Group items tagged

"Within sight of the White House : section of Washington, D.C., known as "Hooker's Division," which contains 50 saloons and 109 bawdy-houses--list of 61 places where liquor is sold with government [sic] but without city licenses." Newspaper clipping. - Available also through the Library of Congress Web site as a raster image. - Includes text, directory of unlicensed premises, and index to points of interest. - LC copy mounted on cloth backing.

Completely readable online. Published 1937. Hathitrust Digital Library also includes related references. Detailed description of landscape of White House over time, changes by various occupants, development of White House from "country" landscape to formal occupancy of today. Missing? Role of builders and workers, including enslaved workers.

Social/cultural history of famed Willard Hotel --often called the center of Washington more than either the Capitol or the White House or the State Department. Founded in 1847 on land originally owned by Scottish proprietor, David Burnes.

Since the creation of the District of Columbia, antislavery reformers had decried the presence of slavery as a contradiction of the nation's founding principles of freedom, equality, and justice. The nation's capital was a natural target for the early antislavery movement. Constitutionally, Congress controlled the District of Columbia through "exclusive jurisdiction" and could eliminate the slave trade and slavery itself within its borders at any time. When the federal government moved to Washington in 1800, Congress agreed to enforce Maryland's laws in the city, including both slavery and a "black code" that restricted the freedom of all African Americans, slave and free. As a southern city, Washington was a congenial place for slavery to take root. In 1800, thirty percent of the District of Columbia's residents were African Americans, fewer than one-fifth of them free. From its very beginning, visitors and government officials from the North and abroad condemned the capital for its open slave markets, economic reliance on slavery, exploitation of African Americans, and racial discrimination. Immediately after moving into the White House, for example, Abigail Adams wrote contemptuously that "The effects of slavery are visible everywhere." The institution continued to grow steadily until 1830, when the number of slaves in Washington reached its peak, representing twelve percent of the city's population. At the same time, Washington began supplanting Baltimore as a regional center of the slave trade. After 1830, slavery began to decline in Washington as the slave trade drained laborers from the faltering tobacco plantations of the Chesapeake region. Between 1830 and 1860, the slave population fell from its peak of twelve percent to just three percent of the District of Columbia's residents, about 3,300.

Reprint of article from Boston Globe (1888) with image of first elephant house (1899) Blogpost also includes photo of Olmstead plans for National Zoological Park...and more...

For over a century, the Willard Hotel has been the gathering place and site of innumerable behind-the-scenes networking among the powerful and famous (and often rich) in Washington.Note its proximity to the White House and other physical centers of power,

Southwest Washington, D.C., is a defined neighborhood even without a proper name; the quadrant has a clear border southwest of the U.S. Capitol Building, nestled along the oldest waterfront in the city. Its physical delineations have defined it as a community for more than 250 years, beginning in the mid-1700s with emerging farms. By the mid-1800s, a thriving urban, residential, and commercial neighborhood was supported by the waterfront where Washingtonians bought seafood and produce right off the boats. In the 1920s and 1930s, an aging housing stock and an overcrowded city led to an increase of African Americans and Jewish immigrants who became self-sufficient within their own communities. However, political pressures and radical urban planning concepts in the 1950s led to the large-scale razing of most of SW, creating a new community with what was then innovative apartment and cooperative living constructed with such unusual building materials as aluminum.