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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. |