Existing comment:
At the Crossroads
Hub, Home, Heart
-- Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail --
One year before Congress and the President arrived in their new capital city in 1800, Washington's Navy Yard opened at the foot of Eighth Street, two miles south of this sign. The yard soon became the city's biggest employer. In 1908 streetcars began connecting H Street to the Navy Yard via Eighth Street, allowing workers to commute. As the transfer point between the Eighth Street line and the H Street line to downtown, this busy spot attracted the Home Savings Bank's Northeast Branch and the Northeast Savings Bank, founded by H Street merchants, across Eighth Street from each other.
Before Prohibition closed DC's many saloons in 1917, 727 H Street housed the German-owned Beuchert Tavern. Louis Kavakos bought the place in 1929 and ran it as a lunch counter/confectionery. After Prohibition ended four years later, Kavakos and his sons William, George, and John replaced the luncheonette with Club Kavakos, a bar and grill with live music, dancing, vaudeville, and strippers. Like many DC night spots, the club thrived during World War II. After the war, patrons enjoyed evenings hosted by WMAL radio DJ Willis Conover. Jazz greats Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Dizzy Gillespie all recorded live albums here.
In 1914 Ezras Israel Orthodox congregation moved from its space above a grocery on H Street into the former Centennial Baptist Church at Eighth and I Streets, one block north. Forty-five years later it closed as most of H Street's Jewish population moved north, and eventually re-opened in Rockville, Maryland. |