Tag: History

Old Streetcar route: The Fourth Street Line

From Rider’s Washington, 1924.

Fourth Street Line: operates between Steamboat wharves (M and Water Sts., S.W.) and W St. and Georgia Ave., N.W. Route: northwest on Water St. to 11th St., north on 11th St. to Virginia Ave., northwest on Virginia Ave., to B St., west on B St. to 14th St., nort on 14th St. to G St. N.W., east on G St. to 5th St., north on 5th St. to New York Ave., northeast on New York Avenue to 4th St., north on 4th St. to Florida Ave., east on Florida Ave., to 3rd St., north on 3rd St. to Elm St., west on Elm St. to 4th St., north on 4th St. to W St. to Georgia Ave.
Car signs: northbound, “LEDRIOT PARK”; southbound, “WHARVES.”

Is it just me or does that sound like a screwy route?

Old Streetcar Routes

Well I’m back from the annual trek to Florida to see the family, and since I’m catching up on what’s been going on, here’s some history.

From Rider’s Washington, a tourist guidebook from the 1920s, there is a description of the different streetcar lines. I’ll mention a few here.

Florida Avenue Line: operates between Stephenson Monument (Pennsylvania Ave. and 7th St.) and Navy Yard Gate. Route: north on 7th St. to T St., east on T St. to Florida Ave., southeast on Florida Ave., to 8th St. N.E., south on 8th St., to Navy Yard Gate (M St. S.E.). Car signs: north and eastbound, “NAVY YARD”; west and southbound, “7TH AND PA, AVE. N.W.”

New Jersey Avenue Line: operates between Rock creek Bridge (20th and Calvert Sts. N.W.) and Navy Yard Gate (8th and M Sts. S.E.). Route: east on Calvert St. to 18th St., south on 18th St. to U St., east on U St. to Florida Ave. to New Jersey Ave., southeast on New Jersey Ave. to Massachusetts Ave. to Union Station, thence southwest on Delaware Ave to B St. N.E., east on B St. to Pennsylvania Ave., southeast Pennsylvania Ave. to 8th St., south on 8th St. to Navy Yard.

The Washington Railway and Electric Company was another (I don’t have it in my notes who operated the above lines) streetcar company in DC. Their Georgia Avenue-Ninth Street Line had four lines. Line A went from Forest Glen to Water St. going down Georgia then down 9th. Line B went from between the Wharves to Ga Ave and Eastern Ave. Line C went between Water St to the Soldiers Home. Line D went between Takoma, Anacostia and Congress Heights. It started at Butternut St in Takoma to GA Ave and went along the same southern route as Line A to 4 1/2 St to Maryland Ave to B St and Canal Sts. then east on E, south on 4th, then east on G, then south on 11th to Anacostia Bridge, then south on Nichols Ave to a terminal at Talbert St. From Talbert on Nichols Ave to Congress Heights and west on Portland St to Steel Plant, The names of the streets may have changed because the directions seems odd once you get past the Anacostia Bridge, which could be (I dunno) the Fredrick Douglass Memorial Bridge.

Later the Fourth Street Line.

Capital Sporting Grounds: Preface and Introduction

This is the first book I’ve read by someone I know who wasn’t my professor. That is a factor, in that those assigned books by professors pushing their products, were something to quickly get through. Heck knows I probably never read the preface or acknowledgements. If I did read the introductory chapter, it was more than likely skimmed.
B.’s or Dr. Brett L. Abrams’, PhD (American U) book, is so far, so good, but with some bumps. If I weren’t making notes in the book, I probably would read faster as this is not a difficult read, he’s telling a story. However, at points, I’m finding myself in disagreement with his writing style, and my notes are reflecting that. These are just minor stylistic things like where a sentence is in a paragraph. My other notes are just markers, either summing up a thought or highlighting major points. Habitually with non-fiction I tend to make notes in books (I own), as a way to talk with the author. Of course, in this case I could just walk over and talk with the author.
The Preface tells why this book is different from what’s out there. Books covering the topic of stadiums are coffee-table picture books or technical tomes on economics or construction. There are books that are about single stadiums, in other cities, not D.C. So what B. is doing is filling a vacuum, looking at the District of Columbia/ DC Metro area and stadium development taking in account the politics and history of that development.
The Introduction provides the historical background of the growth and development of Washington, DC as a city. He quickly reviews DC’s character as four cities, an international city, a federal city, a local city, and a regional city.

B.’s Stadium Book gets WP write up

My next door neighbor/co-worker B. has his book Capital Sporting Grounds out now and his book got some love from Marc Fisher. I just got the book in my hot little hands today, and I hope to give an honest as I can report of it once done.
I’m a bit more interested in Capital Sporting Grounds than the other book he released last year, because its topic is development history in Washington DC. Also B. gave a pretty interesting presentation sometime back at the Historical Society about stadium development and some of the backroom dealing involved. B. is interested in the story and I look forward to experiencing his storytelling.

History resource

I’ve been playing with the relationship calculator to figure that whole 5th cousin twice removed thing. Anyway, not specifically Shaw related, but helpful in pinning down what portions of the US Census to look for former Shaw residents by street.
The One-Step Webpages by Stephen Morse are more helpful when you have a subscription to Ancestry. Yes, the same Ancestry.Com that maybe one day will digitize the material in the DC Archives. Maybe. Without the subscription it points you in the right direction.
There are other tools on the site that are useful if you’re looking into 19th and early 20th Century immigrants going through New York. It would be a great resource for people doing New York history. Unfortunately, I’m not doing New York history.

