAPP_200513_121.JPG	[99] TRGAPP_200513_123.JPG
[100] TRGAPP_200513_126.JPG	[101] TRGAPP_200513_129.JPG	[102] TRGAPP_200513_133.JPG
[103] TRGAPP_200513_136.JPG	[104] TRGAPP_200513_138.JPG	[105] TRGAPP_200513_141.JPG
[106] TRGAPP_200513_144.JPG	[107] TRGAPP_200513_146.JPG	[108] TRGAPP_200513_149.JPG
[109] TRGAPP_200513_152.JPG	[110] TRGAPP_200513_155.JPG	[111] TRGAPP_200513_158.JPG
[112] TRGAPP_200513_161.JPG	[113] TRGAPP_200513_164.JPG	[114] TRGAPP_200513_167.JPG
[115] TRGAPP_200513_170.JPG	[116] TRGAPP_200513_173.JPG	[117] TRGAPP_200513_177.JPG
[118] TRGAPP_200513_181.JPG	[119] TRGAPP_200513_184.JPG	[120] TRGAPP_200513_187.JPG
[121] TRGAPP_200513_193.JPG	[122] TRGAPP_200513_196.JPG	[123] TRGAPP_200513_201.JPG
[124] TRGAPP_200513_203.JPG	[125] TRGAPP_200513_206.JPG	[126] TRGAPP_200513_208.JPG
[127] TRGAPP_200513_214.JPG	[128] TRGAPP_200513_220.JPG	[129] TRGAPP_200513_222.JPG
[130] TRGAPP_200513_225.JPG	[131] TRGAPP_200513_231.JPG	[132] TRGAPP_200513_233.JPG
[133] TRGAPP_200513_236.JPG	[134] TRGAPP_200513_241.JPG	[135] TRGAPP_200513_244.JPG
[136] TRGAPP_200513_247.JPG	[137] TRGAPP_200513_251.JPG	[138] TRGAPP_200513_253.JPG
[139] TRGAPP_200513_256.JPG	[140] TRGAPP_200513_259.JPG	[141] TRGAPP_200513_263.JPG
[142] TRGAPP_200513_265.JPG	[143] TRGAPP_200513_268.JPG	[144] TRGAPP_200513_271.JPG
[145] TRGAPP_200513_274.JPG	[146] TRGAPP_200513_277.JPG	[147] TRGAPP_200513_280.JPG
[148] TRGAPP_200513_284.JPG	[149] TRGAPP_200513_287.JPG	[150] TRGAPP_200513_290.JPG
[151] TRGAPP_200513_293.JPG	[152] TRGAPP_200513_296.JPG	[153] TRGAPP_200513_300.JPG
[154] TRGAPP_200513_303.JPG	[155] TRGAPP_200513_305.JPG	[156] TRGAPP_200513_307.JPG
[157] TRGAPP_200513_310.JPG	[158] TRGAPP_200513_313.JPG	[159] TRGAPP_200513_316.JPG
[160] TRGAPP_200513_319.JPG	[161] TRGAPP_200513_325.JPG	[162] TRGAPP_200513_329.JPG
[163] TRGAPP_200513_332.JPG	[164] TRGAPP_200513_335.JPG	[165] TRGAPP_200513_338.JPG
[166] TRGAPP_200513_344.JPG	[167] TRGAPP_200513_349.JPG	[168] TRGAPP_200513_355.JPG
[169] TRGAPP_200513_358.JPG	[170] TRGAPP_200513_365.JPG	[171] TRGAPP_200513_367.JPG
[172] TRGAPP_200513_370.JPG	[173] TRGAPP_200513_373.JPG	[174] TRGAPP_200513_377.JPG
[175] TRGAPP_200513_380.JPG	[176] TRGAPP_200513_383.JPG	[177] TRGAPP_200513_386.JPG
[178] TRGAPP_200513_389.JPG	[179] TRGAPP_200513_392.JPG	[180] TRGAPP_200513_395.JPG
[181] TRGAPP_200513_400.JPG	[182] TRGAPP_200513_404.JPG	[183] TRGAPP_200513_407.JPG
[184] TRGAPP_200513_409.JPG	[185] TRGAPP_200513_415.JPG	[186] TRGAPP_200513_417.JPG
[187] TRGAPP_200513_419.JPG	[188] TRGAPP_200513_422.JPG	[189] TRGAPP_200513_428.JPG
[190] TRGAPP_200513_431.JPG	[191] TRGAPP_200513_434.JPG	[192] TRGAPP_200513_437.JPG
[193] TRGAPP_200513_439.JPG	[194] TRGAPP_200513_441.JPG	[195] TRGAPP_200513_444.JPG
[196] TRGAPP_200513_445.JPG	[197] TRGAPP_200513_451.JPG	[198] TRGAPP_200513_452.JPG
[199] TRGAPP_200513_455.JPG	[200] TRGAPP_200513_458.JPG	[201] TRGAPP_200513_461.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. TRGAPP_200418_02.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 19 Mr. Lincoln's Ride It's the summer of 1862. Early morning, but already hot and dusty. You're standing at this spot, when you see a tall man on horseback. It's President Abraham Lincoln. You're pleased to see him, but not surprised. After all, he rides by here often. Georgia Avenue, then the Seventh Street Turnpike, ran between downtown Washington and Rock Creek Church Road, which led to Lincoln's summer cottage on the grounds of the Old Soldiers' Home (now the Armed Forces Retirement Home). Though Lincoln generally traveled with military escorts, sometimes he sneaked out before dawn or after dark to journey in solitude. The Civil War was a year old. Lincoln occasionally stopped to visit with formerly enslaved men and women or wounded soldiers at settlements and Army camps along his route. Harewood Hospital, once located near today's Washington Hospital Center, was one of these. The poet Walt Whitman described Harewood as "out in the woods, pleasant and recluse." In March 1865, southern radical John Wilkes Booth heard the president would attend a play at Campbell Hospital, then located at Sixth and Florida, near where this Heritage Trail begins. Booth plotted unsuccessfully to kidnap Lincoln on his way back to the cottage. But a mere month later, he had his way, assassinating Lincoln at Ford's Theatre. For 83 years Engine Company 24, DC's first fully motorized fire company, occupied the south end of this block. Though the facility closed in 1994, its handsome fa�ade survives on the Metro cooling plant on New Hampshire Avenue just south of this corner. The Green line opened here in 1999.
