Existing comment:
Cultural Convergence
Columbia Heights Heritage Trail
8 Girard Street Elites
The 1100 and 1200 blocks of Girard Street once were home to a "Who's Who" of African American leaders.
This and nearby "double-blocks" are the heart of John Sherman's Columbia Heights subdivision. By placing all houses 30 feet from the street's center, Sherman created a gracious and inviting streetscape. The elegant rowhouses, built mostly between 1894 and 1912, echoed the social and economic class of their first, white residents.
By the 1920s black families began arriving from neighborhoods to the east and south. Many had ties to nearby Howard University. Dr. Montague Cobb of 1221 Girard, a foremost physical anthropologist, headed the Howard Medical School's Anatomy Department and helped lead the NAACP. His colleague, Dr. Roland Scott of 1114 Girard, chaired Pediatrics and led the fight against sickle cell disease. Dorothy Porter Wesley, of 1201 Girard, developed the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, the eminent library of the African Diaspora. Educator Paul Phillips Cooke, who led the American Veterans Committee and became President of D.C. Teachers College, moved to 1203 Girard as a boy in 1928 and remained until 2006.
Across Girard Street is Carlos Rosario Public Charter School, originally the white Wilson Normal School (teachers college) and later part of the University of the District of Columbia. As you walk to Sign 9, you'll pass Fairmont Street, where jazz pianist, composer, and educator Billy Taylor grew up at 1207. Music teacher Henry Grant, mentor to both Taylor and Duke Ellington, once lived at 1114. Home rule activist Rev. Channing Phillips lived at 1232 Fairmont before becoming, in 1968, the first African American nominated for U.S. president at a major party convention. |