Access

I was going to write about the power outage in the eastern part of Shaw this morning, but I got an email through my local professional organization about a supposed deal between The Generations Network, Inc.(TGN), the company behind Ancestry.Com and the DC Archives.
Jonetta Rose Barras reports and is critical of the proposed deal. In short TGN wants to digitize DC Archive material and make it available for a fee on its website. Considering the poor access to materials at the DC Archives now, I think it is a good thing. Compared to the Library of Congress, National Archives, Washingtonia Room at the MLK library, and the Washington Historical Society’s archive/library, places that have posted hours, available staff and are set up to deal with researchers, the access is poor. Paid access is a step up from nearly no access. Better would be free access.
And Ancestry does provide some free access. There is the Social Security Death Index, which is helpful in finding dead DC tax payers. The Jewish Burial Index (DC) is free and the 1880 Census is free, with registration. Then again, one could just go to an institution where they have a subscription to the service and access all the databases there.
But the claim that the “‘physical and intellectual control’ of the city’s vast repository of historical records would be relinquished to an outside entity.'” as some elements of wrong in it. At worst DC would be loaning records for the purpose of digitizing. At best the digitization would be on-site or local. But once the digitization is done, the records go back on the shelves. The District of Columbia isn’t the first, and won’t be the last local goverment to have their records digitized by TGN.
I use Ancestry for work and research and the database has been very helpful, making quick work of some time consuming searches. And to make even my work easier by adding more D.C. items would make me so happy.

Crowding- and good intentions gone lost

I forget which census year it was but one year there were 11 people living in the house I currently occupy. As far as I know, the house has always been a two bedroom and I believe the cellar is a late 20th century addition. My house is about 1,000 sq ft.
I have read that overcrowding could be blamed on segregation. Segregation was probably one of several causes, if there are so many structures in the city and many of those structures are off limits due to covenants and other restrictions, then that limits housing choices. I get a sense that economics had something to do with it as well, but that is just a guess.
Anywho, a turn of the century description of crowded rental housing comes from a report from Clare de Graffenried:

I have no doubt that lodgers are harbored in these alleys whose presence, for many reasons not creditable to the occupants, is always concealed. The confessed facts are startling enough. We have here accounts of 7 persons living in two rooms– the mother and her sons, 21, 17 and 7 years of age, occupying one bedchamber. Again, 9 individuals live in two romse[sic]; 11 people in four rooms. Five, almost all adults, sleep in one room– the mother 43, a son 21, and daughters 19, 17, and 14; and 4 persons use another room– a mother 45, and aunt 70, and a son 22, and a baby 9 months old.
–Page 18 of Kober, George “The History and Development of the Housing Movement in the City of Washington, DC” Washington, DC 1907.

Doing a Google search for Miss de Graffenried, brought up Between Justice and Beauty by Howard Gillette, Jr., which on page 113 where he notes that she goes for the dramatic story over statistics. Later Gillette writes on page regarding the predecessor of the Washington Sanitary Improvement Company, which built the houses on Bates Street:

By 1904 the company housed 140 families, 30 of whom were black. Since the overwhelming majority of alley dwellers were black, the company clearly did not direct its attention to those in greatest need.– page 115

In Kober in 1909 writes about their housing efforts:

It should be stated, that while the original intention was to provide homes for alley residents and thereby remove the slums, it was considered best to begin this movement by providing improved dwellings for the better class of wage earners, in the belief that houses vacated by them would be rented by the next grade, and so on until the bottom of the ladder was reached. –page 31

More from The History and Development of the Housing Movement

Here’s something else from George Kober’s The History of Development of the Housing Movement in the City of Washington, D.C. regarding slum housing:

But even in modern cities unhealthful habitations abound and have been permitted to be erected without interference.
We have them in Washington and Georgetown in considerable number, which greatly increased during the War, when the slave deserted the plantation to find refuge and liberty in the District of Columbia, the only spot at that time in the United States that offered such a boon.
The rapid influx of a negro population, estimated to have been between 30,000 and 40,000, imperatively demanded immediate accommodation. In consequence of this necessity, hovels of every description arose as if by magic. The result of this abnormal growth of a class of people destitute of means and education, ignorant of physical laws, at a time of war and confusion has been the erection of cheap dwellings, as much of the material having been obtained from army camps and hospitals.
–Pages 4-5

That could explain the shanty nature of some of the ‘houses’ pictured in the book and in other places I’ve seen regarding bad DC housing. The weirdest thing is people paid rent to live in these poorly constructed shacks. In 1874 the amount ranged from $2.50-$10.00. In an 1896 survey unfit housing rents were about $8-10.50. What’s that in 2009 dollars? No clue the BLS inflation calculator only goes back to 1913. But $10 1913 dollars equals $214.57 in today’s dollars. Roughly.
Later I will cover overcrowding.

1909 book on alleys and crappy DC housing

Weller, Charles Frederick. Neglected neighbors :stories of life in the alleys, tenements and shanties of the national capital. Philadelphia : J.C. Winston, 1909. Is available online at http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/3370011. It does the whole city. However the author appears to be concerned solely with white occupants of slum housing.

Fun with ProQuest:1825 T Street NW

Yes, this is a couple of blocks west of 16th Street, so definately not in Shaw. But I came across a Washington Post article* when looking for Northwest slum housing with no electricity. 1825 T Street was built as negro housing, replacing 5 frame houses that once sat on that spot. It was part of a plan to clear (tear down) slum housing from 16th to Conneticut Avenue. Currently they are condos, and appear to have been condos since the 80s. I thought it was interesting, so thus, I post.

*”Apartments To Replace Slum Area.” by Robert P. Jordan. The Washington Post (1877-1954) [Washington, D.C.] 9 Jul 1950,R1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The Washington Post (1877 – 1992). ProQuest.