2. TRGAPP_200418_10.JPG: President Lincoln's Cottage at the time of his visits.
3. TRGAPP_200418_12.JPG: President Lincoln, seen here reviewing troops, followed this route to the cottage.
4. TRGAPP_200418_14.JPG: "Washington, D.C. 1862-4" showing the usual route taken by President Lincoln to the Soldier's Home. Based of Boshke's map of 1861.
5. TRGAPP_200418_17.JPG: Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, right, considered attacking Lincoln at Campbell Hospital, above.
6. TRGAPP_200418_21.JPG: Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, right, considered attacking Lincoln at Campbell Hospital, above.
7. TRGAPP_200418_22.JPG: In 1949 Engine Company 24 stood on the site of today's Park Place apartments.
8. TRGAPP_200418_25.JPG: Military musicians pose in front of a Harewood Hospital building, 1864.
9. TRGAPP_200418_29.JPG: The flimsy hospital wards stretch across the hillside.
10. TRGAPP_200418_37.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
11. TRGAPP_200418_42.JPG: The Orchid Dry Cleaner building was razed to make way for the Metro station entrance across the street.
12. TRGAPP_200509_001.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 1 Grief Turns to Anger Thursday Evening, April 4, 1968. The news that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has been assassinated in Memphis makes its way like lightning through the city. Nearby at 14th and U Streets -- once the cultural heart of DC's African American community and a bustling area where hundreds change buses and shop -- faces register first shock and then anger. People demand that businesses close out of respect for Dr. King. Then individuals begin breaking windows, looting some places, burning others. The violence spreads along U Street to this intersection, where, over the next three days, almost every white-owned business on Seventh between S Street and Florida Avenue is destroyed. A United Planning Organization leader tells the Washington Post that day, "Black Americans feel more divided from white Americans than at any time in this century." The 1968 riots were, in large part, a response to inequities in housing, jobs, and schools, and to the city's neglect of black neighborhoods. "We're burning the rats and roaches along with everything else," proclaimed a youngster who had just set fire to a store here on Seventh Street. The rubble and crime left behind scarred this Neighborhood for years, and those who once enjoyed its restaurants and clubs stayed away. While officials and activists worked on rebuilding plans almost immediately -- a playground opened in summer 1969 where Waxie Maxie's had stood at 1836 Seventh Street, across Seventh close to T Street -- it would take many long years and the 1991 opening of this Metro station to make substantial progress.
13. TRGAPP_200509_036.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
14. TRGAPP_200509_042.JPG: A view through the ruins of Dox Liquors, which once stood on this corner, of businesses across Seventh St., April 16, 1968.
15. TRGAPP_200509_047.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 4 Armed Resistance Shortly before midnight on July 22, 1919, James Scott, a black army veteran, boarded a streetcar at the corner and nearly lost his life. A few days before, a white mob, including many veterans of World War I, had terrorized Southwest DC, randomly attacking black people in retaliation for an alleged assault on a white woman. Spurred by rumors and newspaper headlines, attackers targeted other Black neighborhoods. But Scott didn't know this. Boarding the streetcar here, he was stunned to hear white passengers yell, "Lynch him!" As he attempted to flee, the conductor shot at him three times. That summer race relations were tense nationwide, with rioting in many cities. In Washington black men who had fought bravely overseas came home to a city more segregated than the one they had left. President Woodrow Wilson's administration had established separate facilities for black federal employees. Unemployment was high. African Americans who had been respected as soldiers came home determined to fight U.S. racism. Most whites were determined to keep them "in their place." As mobs raged, some 2,000 black Washingtonians rallied here to defend their neighborhood. Veteran sharpshooters manned the Howard Theatre's roof, and others patrolled Seventh Street. Clergymen called on President Wilson to protect the community. By the time U.S. troops quelled the violence, seven people were dead and hundreds were injured But African Americans took pride in the successful defense of their neighborhoods. Among those decrying the violence was William A. Taylor, founding pastor of the Florida Avenue Baptist Church, which you just passed, at 633 Florida Avenue. The original 1913 church building was replaced in 1964.
16. TRGAPP_200509_058.JPG: For the duration of the disturbances, the Washington Post ran inflammatory headlines including this one from July 22, 1919. The Washington Post
17. TRGAPP_200509_061.JPG: This map, published in the old Washington Times in 1919, shows areas of the city hit by "rioting" on July 21. "Zone 1" was the around where this sign is today.
18. TRGAPP_200509_064.JPG: After the disturbances ended, copies of this handbill appeared throughout DC's black neighborhoods.
19. TRGAPP_200509_067.JPG: Rev. William A. Taylor, center, and family at his 2119 13th St. home, 1938. At upper left is grandson Billy Taylor, later an influential jazz musician and educator.
20. TRGAPP_200509_070.JPG: The Florida Avenue Baptist Church, right, celebrated its mortgage burning in 1944.
21. TRGAPP_200509_075.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
22. TRGAPP_200509_077.JPG: The separate Welcome Home parade for African American soldiers who served their nation in segregated units during World War I, Pennsylvania Avenue, February 1919.
