Existing comment:
Village in the City
Mount Pleasant Heritage Trail
12 Changing Fashions
Around 1900 this successful suburb attracted successful business leaders, who set a grand standard for home building. Printer Byron S. Adams commissioned architect Frederick Pyle to design 1801 Park Road in the Colonial Revival style. Pyle also contributed 3303 18th Street. Developer Lewis Breuninger built 1770 Park Road for his family, as well as rowhouses along Park Road. Completing the luxurious landscape was the large house at 1802 Park Road (since demolished for rowhouses). This enclave was short-lived however.
During the Great Depression of 1929-1941, the houses at 1801 and 1802 Park Road became homes for the elderly. In the 1950s, 3303 18th Street became a rooming house. Twenty years later, social service providers operated from dozens of Mount Pleasant's houses, large and small. More recently these well-built, convenient buildings have gone back to single-family use by people of means returning to in-town living.
After World War II, Mount Pleasant enjoyed a brief heyday as a "hillbilly" (now country) music destination. Singer (and later sausage salesman) Jimmy Dean found fame hosting a local TV show, Town and Country Time, but Mount Pleasant knew him first as Jimmy Dean and the Texas Wildcats, the Starlite Restaurant's house band. Dean roomed at 3303 18th Street, where neighbor Fred Hays delivered the Washington Daily News: "I'd walk through the unlocked front door, up the stairs and throw one over the railing. That's where Jimmy Dean lived." Charlie Waller, founder of the Country Gentlemen bluegrass band, grew up in his mothers rooming house at 1747 Park Road. When country gave way to rock 'n' roll in the 1960s, local clubs followed suit. |