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Two of the heritage trail street
signs that encapsulate the
history of Columbia Heights. |
Columbia Heights, one of the hippest, trendiest and most popular neighborhoods in Washington, just took a step backwards. The progressive neighborhood north of U Street/Shaw, east of Adams Morgan and southeast of Mount Pleasant, recently joined those neighborhoods in highlighting its history through its own “heritage trail.” The self-guided walking tour tells the story of how Columbia Heights went from a “countryside” farm community to a posh neighborhood of mansions with back staircases as the streetcar line extended north and the city’s wealth grew. More recently, it has morphed into the city’s most racially and economically diverse neighborhood with its own subway stop.
Starting on 14th Street between Kenyon and Irving streets NW, directly across from the Target, the heritage trail takes a circuitous path up 14th Street to Otis then over to 11th Street and down to Girard then south to Clifton, over to 15th along Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park and ending across the street from where it started at 14th and Columbia Road.
Highlights along the way include the site of the Arcade Market, which once stood where DC USA mall stands today. It was the terminus for the horse-drawn carriages that brought people from downtown to the newly burgeoning community up on the hill. By the 1890s, when electric street cars began climbing 14th Street and later extending up into what is now 14th Street Heights, the Arcade became what would be considered a mall today, with shops, a movie theater, bowling alley and other amusements.
Across the street was the place where J. Willard Marriot and his Hot Shoppes got its start. This business was the predecessor to the Marriott’s chain of hotels.
Also the grand Tivoli Theater, the first theater in town to be equipped for talking movies and the city’s largest in the 1920s, first opened as a whites-only movie palace. The theater was renovated in 2006 after being closed for several decades.
The trail includes markers for the homes of several prominent Washingtonians – including former US Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan and several African-American leaders in music, science, education and politics – and the old Central High School, which was built as a whites-only school around the turn of the 20th century and became a high school for African-Americans in the segregated school system of 1950.
The 13th Street Divide
Due to early white-flight in Columbia Heights after World War II, student enrollment at Central decreased drastically, and the African-American community pressed the DC Public School system to put the school in the “colored division” to help ease overcrowding at the old Cardozo High down in Shaw. After a few years and with audible disgruntlement on the part of some Central alumni, the school became Cardozo, the name it goes by today, and African-Americans came into the school, formerly the “crown jewel” of DC high schools, for the first time. At the time there was a racial divide along 13th Street. African-American families were able to live on the east side of 13th and beyond. Many of them were associated with nearby Howard University and could afford the larger homes. However, the west side of 13th and beyond was restricted for white families until one African-American couple moved into 2530 13th St. NW, on the west side, in the early 1940s. White families later sued them, and the case then went to the Supreme Court with the Court declaring racially restrictive covenants were unenforceable in 1948.
While there was a great deal of nightlife and racial coexistence in the area, much of Columbia Heights’ history chronicles the nation’s civil rights struggle. The area was practically devastated in 1968 as riots broke out both in the District and in major cities across the country following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
A former shop-owner at 14th and Clifton streets, where the Boys and Girls Club stands today, retells the story of how his business burned in the protest. Larry Rosen, a 1941 graduate of Central High, bought the old Smith’s Pharmacy on 14th between Chapin and Clifton streets in 1960. “In those days every pharmacy had a soda fountain, and ours was one of the most popular in the city,” he recalls.
Many of Smith’s customers were area homeowners and Central High students. As the neighborhood changed, of course, so did the customer base. Rosen said that most of his employees and most of his customers were African-American, “and everybody got along in those days.” His business went along successfully for the next eight years until it was looted and burned in April 1968. “We never reopened after that,” he said.
Author Marita Golden, best known for her novel “Long Distance Life,” which takes place in 1920s through 1950s Washington, grew up in Columbia Heights. According to Golden, Columbia Heights was always a dynamic, diverse place populated with hardworking people who did the best they could and enjoyed their lives, even with the limitations before them.
“It is amazing how far this community has come today,” she noted. But, she said, the heart and soul of it has always been the same and probably always will be.
With 19 poster-sized street signs, the Columbia Heights Heritage Trail is among the largest in the city. The heritage trail is a project of Cultural Tourism DC, in collaboration with the Columbia Heights Heritage Trail Working Group. The District Department of Transportation, the Office of Planning and Economic Development and the US Department of Transportation fund the District’s neighborhood heritage trails. |
