Existing comment:
River Farms to Urban Towers
Southwest Heritage Trail
15 Linking the "Island" to the City
A massive, Romanesque style Metropolitan Street Railway car barn once commanded the corner behind you across O Street, with repair shops across Fourth Street. They dated from the 1880s, and were part of Washington's first street railway system. Streetcars were a lifeline for this neighborhood, long known as "the island" because it was cut off from the rest of Washington by creeks, a canal, the Mall, and eventually railroads and freeways. "We had our own community here," recalled Southwester Clarence "Chick" Jackson, "but we could also go anywhere off the island on the streetcar. It was our ... connection to the city."
In the early 1800s, Washingtonians walked or rode in carriages and wagons or astride horses. Later they traveled in horse-drawn wagons known as public omnibuses. By the Civil War, however, the city was booming, overwhelmed with soldiers, civilians, and supplies that needed to be moved around. In 1862 Congress chartered the first street railway - rail cars pulled by horses on steel tracks. Given the strategic importance of Southwest's wharves, one of the first three lines ran from Boundary Street (now Florida Avenue,NW) to Seventh Street, then back.
The electric trolleys of the late 1880s came next, but they were replaced with buses in 1962. That year most car barns became unnecessary. O. Roy Chalk, who owned D.C. Transit (which became Metrobus in 1973), tore down his car barns to build the apartment houses Riverside Condominium and Channel Square. |