23. TRGAPP_200509_081.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
24. TRGAPP_200509_085.JPG: Seventh and T Sts., in 1939. The Howard Theatre is at left.
25. TRGAPP_200509_088.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 2 Seventh and T Back in the day, Seventh and T was the place to go for a good time. Once the Howard Theatre opened at 620 T Street in 1910, restaurants, nightclubs, and businesses serving the diverse African American communities followed. As Marita Golden wrote in Long Distance Life, "Seventh Street, dressed in neon, with the hungry perfume of passion, hummed and whistled and scatted its way into the night." Seventh Street inspired. DC native Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington based his first composition, "Soda Fountain Rag," on the nearby Poodle Dog Caf�, where he worked after school as a soda jerk around 1915. In the 1960s, under-aged fan and neighbor Reggie Kelly "delighted in hanging outside the doors" of Mike's New Breed across Seventh north of T Street "listening to the house bands." Back in 1938, at 1836 Seventh, Max Silverman started what became the Waxie Maxie's chain of 28 record stores. Fans of Sarah Vaughan, Buddy Rich, and rising local black artists flocked to Silverman's jam sessions and live radio broadcasts held in the storefront's window, known as the goldfish bowl. The teen-aged Ahmet Ertegun, son of Turkey's ambassador to Washington, was a frequent customer. Inspired by the R&B of Seventh and T, Ertegun found Atlantic Records in 1947, eventually recording DC's Clovers, as well as Ray Charles, the Rolling Stones, and many others. To your right is the Southern Aid Society Building and Dunbar movie house, which opened in 1921. African American architect Isaiah T. Hatton designed the building, and Lewis Giles, Sr., just staring a long career as a Washington architect, was chief draftsman.
26. TRGAPP_200509_091.JPG: Grand re-opening of Quality Music (later named Waxie Maxie's), 1836 Seventh St., 1948. DJ Harold Jackson, Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughan, and owner Max Silverman greet shoppers.
27. TRGAPP_200509_094.JPG: Grand re-opening of Quality Music (later named Waxie Maxie's), 1836 Seventh St., 1948. DJ Harold Jackson, Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughan, and owner Max Silverman greet shoppers.
28. TRGAPP_200509_097.JPG: Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records.
29. TRGAPP_200509_103.JPG: Max Silverman welcomes Duke Ellington to Quality Music, around 1948.
30. TRGAPP_200509_105.JPG: Page one of Duke Ellington's "Soda Fountain Rag."
31. TRGAPP_200509_108.JPG: The Off Beat Club, a Seventh and T destination of the 1940s.
32. TRGAPP_200509_113.JPG: Draftsman, later architect, Lewis W. Giles, Sr., checks the Southern Aid Building's construction.
33. TRGAPP_200509_119.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 3 Howard Theatre The legendary Howard opened in 1910 as the nation's first major theater built for African Americans. Audiences came for plays, variety shows, concerts, and movies. In the 1930s, under manager Shep Allen, the Howard became part of the segregation-era "Chitlin' Circuit" that featured African American performers. Allen's Amateur Night contests launched Billy Eckstine, Pearl Bailey, and Bill Kenny of the Ink Spots. Godfather of Go-Go Chuck Brown, the inventor of "DC's own sound," first worked outside the Howard Theatre as a young child, calling: "Shoes shined, shoes shined, five cents, a nickel, or a half a dime!" As the neighborhood went, so did the Howard. Although the theater escaped damage in the riots of April 1968, audiences thereafter avoided the riot-scarred neighborhood. The Howard closed in 1970, reopened in 1974, and closed again. Rehabilitation started in 2010. For years, the stage doors of the Howard opened to Wiltberger Street near the Wonder Bread Bakery, formerly Dorsch's White Cross Bakery. Fans would linger amid the aroma of fresh bread and the promise of stardust, watching for performers bound for U Street night spots or an after-show soiree at Cecilia's. This area's bakeries included two others near Howard University: Corby (later Continental) and Bond Bread. Baseball fans leaving Griffith Stadium remember stopping for fresh doughnuts on the way home. Near the Howard Theatre at 614 S Street was Jean Clore's Guest House and after-hours club. "Well-known dignitaries from every walk of life" stayed at Clore's "swanky homey hotel," according to the Black press of the 1930s. In 1982 the New Community Church moved into the building.
34. TRGAPP_200509_122.JPG: Howard Theatre manager Shep Allen with Fats Waller at the Howard, 1939, as Waller presents a check to a Police Boys Club representative.
35. TRGAPP_200509_127.JPG: 1. Redd Foxx Star Collection, DC Public Library; �Washington Post 2. James Brown Star Collection, DC Public Library; �Washington Post 3. Ruth Brown Moorland Springarn Research Center 4. Billy Eckstine Washington Post 5. LaVern Baker Washington Post 6. Leigh Whipper Collection of Carole Ione Lewis 7. Chuck Brown Washington Post
36. TRGAPP_200509_130.JPG: Cecelia Penny Scott, right, with husband James Scott, right rear, and patrons in her popular restaurant and rooming house across T Street from this sign, 1958.
37. TRGAPP_200509_136.JPG: A delivery truck for Dorsch's White Cross Bread, 1926
38. TRGAPP_200509_141.JPG: Hotelier and society figure Jean Clore, 1938
39. TRGAPP_200509_144.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
40. TRGAPP_200509_147.JPG: Crowds gather at the Howard Theatre, around 1940.
41. TRGAPP_200513_001.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 5 Griffith Stadium "I used to come home every night, get a quarter from my mother, run to Griffith Stadium, and sit in the bleachers," Abe Pollin once said. "I would look out at these good seats and say, ‘Some day, maybe I will get a good seat.' "When Pollin's MCI Center opened downtown in 1997, the respected real estate developer got himself – and gave his city – thousands of good seats. Griffith Stadium occupied this block until it was razed in 1965. (Howard University Hospital opened here ten years later.) During the 1940s, Griffith crowds cheered batting superstar Josh Gibson of the Homestead Grays, the Negro League team that won more games than any other hometown team. Here ace pitcher Walter Johnson led the all-White Washington Senators to their only World Series victory in 1924. While Griffith was one of DC's few public venues open to all during segregation, the races sat separately. Griffith also hosted the Washington Redskins (1937-1961), student cadet competitions, Boy Scout jamborees, National Negro Opera Company performances, and mass baptisms conducted by Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux, whose Church of God still stands just across Georgia Avenue. The charismatic Michaux organized affordable housing, had his own radio show, and served bargain meals at the Happy News Caf�. In 1946 impresario David Rosenberg hired prominent African American architect Albert Cassell to design a music hall at 815 V Street. Soon after, Duke Ellington lent his name to a nightclub there. By 1952 WUST Radio occupied the facility, hosting evangelical broadcasts, jazz, and later, reggae and go-go concerts. After WUST moved to Virginia, the 9:30 Club relocated there from 930 F Street.
