Existing comment:
A Fitting Tribute
Logan Circle Heritage Trail
10 The Artistic Life
The Imposing Double House to Your Left, numbers 1 and 2, was built as an investment for Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., son of the 18th president. The house would later serve as the Venezuelan Legation and then a Seventh-Day Adventist nursing home.
Henry M. Letcher and his wife Evelyn purchased 1-2 Logan Circle. Henry, an artist, designer, educator, and decorated veteran of the Tuskegee Airmen, and Evelyn, a teacher opened Letcher Art Center. After receiving accreditation from the Veterans Administration, the center taught commercial art, sign painting, silk screening, and architectural drafting to returning World War II veterans. Henry brought his first cousin and best friend Duke Ellington to visit and be photographed among the students. The School, recalled his son Henry, Jr. enabled scores of service men to become "peace-time earners and family men" despite segregation.
After Letcher's death in 1967, Henry Jr., a musician, took over the mansion, populating it with fellow musicians and artists, among them musician/poet Gil Scott-Heron. The younger Letcher's band Jambo performed locally in the early 1970s and attracted audiences with jazz-inflected R&B accompanied by psychedelic light shows. In 1972, when the neighborhood "became too rough," as Henry Jr. recalled, his mother sold the house. In 1998 it was converted to condominiums.
One block east of this sign is 1316 Rhode Island Avenue, an example of the 1970s wave of rehabilitation in Logan Circle. Architect Robert B. Gordon and his wife Doll purchased the shell of 1316 in 1979. Gordon designed a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired interior within the Victorian exterior of the 1885 red-brick exterior rowhouse. |