This is a great find from archive.org. We dug up an old home movie of a family’s visit to Washington and the White House. When you watch it, you’ll be shocked to see how different the times were (i.e., security compared to today was non-existent)
Source: The Internet Archive
Here is an interesting video that we found, showing a collection of really old photos of D.C.
Here’s another great video of the old D.C. streetcar system.
This is some really cool old footage. It shows the 82 streetcar line running from Eckington, heading through northeast, up to Mount Rainier, Hyattsville, Riverdale Park, and College Park.
It’s really long, but well worth a watch.
Before the first train ran, WMATA produced an infomercial to build public excitement for the new Washington Metro.
This is a drawing done by John T. McCutcheon for the 1919 visit of the Prince of Wales.
The Library of Congress also had this great clip of him visiting Teddy Roosevelt’s grave.
Below is the caption for the video.
In the summer of 1919, Edward, the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, embarked on a tour of the Dominions. After touring Canada for several months, the Prince decided to spend several days in the United States. His visit was the first visit of a Prince of Wales to the United States since that of his grandfather, Edward VII, fifty years earlier. On his last day in New York, Nov. 21, 1919, the Prince made a semiprivate journey to Oyster Bay. Film shows the Prince placing a laurel wreath on TR’s grave in Youngs Memorial Cemetery; the Prince, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., wearing a mourning band, a man who is probably Joseph M. Nye, Chief of Special Agents, Dept. of State, and a group of men return down the path from the gravesite. Behind the Prince, the man wearing dark glasses is probably Viscount Grey, British Ambassador to the United States. A man wearing an ascot and walking in the rear of the group may be Rodman Wanamaker, Chairman of the Mayor’s Committee on Reception to Distinguished Guests. The Prince tips his hat to people gathered alongside the path.
Do you know why it’s named Andrews Air Force Base? Who was Andrews? If you know, before reading this, you are an all-star GoDCer.
The base’s military history dates back to the Civil War, when Union troops occupied a church near Camp Springs, Maryland. The church still stands, and is used on the base as Chapel Two.
The 4,000-acre base began its current life in 1943 as Camp Springs Army Air Base. Toward the end of 1944, it was reported in the Baltimore Sun, on December 22nd, that the base was to become the air forces’ headquarters for the continental United States. The announcement was made the day earlier. Below is an excerpt from the article.
It will be responsible for air defense of the United States, for joint air-ground training and for training of service and combat units and crews and their preparation for deployment overseas, the announcement said.
The continental headquarters will be manned by personnel now assigned to AAF headquarters here, and new buildings and barracks will be built at Camp Springs airfield to accommodate them.
…
Brig. Gen. Eugene H. Deebe, of Long Beach, Cal., is to be the first commanding general of the CAF. He was formerly the highest ranking American air officer of the staff of Lord Louis Mounthatten in India.
On February 7th, 1945, the base was renamed Andrews Field to honor Lieutenant General Frank Maxwell Andrews, who had died in Iceland, two years earlier in a plane crash. At the time, he was Commanding General, United States Forces, European Theater of Operators (i.e., kind of a big deal).
We dug up an interesting article about Andrews in the Washington Post from Mar 22nd, 1942.
Army legend has it that before World War I, when aviation was like flying on a leaf and a young lieutenant, “Andy” Andrews wanted to marry the general’s daughter, the general said Andy couldn’t be both his son-in-law and an army pilot.
So young Lieut. Andrews married the daughter and stayed in the cavalry–for three years.
In 1917 he transferred to the Army’s Neophyte Air Arm and with the Army of Occupation in Germany after the war had  the satisfaction of being father-in-law Maj. Gen. Henry T. Allen’s air service officer.
Today Lieut. Gen. Frank Maxwell Andrews is as tenacious in his aims as ever. And he aims to keep impregnable the theater of his Caribbean command which anchors in the Panama Canal Zone and fans out to the bases acquired from Britain.
Now, the base named for Lieut. Gen. Andrews is home to the 89th Airlift Wing of the United States Air Force, better known as the Presidential Airlift Group. You may recognize them for their most famous aircraft, Air Force One (there are actually two planes that serve as Air Force One).
And here is a cool video of Air Force One, taking off from Andrews Air Force Base.
This is absolutely horrifying.
Some of you may not know this, but a number of times in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was permitted to parade down Pennsylvania Ave. Hard to believe, I know.
Ghosts of DC has a new favorite coffee joint at 1201 S St. NW. I went down this past Saturday with Mrs. Ghost and ran into Ms. EatMore DrinkMore (aka, Jenna). Maybe an “If Walls Could Talk” partner post with EMDM on a D.C. restaurant?
It’s been quite some time since our last IWCT post, so, to get this category going again, there’s no better place than our own Brooklyn-like coffeehouse at 12th and S St. NW, The Coffee Bar (EMDM did a review on them a short while ago).