42. TRGAPP_200513_005.JPG: Homestead Grays power hitter Josh Gibson at bat.
43. TRGAPP_200513_008.JPG: Walter Johnson photographed in 1924, the year the Senators won it all.
44. TRGAPP_200513_011.JPG: High School Cadets participated in separate competitive drills at Griffith Stadium, 1940s. White cadets march [above], and a company from the "Colored" schools stands in formation [at left].
45. TRGAPP_200513_013.JPG: High School Cadets participated in separate competitive drills at Griffith Stadium, 1940s. White cadets march [above], and a company from the "Colored" schools stands in formation [at left].
46. TRGAPP_200513_016.JPG: Upper left, Elder Michaux welcomes diners in his Happy News Caf�, 1727 7th St., 1937.
47. TRGAPP_200513_019.JPG: Upper right, a baptism begins at Griffith Stadium.
48. TRGAPP_200513_022.JPG: Elder Solomon Michaux's Church of God, 1949, across from Griffith Stadium.
49. TRGAPP_200513_025.JPG: WUST Radio DJ Steady Eddie was a Howard University senior and member of the Howard Players, 1952. The WUST building, far left, became the "9:30 Club" in 1996.
50. TRGAPP_200513_030.JPG: WUST Radio DJ Steady Eddie was a Howard University senior and member of the Howard Players, 1952. The WUST building, far left, became the "9:30 Club" in 1996.
51. TRGAPP_200513_033.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
52. TRGAPP_200513_036.JPG: This bird's-eye view of Griffith Stadium shows Georgia Ave. with its streetcars at the upper edge of the ball park, 1925.
53. TRGAPP_200513_044.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 6 Medical Care for All During the Civil War (1861-1865), thousands of formerly enslaved people came to Washington in search of new lives. They needed work, education, shelter – and health care. In 1862 the U.S. government responded with Freedmen's Hospital, located at 12th and R Streets, NW. Less than a decade later, Freedmen's moved near Fifth and W Streets and became Howard University's teaching hospital. At a time of strict segregation, Freedmen's, like the university itself, was open to all, offering high-level care and education. Freedmen's focused on training physicians, but also became a top research institution. Pediatrician Roland Scott pioneered studies on sickle cell anemia, the genetic blood disorder that primarily affects African Americans. Washingtonian Charles R. Drew, who developed life-saving methods for mass blood banking during World War II, headed Freedmen's Surgery Department from 1941 until his death in 1950. From 1908 until 1975, Freedmen's operated in the building across the lawn from this sign, closing when Howard University Hospital opened on Georgia Avenue. Among the Howard-associated physicians who cared for their community was Ionia Whipper, a graduate who sheltered unwed mothers in her home/clinic nearby at 511 Florida Avenue during the 1940s. Former faculty member Simeon Carson opened a private hospital at 1822 Fourth Street. During Civil Rights demonstrations Freedmen's treated participants free of charge. Just east of here is the edge of what oldtimers called Howardtown, an area of wood-frame houses that grew from a settlement of formerly enslaved people during and after the Civil War. The Kelly Miller Dwellings replaced much of Howardtown in the early 1940s.
54. TRGAPP_200513_048.JPG: A 1930 class of nursing students stood for a Scurlock portrait on Freedmen's Hospital's front steps.
55. TRGAPP_200513_051.JPG: A Freedmen's orderly pushes a convalescent.
56. TRGAPP_200513_053.JPG: Dr. Charles R. Drew, left, poses with the Red Cross's first mobile blood-collecting unit during World War II.
57. TRGAPP_200513_056.JPG: Dr. Roland Scott (wearing eyeglasses) receives an incubator for Freedmen's Hospital's babies, 1941.
58. TRGAPP_200513_057.JPG: Howard-associated physicians Ionia Whipper, bottom right, and Simeon L. Carson, right. Below, Carson's private hospital.
59. TRGAPP_200513_066.JPG: A portion of old Howardtown.
60. TRGAPP_200513_069.JPG: Inspectors examine the new V Street Houses, right, also visible as the horseshoe-shaped development near Griffith Stadium, far right. Just south, the Kelly Miller Dwellings are under constructions, 1941.
61. TRGAPP_200513_075.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
62. TRGAPP_200513_078.JPG: In a men's ward at Freedmen's Hospital, 1939.
63. TRGAPP_200513_086.JPG: Cowtown with Garfield Hospital, photographed looking west from atop Howard University's Main Building, 1910.
64. TRGAPP_200513_089.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Avenue/Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 8 Cleaning Up Cowtown The area west of this spot once was an Irish and German immigrant neighborhood known as "Cowtown." That's because, before 1871, cows, pigs, and sheep roamed freely here, while those kept in Washington City, south of Boundary Street (today's Florida Avenue), had to be penned. A stream bordering Sheridan Avenue carried away the reeking refuse from Cowtown's slaughter houses. While the livestock and slaughterhouses eventually left, the low-income multi-ethnic neighborhood's poor reputation remained. Odessa Marie Madre DC's own "Al Capone," grew up here and later ran a Cowtown "jill joint" selling bootleg liquor. By the 1940s juvenile gangs ,known as the "Bonecrushers" and "Fifth Street Tigers" committed not-so-petty crimes. Then local police officer Oliver Cowan created the Junior Police and Citizen Corps, so youth could "solve its own problems." "Kids caught breaking street lights were named Inspectors of Streets and Lights," reported the Washington Post. Unlike the segregated Boys' Clubs and Boy Scouts, the Corps encouraged, interracial friendships and included girls. Juvenile arrests dropped dramatically. From the 1880s to the 1950s, Garfield Hospital stood just west of here. Garfield Terrace, DC's first public housing designed for e1derly residents replaced the hospital in 1965, bringing innovative wheelchair-accessible foot paths and community kitchens. Corby Brothers Bakery opened across the street from here in 1911. Brothers Charles and William Corby grew very rich after inventing machines and processes that revolutionized baking and led to mass distribution of bread. 'Eventually Continental Baking bought out the Corbys and the factory turned to making Wonder Bread. Howard University then bought and adapted the old plant for offices and shops.
