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Worthy Ambition
LeDroit Park/Bloomingdale Heritage Trail
5 The University Next Door
Howard University's Employment, educational, and cultural opportunities have attracted and kept families in LeDroit Park and Bloomingdale for generations. Ettyce Hill Moore, a third generation Washingtonian who grew up at 128 V Street in the 1930s and '40s, remembered taking lessons at Howard's Junior Music School, complete with recitals in Rankin Chapel. "People from all over the city would come," she recalled, "and we had to dress in evening gowns." Renowned jazz singer Shirley Horn lived with relatives at 47 R Street to study at the music school. May Miller Sullivan, who grew up in faculty housing here as the daughter of Howard University's Dean Kelly Miller, became a noted playwright and poet.
Howard University also has physically influenced its neighborhood. By the 1970s many early LeDroit Park houses were abandoned in the aftermath of desegregation and the 1968 disturbances following the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The university bought properties with plans to raze them for a hospital expansion. But when LeDroit Park residents sought and won Historic District protection, the university let its houses sit neglected. Finally in the 1990s, under pressure from its neighbors and with support from Fannie Mae, the university secured financing to rehabilitate neighborhood housing and help Howard and city employees buy them. Local nonprofits Manna, DC Habitat, and People's Investment Corporation took on similar projects to revive the community.
Howard University Hospital occupies the former site of the Griffith Stadium (1911-1965). The stadium hosted the Homestead Grays, Washington Senators, Washington Redskins, and community events. On a legendary, gusty afternoon in 1953, Mickey Mantle hit a record home run out of the park all the way to Oakdale Place. |