Existing comment:
Kennedy Recreation Center.
Stop #10 on the Shaw Heritage tour: Community Anchors:
Seventh and O Streets, NW
At Seventh and O Streets stands the tower of the O Street Market.When the market opened in 1881, and refrigerators had not yet been invented, people shopped here daily for everything from live chickens to fresh tomatoes. At first the vendors were German immigrants. By the 1960s, most were African American. Damaged in the riots of 1968, the market was restored in 1980 but lost its roof in a 2003 snowstorm.
On the east side of Seventh, landscaper John Saul began planting fruit trees in 1852. His son, B. Francis Saul, later opened a real estate business that became the B.F. Saul Company and Chevy Chase Bank. During the Civil War, the Union Army camped here at Wisewell Barracks and Hospital.
Rowhouses facing Sixth Street eventually replaced Wisewell Barracks, sharing the square with the Henry, Polk, and Central High schools for white students. Former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, class of 1913, is Central's best-known graduate. Central High School moved in 1916 to a grand new facility astride the 13th Street hill (now Cardozo High School).
In the 1950s, the entire block was leveled for a playground. Completed in 1964, the playground was dedicated to the memory of President John F. Kennedy. Kids eager for play space clambered on its 1888 steam locomotive, a tugboat, and two surplus Air Force jets. But after the riots of 1968 burned neighboring buildings, much of the playground's equipment was removed, and the facility became crime-ridden. Friends of Kennedy Playground led clean-up efforts in the 1990s, and a new recreation center opened here in 2003. |