65. TRGAPP_200513_092.JPG: Officers of the Second Police Precinct kept order in boisterous Cowtown, 1878.
66. TRGAPP_200513_095.JPG: Looking west on Barry Place in Cowtown, around 1925.
67. TRGAPP_200513_097.JPG: Junior Police and Citizens Corps founder Police Sergeant Oliver Cowan with young club members, 1946. [Civil rights activist Walter Fauntroy became a lieutenant in one of Cowan's Junior Police squads in 1942.]
68. TRGAPP_200513_100.JPG: The Wonder Bread bakery (formerly Corby's), 1949.
69. TRGAPP_200513_102.JPG: 1927 ad for Wonder Bread
70. TRGAPP_200513_104.JPG: Treating a Patient at Garfield Hospital
71. TRGAPP_200513_106.JPG: Garfield Hospital
72. TRGAPP_200513_109.JPG: Odessa Madre with an unknown man at the time of her 1952 arrest.
73. TRGAPP_200513_121.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
74. TRGAPP_200513_123.JPG: Illustrious Howard faculty of 1950: James Nabrit, Dr. Charles R. Drew, Sterling Brown, E. Franklin Frazier, Rayford Logan, and Alain Locke.
75. TRGAPP_200513_129.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Avenue./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 9 Teachers and Preachers As the Civil War was ended in 1865, most formerly enslaved African Americans arriving in the District could not read or write. The following year members of the First Congregational Society considered organizing a school to train teachers and preachers to educate them. Instead in 1867 the society went further and established Howard University to educate youth "in the liberal arts and sciences." The university has graduated such notables as Vernon Jordan, Toni Morrison, Jessye Norman, and Andrew Young. During the segregation era (1880s-1950s), white universities discriminated in their hiring. But Howard hired African Americans with PhDs, assembling a faculty of extraordinary gifts and accomplishments. Luminaries included historian Carter G. Woodson, philosopher Alain Locke, sociologists Kelly Miller and E. Franklin Prazier, artist Lois Mailou Jones, and educator Lucy Diggs Slowe. Appointed in 1926 as Howard's first black president, the Reverend Mordecai W. Johnson elevated Howard from a small, underfunded institution into "the Capstone," a highly respected, PhD-granting university. In the early 1930s, under Dean Charles Hamilton Houston, Howard's law school trained future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. The two later led an NAACP team whose efforts eventually toppled legal segregation in America, including in public schools (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954). On that team were Howard law professors James M. Nabrit (later Howard president), George E.C. Hayes, William H. Hastie, and Spottswood Robinson III, and historian John Hope Franklin. Atop the hill is Howard Hall (1869), originally home to the Civil War hero for whom the university is named. General Oliver Otis Howard led the Freedmen's Bureau, helped found the school, and served as its third president.
76. TRGAPP_200513_133.JPG: Students Study Art around 1925
77. TRGAPP_200513_136.JPG: Students Study Engineering around 1925
78. TRGAPP_200513_138.JPG: Students gather at Main Hall and Administration Building, one of Howard's first buildings. Founders Library, its replacement, opened in 1939.
79. TRGAPP_200513_141.JPG: General Oliver Otis Howard
80. TRGAPP_200513_144.JPG: Tennis champion and Dean of Women Lucy Diggs Slowe, around 1920
81. TRGAPP_200513_146.JPG: President Mordecai Johnson hosts First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt at Howard University Art Museum opening, 1941.
82. TRGAPP_200513_149.JPG: Charles Hamilton Houston, right, and Thurgood Marshall, left, won Donald Murray, center, the right to attend University of Maryland School of Law, 1935.
83. TRGAPP_200513_155.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 10 "Strike!" Howard University has a long history of student activism for civil rights, peace, and academic reform. Students of the 1930s and '40s protested lynchings nationwide and DC businesses that snubbed African Americans. In the early 1960s students organized sit-ins, registered voters in the South, and discussed pan-African theories. In 1966 university traditions merged with the Black Power movement when students elected the Afro-sporting activist Robin Gregory as Homecoming Queen. The following spring students protested the Vietnam War, charging that black soldiers fought for "freedom they do not have" at home. After students boycotted classes, Howard changed from a requirement to an elective the military (ROTC) training that put many on the path to Vietnam. In March 1968 students demanding a more Afrocentric curriculum seized the Administration Building. Writing to President James M. Nabrit, himself a civil rights icon, students insisted that Howard open to the wider black community, produce "leaders who take pride in their true identity," and become "the center of Afro-American thought." The negotiated settlement gave students more say in curricular and disciplinary issues. One month later a stunned campus united in grief over the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had often spoken on campus. Many graduates continued the struggle. Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure) chaired the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and eventually moved to Guinea and worked for pan-African revolution. Student leaders Charlie Cobb and Anthony Gittens co-founded DC's first Afrocentric bookstore, the Drum and Spear. Former theology student Douglas Moore led the Black United Front and helped found the DC Statehood Committee.
84. TRGAPP_200513_158.JPG: Protesters fill the Administration Building hallway, March 1968. At right, students post one of their demands.
85. TRGAPP_200513_161.JPG: Homecoming Queen Robin Gregory, 1966.
86. TRGAPP_200513_167.JPG: Student leader Anthony Gittens announces the end of the March protest. From left are trustees Percy Julian, Jr., Richard Hale, Kenneth Clark, and Myles Page, and students Ewart Brown (later premier of Bermuda), Adrienne Mann, Gittens, Michael Harris, and Q.T. Jackson, Jr.