First, take a look at the Baist Real Estate Atlas’ for the intersection at 12th and S St. starting in 1909 below. You’ll notice that 12th St. used to go through S St., where now, Garrison Elementary School sits. The school was much smaller back then, sitting on 12th St., south of S St. In this map, the building marked as #35 is where The Coffee Bar is today.
Also, for reference, pink buildings are brick structure and yellow are frame structures.
Now, take a look at the area in the 1888 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map. You’ll notice that most of the structures were there back then. One major difference is that W.E. Hodges Coal Yard occupied to lot where the Garrison School now stands.
The Harmon family grocery store (and full house)
In 1940, there was a young couple, Woodrow Young (24) and Margaret Harmon (16) who were getting married. Margaret was listed as living at 1201 S St. Pretty young to be getting married as a teenager. A few years earlier, in 1937, another announcement had her brother Robert Harmon (20) getting married to Viola F. Scruggs (19).
And, in 1939 Miss Willie M. Kelly of Raeford, NC, married John C. Harmon at the Lincoln Temple Church, 11th and R St. NW.
We did some more digging on the Harmon family, and we were able to find their household in the 1940 U.S. Census.
John Wesley and Lillie B. Harmon were an older, African-American couple, originally from Delaware. In 1940, they were both 59 years old and lived above their grocery store at 1201 S St. NW.
Also in the house that year was their 16-year-old daughter Margaret, and another daughter, 11-year-old Sacajawea.
His other daughter Ruth, 25, lived in the home with her husband, Herman Walker, 35 and an art instructor, originally from Texas. They had two young children, Evangeline, almost two, and Herman Jr., seven months.
Three additional non-family members were living with them (full house!). James Spaulding, a 60-year-old widower from North Carolina, who worked as a brick layer, Emmett Poindexter, 61, and his wife Helen, 55, both from Virginia. Emmett worked as an independent laborer and Helen worked as a domestic for a local family.
That’s eleven people in one home! I’m guessing it only had one bathroom too.
By the way, I was also able to dig up a little more on Margaret Harmon. According to her Social Security records, she was born on March 24th, 1924 and only passed away a couple years ago, the day before Christmas Eve, 2011.
I also found some more on Lillie Harmon. She passed away in New York on August 25th, 1954, having lived 34 years in D.C. The obituary also stated that she had another daughter, Pocahontas.
That’s not all. After even more digging, I was able to find a feature in the Afro-American from Saturday, July 1st, 1939 entitled “Meet Your Neighbor” by Harry B. Anderson. John Wesley Harmon was the feature that day. (The following week would be a huge one for history, with Teddy Roosevelt‘s head on Mount Rushmore being dedicated on Sunday, July 2nd and Lou Gehrig‘s famous speech at Yankee Stadium being on Tuesday, July 4th.)
How long does the average colored business operate in Washington, for example, a grocery store?
Well, not wishing to offend nor discourage businessmen already set up in business, the answer to the above question: not over a year.
But J. Wesley Harmon, a local grocery store operator, with a flourishing business at Twelfth and S Streets, Northwest, is an exception, because he has been established for the past twenty years.
Trading in a vicinity where all the residents are members of his own group, he attributes his being able to stick to the same location to the fact that he has been patient and optimistic, always desiring to deal directly with his own race.
“Considering the many businesses of our group in the city which have dissolved almost overnight, after a brief life span, I guess it is rather an exception for me to state that I have been doing a fair business here for many years with all my patronage colored,” Mr. Harmon said, last week.
…
All this Mr. Harmon has reflected in his many years of commercial enterprise since he first went into business at the age of twenty-three, selling flour as the operator of his own flour mill in Sussex County, Del.
He thinks that he might have still been there after doing business for seven years had his initial concern not been destroyed by fire. After this, he taught in the Delaware County schools for a while, then worked in several other positions until 1915, when he came to Washington and attended Howard University.
Today he has but one aim in reference to his business, “I feel I have done a good job with my store all these years, because I have been able to raise a family of six children successfully and now my future aim is to turn the operation of my business over to them,” he declared.
…
His philosophy on life is give all you have to the world — even if it hurts — as you will find the results return doubled.
Well Mr. Harmon, your successful grocery store is now a successful, and quite popular local coffee joint. Maybe you’ll get a drink named after you to pay homage to your years of serving the local community.
In the 1970s, the building was occupied by a neighborhood market, K and D Food Market. According to the Washington Post crime blotter, the store was robbed my two armed men on Friday, December 3rd, 1971 (a week after Christina Applegate was born). Again, on Tuesday, January 29th, 1974 (the same day Ed Helms was born), the store was robbed by two masked men.
The market lasted into the 1990s, because there was a report of another robbery, this time in 1991, by three armed and masked men. These were ambitious robbers too, as K & D was one of five stores they robbed within three hours.
Sadly, there wasn’t much else available in the newspaper archives about 1201 S St., but it was great learning about the Harmon family.
