Shaw
Shaw was the center of Black Washington for generations, home to the Howard Theatre, the jazz clubs of U Street, and a vibrant community that endured both remarkable prosperity and devastating loss following the 1968 riots.
Before it welcomed jazz musicians and visiting professionals, the Dunbar Hotel was a brewer’s luxury apartment house at 15th and U.
In 1863 a camp for freedpeople on 12th Street was torn down. Families who stayed settled in shanties nearby, the start of Hell’s Bottom.
Nearly 200 laborers showed up at 6 p.m. with orders to tear down the Northern Liberty Market that night. By 11 the roof was gone.
Long before Stetson’s Famous Bar & Grill filled 1610 U Street NW with punk shows and cheap beer, the same storefront was a Prohibition speakeasy. Federal agents raided it five times between 1921 and 1924. Then they raided it again in 1930.
Gordon Parks photographed Engine Company No. 4 in 1943: men trusted to run into a fire, and made to eat off separate plates.
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Truxton Circle lost its namesake traffic roundabout in 1947, but the story of how it got that name reaches back to the founding of the U.S. Navy and Commodore Thomas Truxtun, one of the most celebrated officers of the early republic.
The Apollo in New York, the Pearl in Philadelphia, the Uptown in Baltimore, and the Howard Theatre in Washington were the preeminent African-American venues for stars like Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and the big bands of the 1930s to rock and roll and the Motown sound.
The Republic Theatre opened May 30th, 1921, a block west of the Lincoln Theatre on U Street. It was knocked down in 1976 to make way for the new Metro.
Photographs from August 1942 show the corner grocery across from Ella Watson’s home and the store’s owner, Mr. J. Benjamin.
This Smithsonian photograph shows the intersection of 14th and U Streets in 1960.
A Washington Post classified advertisement from October 21, 1988, records homes offered for sale.
A photograph shows the row houses on the west side of Blagden Alley in 1923.
A Harris & Ewing glass-plate photograph records homes along a Washington alley.
Henry Ives Cobb’s perspective sketch shows Washington Manual Training High School, later associated with Asbury Dwellings.
Before it was The Coffee Bar, 1201 S Street NW housed the Harmon family grocery store. Old Baist and Sanborn maps trace 12th and S Street NW back to the 1880s.
A 1921 map shows the U Street area in the blog’s GoDCers Love Maps series.
Baist real estate maps of U St. and Vermont Ave. NW in 1903 and 1921. In those 18 years, many of the frame houses were replaced by brick structures.
Three 9:30 Club nights: Smashing Pumpkins opening V Street in 1996, a celebrity-packed Radiohead show, and one at F Street.
An 1880 statistical map compiled by Lt. F.V. Greene shows property values across Washington, with land in Shaw and Mt. Vernon Square worth three to four times more than comparable plots in Dupont Circle.
On May 28th, 1941, Griffith Stadium hosted its first night game under the newly installed lights. Walter Johnson was special guest, Joe DiMaggio had a 12-game hitting streak, and the Senators were stumbling. Read about the historic night in Washington baseball history.