87. TRGAPP_200513_170.JPG: Howard students react to Dr. King's assassination, 1968.
88. TRGAPP_200513_173.JPG: Howard alumni Stokely Carmichael
89. TRGAPP_200513_177.JPG: Howard alumni Douglas Moore
90. TRGAPP_200513_184.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
91. TRGAPP_200513_187.JPG: Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking in Rankin Chapel, Dec. 1956.
92. TRGAPP_200513_196.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 11 The Lake So Blue The body of water that inspired the line in Howard University's alma mater, "far above the lake so blue stands old Howard firm and true," is McMillan Reservoir, which opened in 1902 to supply water to the city. The reservoir and the Old Soldiers' Home grounds nearby created a green oasis for Howard students and their neighbors. On summer nights before World War II, neighborhood families fled their hot rowhouses to sleep on blankets near the cooling water. Howard's neighbors, long uplifted by the university's intellectual life, have enjoyed its campus traditions, especially Homecoming. In 1926 they joined the crowd of 16,000 to dedicate Howard's new stadium, and cheered as the Bisons crushed Lincoln University's Lions, 32-0. The annual Thanksgiving Day football game was the centerpiece of Classic Week's fraternity-hosted concerts, receptions, and dinner dances. Among the speakers at the 1926 stadium dedication was its designer, Professor Albert Cassell. The architect oversaw Howard's expansion in the 1930s, designing 16 campus buildings. Lynn C. French, who grew up near the campus, remembered attending Howard commencements with her family in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s -- not only to cheer graduating friends and relatives, but also to hear the inspirational speeches by such speakers as President Harry Truman. Just a year after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the graduates, pledging to enforce equal rights for all Americans: "It is not enough to open the gates class. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates." More recently Colin Powell and Oprah Winfrey have addressed the graduating class.
93. TRGAPP_200513_201.JPG: Crowds await the new stadium's first match, the 1926 Howard-Lincoln Thanksgiving Day "Classic."
94. TRGAPP_200513_203.JPG: Members of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority participate in Howard homecoming festivities, 1939.
95. TRGAPP_200513_206.JPG: Architect and Professor Albert Cassell with infant son Irvin. Among Cassell's campus designs are Douglass Hall right, and Founders Library.
96. TRGAPP_200513_214.JPG: Lynn French, holding the diploma, with her parents Carolyn Howard and David M. French after his 1948 graduation from Howard Medical School.
97. TRGAPP_200513_220.JPG: Howard President James Nabrit, at right, watches as U.S. President Lyndon Johnson greets Howard students in front of Founders Library following his June 1965 commencement speech.
98. TRGAPP_200513_222.JPG: In 1960 Sen. John F. Kennedy spoke on campus, above, as did labor leader A. Philip Randolph, left.
99. TRGAPP_200513_233.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
100. TRGAPP_200513_236.JPG: Aerial view of Howard's campus, around 1950.
101. TRGAPP_200513_241.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 12 Beyond the Basics During the Civil War, thousands of once-enslaved people crowded into DC, desperate for shelter, work, and protection. Most vulnerable were orphans and children separated from their families. In 1863 the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children opened a shelter for them in Georgetown. The National Home, managed by prominent African American women, was the city's only foster facility for black children. It taught them basic writing, math and trades and placed them for adoption. Eventually the home moved to 733 Euclid Street. The National Home's successor donated its building to the Emergent Community Arts Collective, which opened in 2006. Dolores Tucker, who grew up at 1000 Euclid, remembered a neighborhood filled with schools and teachers. After Tucker's mother Gladys Williams left teaching to raise her family, "teachers on their way to school used to stop at our home to have coffee with my mother…It was Grand Central Station." On the southeast corner of Georgia Avenue and Fairmont, Italian immigrants Frank and Mary Guerra opened the original Howard Delicatessen in 1923. In 1988 Kenny Gilmore took over the business. Gilmore, godson to the Guerra's daughter, had grown up two doors away and worked in the deli as a young boy.
102. TRGAPP_200513_247.JPG: Children of the Merriweather Home (successor to the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children) set the table, left, and dress for a Girl Scouts meeting, 1963.
103. TRGAPP_200513_253.JPG: Miner Teachers College football team, 1935.
104. TRGAPP_200513_256.JPG: Students at Banneker Junior High School (later Banneker High School), 1942.
105. TRGAPP_200513_259.JPG: Arthur Ashe, who won a youth championship at Banneker Recreation Center in the 1950s, returned to hold a tennis clinic there in 1969.
106. TRGAPP_200513_263.JPG: Dolores Williams leads mother Gladys and brother Theodore out of their home at 1000 Euclid on her wedding day, 1959.
107. TRGAPP_200513_265.JPG: Howard Delicatessen's first owners Mary, left, and Frank Guerra with their daughter Grace Guerra (Urciolo). Below, their successor Kenny Gilmore, with broom, coped with construction on Georgia Ave. in 1991.
108. TRGAPP_200513_268.JPG: Howard Delicatessen's first owners Mary, left, and Frank Guerra with their daughter Grace Guerra (Urciolo). Below, their successor Kenny Gilmore, with broom, coped with construction on Georgia Ave. in 1991.
109. TRGAPP_200513_271.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
110. TRGAPP_200513_274.JPG: Local children attended Miner Normal School's "practice" elementary school, around 1900.
111. TRGAPP_200513_280.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 13 Along the "Nile Valley" With its Afro-centric shops and connections to Howard University, this stretch of Georgia Avenue has been called the "Nile Valley." Blue Nile Botanicals opened first at 2826 Georgia in 1977. Hodari Ali, a former editor of Howard's student newspaper, followed with Pyramid Books at 2849 Georgia, where businessman Kenny Gilmore remembered finding "the whole 360 degrees of black life." Filmmaker and Howard Professor Haile Gerima opened Sankofa caf� and bookstore at 2714 Georgia in 1999. Long before the bookstores opened, the Cardozo Sisters operated a hair salon across the street in Howard Manor. Founded in Elizabeth Cardozo Barker's upstairs apartment, the salon set a refined tone. Its uniformed staff were prohibited from "speaking loudly, gossiping, or calling customers by their first names." Some clients with "permanent appointments" had their hair done at the same time every week for 30 years. The three sisters, daughters of DC educator Francis Lewis Cardozo, Jr., trained dozens of hairdressers. As a member of the city's Board of Cosmetology, Barker fought successfully to desegregate the profession. Ernest Myers began cutting hair at the Eagle Barber Shop at 2800 Georgia in 1947 and eventually bought the business. In order to attract mothers and their young sons, Myers recalled, he played only Christian radio music before 2 pm. He numbered Howard University presidents among his high-powered clients, some of whom first came under Myer's scissors during their student days. Deas Delicatessen opened in 1961 at 2901 Georgia, one block north, offering Howard students a three-meal-a-day plan, and serving such celebrities as comedian/activist Dick Gregory and the Urban League's Vernon Jordan.
