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Village in the City
Mount Pleasant Heritage Trail
4 Sacred Heart Academy
Set back from the Street at 1621 Park Road, to your left, is an elegant old house, once the all-girls Sacred Heart Academy. The Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters of Wisconsin founded the Academy in 1905 and went on to operate it with Sacred Heart parish, adding a co-ed grade school in 1930. Lay educators took over in the 1990s. In addition, the school housed GALA Hispanic Theatre from 1985 to 2000.
While the school always served Mount Pleasant's diverse nationalities, African Americans were excluded until 1951. Washington's Catholic schools actually began desegregating in 1949, five years before DC Public Schools.
The Park Monroe Apartments, straight ahead, occupy a site where between 1913 and 1921 the family of Wisconsin Progressive Senator Robert F. La Follette lived. The senator and his wife Belle Case La Follette, worked together for world peace and human equality. Just across 16th at 3321 was the home of movie theater mogul Harry M. Crandall. Tragedy struck Crandall in 1922, when the roof of his Knickerbocker Theater at 18th and Columbia Road collapsed during a blizzard, killing 98 and injuring scores. At the time, Crandall was about to build another theater at 14th and Park Road using the Knickerbocker's architect. In shock, he hired another designer, an the Tivoli opened in 1924.
Mary Henderson and architect George O. Totten built the mansion on the corner in 1920. From 1939 until 1969 it housed Capital Radio Engineering Institute, teaching radio and TV electronics. CREI later became Maryland's Capitol College. |