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A Georgetown "Cathedral"
Almost a miniature Gothic cathedral, Christ Church behind you was built in 1885. It is the third building to occupy the spot since a group of Georgetown Episcopalians founded the parish in 1817. Among the founders were Francis Scott Key, author of The Star-Spangled Banner, and old-moneyed, landowning families with Maryland and Virginia ties and a southern orientation. A total interior restoration of the sanctuary was finished in 2003, bringing the church close to its original appearance.
During the Civil War, sentiment for the Confederacy was strong among many parishioners. The rector, a Virginian, refused to offer prayers for President Lincoln and a Union victory. After Lincoln's assassination, Christ Church tolled its bells and draped its façade in black, as much in grief for the defeat of the Confederacy and the loss of so many of its young men as for the President. In the late 19th century, Christ Church continued to be the spiritual home for many of the old-line Southern Sympathizers, known as the Georgetown Assembly.
Britannia Peter Kennon, Martha Washington's great-granddaughter recalled that after the Civil War she and her cousin Robert E. Lee attended Christ Church during his stay at Tudor Place, one of Washington's oldest and most historic houses. Britannia and her sisters Columbia and America grew up at the grand Tudor Place, just up 31st Street. They were daughters of Martha Custis and Thomas Peter, and granddaughters of the first mayor of Georgetown, Robert Peter.
Christ Church Parish Hall, the old Linthicum Institute at 3116 O Street, was built in 1887 as a boys' school; the second floor auditorium was for decades the setting for the Georgetown Assembly's dances. The building two doors west of the hall housed the Lancaster School, founded in 1810 to offer free education to boys and girls, marking the advent of public education for girls in the District of Columbia. |