112. TRGAPP_200513_284.JPG: Pyramid Books owner Hodari Ali discusses Kwanzaa, left, 1986.
113. TRGAPP_200513_287.JPG: This "pharaoh" marked Pyramid Books' storefront.
114. TRGAPP_200513_290.JPG: Anita Lewis makes an appointment with Elizabeth Cardozo Barker (at the desk) and Margaret Cardozo Holmes at the sisters' salon, 1941.
115. TRGAPP_200513_293.JPG: Edward Deas discusses retiring from his deli with Allison Mitchell, 1992.
116. TRGAPP_200513_296.JPG: Eagle Barber Shop proprietor Ernest Myers cuts Paul Gibson's hair, 1991.
117. TRGAPP_200513_300.JPG: Discover More… DC native Edward "Duke" Ellington lived with his wife Edna and their son Mercer at 2728 Sherman Avenue – one block west of here – from about 1919 to 1921.
118. TRGAPP_200513_307.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
119. TRGAPP_200513_310.JPG: Blue Nile owners Warren "Dudu" Allen and Ayo Ifalase at the counter, 2010.
120. TRGAPP_200513_313.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
121. TRGAPP_200513_316.JPG: While Secret Service agents watched, Mayor Walter Washington and neighborhood children enjoyed the Hobart Place pocket park on the day Lady Bird Johnson Dedicated it in 1968.
122. TRGAPP_200513_325.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Avenue/Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 14 Urban Oasis These rowhouses were built by developer Harry Wardman, whose houses, hotels, and apartment buildings are known for elegant, solid construction. When these became available in 1912, buyers snapped them up. Among them were an electrician, a policeman, and an iron worker. All were working class, and all were white. Wardman, like most developers of his era, had added a covenant, or agreement, to the deeds prohibiting sale or rental to "any Negro or colored person under a penalty of Two Thousand Dollars." Despite the covenants, by 1930 the houses were all occupied by African Americans. The change happened partly because of the race riot that occurred near here in 1919, and partly because black residential sections near U Street and Howard University expanded. In 1948 the Supreme Court declared racial covenants unenforceable. Racial change is never permanent, though. In 1956, when Lily Jones and her family moved to Hobart Place, she found a few white neighbors: "When We moved in, " recalled Jones, "they moved out." In her time on Hobart Place, Jones saw Latino families come and go, and the return of the whites. Recently multi-racial block parties resumed here, where Jones and her husband George raised eight children in their "study, well-built" house. This block's best-kept secret may be its tiny "Pocket parks." Responding to requests from Hobart Place Block Club, Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson, added Hobart Place's existing parks to her campaign to beautify Washington. Local philanthropists Carmen and David Lloyd Kreeger funded the work. This house is a mansion… This house holds the key to the future and the majesty of the past… This house has seen its share of ups and downs, but year after year it stands stronger than before. This house is a fortress. This house is love. This house is family -- Maya Alston, granddaughter of Lily Johnson.
123. TRGAPP_200513_329.JPG: Neighborhood Club President Eva Rumph, Carmen Kreeger, Lady Bird Johnson, David Lloyd Kreeger, and Mayor Walter E. Washington dedicated the Hobart Place community parks in 1968.
124. TRGAPP_200513_332.JPG: Lily Jones and neighbor Ruth Lawson enjoy a summer afternoon on Hobart Place, 1979.
125. TRGAPP_200513_335.JPG: From left, Lawrence, Valorie, William (later Rashad), and Darren, four of the eight Jones children who grew up at 762 Hobart Place, dressed for Easter 1968.
126. TRGAPP_200513_344.JPG: Harry Wardman's permit for rowhouses on this block of Hobart Place.
127. TRGAPP_200513_349.JPG: Harry Wardman's plat map for rowhouses on this block of Hobart Place.
128. TRGAPP_200513_358.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
129. TRGAPP_200513_365.JPG: Miss Duckett's class at Monroe Elementary, 1947.
130. TRGAPP_200513_367.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 15 "Treat Me Refined" The House at 3017 Sherman Avenue once was a boardinghouse for Howard University students. In 1923 a determined and talented young woman from the tiny town of Eatonville, Florida, lived here while earning an Associates Degree at Howard. In a short time she would win international acclaim as novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. Hungry for culture, Hurston devoured Howard's opportunities. She performed in campus theater, played violin, joined Zeta Phi Bet sorority, and co-founded the student newspaper, which she named The Hill Top. She published her first story in The Stylus, Howard's literary magazine. She attended renowned poet Georgia Douglas Johnson's literary salon, meeting the best-known black writers of the time. To support herself, Hurston waited tables at the exclusive, all-white Cosmos Club and cleaned houses. New York's black literary leaders discovered Hurston, who soon left for Harlem. There she helped spur the New Negro Renaissance, a period of intense cultural productivity and racial uplift. She went on to study ethnography under Franz Boaz at Columbia University and later collected folklore, returning occasionally to DC for professional meetings. In 1943 Howard honored her with a distinguished alumna award. "What do you think I was doing in Washington all that time if not getting cultured.. Treat me refined" -- Zora Neale Hurston to Langston Hughes, 1931. As you turn right on Kenyon Street ahead, you will pass Chavez-Bruce Preparatory Public Charter School. Built as the Blanche K. Bruce Elementary School, it opened for "colored" students in 1898. Monroe Elementary, at Georgia and Columbia, served white children from 1889 until 1931.Four decades later Bruce and Monroe merged in a new Building at Georgia and Irving.
