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Hub, Home, Heart
Greater H Street NE Heritage Trail
13 Enterprising Families
The small scale and low rents of H Street's oldest buildings have lured waves of immigrant entrepreneurs since the buildings were new in the 1880s. By 1930, alongside Greek, Italian, Irish, and other immigrant-owned shops, at least 75 Jewish-owned businesses operated on H Street.
Abe and Anna Shulman ran a dry goods store and lived at 1237 H, with a kitchen in back and living quarters upstairs. Two of their five children remained on H Street as adults: Israel, a dentist, and Fred, who sold baby furniture and toys. Known as the "Queen of H Street," Anna founded the Hebrew Sheltering Society to house recent immigrants, and led the Sisterhood, a women's aid society, for Ezras Israel Synagogue at Eighth and I Streets. The Shulmans and most of their Jewish neighbors had emigrated from Russia around 1900.
In the 1950s former boxer Eddie Leonard brought sandwiches to H Street. A decade later Chuck Brown, the future "Godfather of Go-Go," bought his first guitar at Chuck and Marge Levin's music store at 1237 H Street. In 1968, after looters destroyed their store, the Levins moved to Wheaton, Maryland, opening Chuck Levin's Washington Music Center.
At 1238 H is the former office of Granville Moore, M.D., a native Washingtonian, World War II veteran (Buffalo Soldier), Howard University faculty member, and civil rights activist who practiced medicine here for more than 50 years. Former patients also recollect how Dr. Moore (1916-2003) made house calls and treated the ill free of charge two days a week. |