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Dupont Circle
Diverse Visions | One Neighborhood
Fire Fact | July 23, 1892
Box 325 (nearby) was sounded at 2:36 am for fire at the Heurich and Company Brewery, 1229 20th St. NW. This was the third disastrous fire at this location following 1881 and 1888. Fire Department information and images courtesy of Capitol Fire Museum
Fire alarm boxes such as this one (originally painted red) were installed in the District after the Civil War. Telegraphs transmitted the box number (top) to a fire alarm center. This system was used until the 1970s when the boxes were converted to a telephone system. By the 1990s, the callbox system had been replaced by the 911 system and was abandoned.
Myrtilla Miner (1815-1864), born near Brookfield, NY, was an idealistic white teacher who came to Washington to teach African Americans. In 1853, with funding from northern abolitionists, she paid $4,000 for a three-acre site at 20th and N Sts. (Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" contributed $1,000.) The next year she opened Miss Miner's School for Colored Girls despite widespread opposition from the Washington establishment.
After her death the Miner Fund was created with $40,000 received from the sale of the three-acre lot. Interest on the money was used to operate a new three story 12-room building at 1613 P St. In 1889 the Miner School became part of the public school system, one of the earliest publicly supported teacher training institutions in the nation for African Americans. Miner Normal School became part of DC Teachers College (left) in 1955 and was folded into the University of the District of Columbia in 1974.
Edith Galt, the widow of a Washington jeweler, lived at 1308 20th St., across from the Heurich mansion, until December 18, 1915 when she was married there to President Woodrow Wilson. Image courtesy of The Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
Artist | Mamdou Cherif
Born in the Ivory Coast and raised in Paris, Cherif's artistry is a bridge between African art and European influences. The front of the sculpture shows two of the fountain's statues with figures walking and playing chess below; the back depicts the jetting water with two people emerging from its spray. The red letters represent the inscription on the fountain's base. |