131. TRGAPP_200513_370.JPG: Zora Neale Hurston, while a student at Howard University, at an unidentified location, 1920.
132. TRGAPP_200513_373.JPG: This issue of the Stylus contained Hurston's first published story.
133. TRGAPP_200513_377.JPG: At the 1938 National Folk Festival in Washington, this group performed southern folk songs collected by Hurston.
134. TRGAPP_200513_389.JPG: This is apparently where the missing marker 16 had been.
135. TRGAPP_200513_395.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
136. TRGAPP_200513_400.JPG: Dancers from the Trinidad and Tobago Association enliven the Georgia Avenue Day Parade, 1988.
137. TRGAPP_200513_404.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 17 The Next Wave Caribbean immigrants discovered this stretch of Georgia Avenue in the 1940s, bringing island culture along with jerk chicken, curry, and coco bread. Many, like Eric Williams, who later led Trinidad and Tobago to independence in 1962, came to study or teach at Howard University. Others came seeking better jobs. the 2000 Census showed that Caribbean-born residents formed DC's second-largest immigrant group. For English-speaking immigrants from the former British West Indies, transition to DC life was relatively easy. They held tightly to their traditions, opening businesses and organizing an annual festival on Georgia Avenue. Behind you on this block Mike and Rita's opened in 1974, specializing in roti, (curried meat and potatoes wrapped in flaky dough). Across the street, at the corner of Lamont, Brown's Bakery opened in 1980, serving patties and spice buns. At that time, there were almost three dozen West Indian establishments along this stretch. Georgia Avenue Day and Carnival parades have featured spectacular costumes, calypso music, and dancing. On Morton Street, to your right, is where the DC Housing Authority built the Park-Morton public housing complex in the early 1960s. The complex housed African Americans whose homes in Southwest DC were demolished during urban renewal to make way for modern apartments and offices.
138. TRGAPP_200513_422.JPG: Discover More ... Dr. Charles R. Drew, who developed a method for storing blood plasma on a mass scale during World War II, was head of surgery at Freedman's Hospital. In the early 1940s he lived with his family one block west of here at 3324 Sherman Avenue, Apartment 1.
139. TRGAPP_200513_428.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail 18 The Modern Shopper Braving a blizzard in February 1936, eager customers lined up to experience a modern, self-service, cash-only supermarket. Nehemiah Cohen and Samuel Lehrman's Giant Food here on Georgia Avenue was the chain's first. Although the Memphis-born Piggly Wiggly chain pioneered the supermarket concept, it took Giant to capture DC consumers. Giant moved into the former Park View Market, which had opened in 1923 with 180 tiled stalls. Before the supermarket, food shopping meant stopping at stand-alone bakeries, butcher shops, and other specialty stores, or at stalls inside a market shed. In all cases, shopkeepers filled the orders. Although mom-and-pop stores offered customers credit between paydays and delivered, Giant's efficiency and lower prices nearly made small specialty stores obsolete. After the arrival of supermarkets, small corner groceries continued to serve neighborhoods. Many were owned by Jewish families who belonged to the city-wide buying cooperative District Grocery Stores (DGS for short). In the 1930s, three Jewish groceries operated on the 3300 block of Georgia, and at least 15 along the route of this trail. The ornate police substation at 750 Park Road (to your left) opened in 1901 as the 10th Precinct headquarters, serving 15 square miles of "suburbs" stretching north from Florida Avenue to the District line, and between Benning Road and Rock Creek. On your way to Sign 19, notice 3641 Georgia Avenue, formerly the York movie theater. The York was built by theater mogul Harry Crandall, who also built the Tivoli (14th Street and Park Road) and Lincoln (U Street) movie palaces.
140. TRGAPP_200513_431.JPG: The grandly named first Giant Food Shopping Center, 1936
141. TRGAPP_200513_434.JPG: Giant Food Cashiers
142. TRGAPP_200513_437.JPG: Joseph and Lena Shankman, (seen with an employee inside their Economy Meat Market, 2827 Georgia, in 1922) were members of the District Grocery Stores buying cooperative.
143. TRGAPP_200513_439.JPG: Celia and Nathan Weinreb in their 438 V St. store, next to the old Griffith Stadium.
144. TRGAPP_200513_441.JPG: Officers of the 10th Precinct posed for the camera across the street from the station house around 1930
145. TRGAPP_200513_444.JPG: The 10th Precinct Station, 1940s
146. TRGAPP_200513_455.JPG: Lift Every Voice Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail How many dreams and memories reside in this short stretch of Georgia Avenue! South of Florida Avenue where it is called Seventh Street, its heart once beat to jazz riffs and the eager steps of people dressed in their finest. Here swept aromas once wafted from commercial bakeries. Just north of Florida is where hot Saturday afternoons meant Griffith Stadium, the crack of the bat and shouts of baseball-mad crowds. And Georgia continues. It climbs toward Howard University, the historical heart of our country's African American intellectual community. Farther still, brick temples of learning give way to rowhouses and storefronts, and the steady beat of everyday life. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail pays homage to the musicians and impresarios, Jewish shop-keepers and African American barbers, intellectuals and activist, and all who built a thriving community along this stretch of one of Washington's oldest thoroughfares. "Pleasant Plains" once was the name of the Holmead family estate, which spread from Rock Creek to Georgia Avenue north of Columbia Road. Today's Pleasant Plains neighborhood lies north of the old Holmead land. And while most of this trail lies in Pleasant Plains, it actually starts in Shaw, enters Pleasant Plains at Florida Avenue, crosses through Park View, the neighborhood north of Howard University, and ends in Petworth. Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave./Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided tour of 19 signs is 1.9 miles long, offering about two hours of gentle, uphill exercise. Free keepsake guidebooks in English and Spanish are available at businesses and institutions along the way. For more on DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
147. TRGAPP_200513_458.JPG: Fred Deckelbaum and his son Nathan and daughter Mildred pose inside Deckelbaum's Meat Market at 786 Harvard St. (at Sherman), around 1940.
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].