Existing comment:
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 Café.
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. |