DC History Center

08/06/2024

Join us and Off the Mall Tours on August 14 for “District of Punk”: an hour-long walking tour about the history of Punk music in DC.The tour ends on the MLK Jr. Memorial Library rooftop just in time for the DC Punk Archive’s FREE rooftop show.

In the 1980s, punks reacted to issues they diagnosed in Reagan-era Washington: a city where hippies were turning into yuppies and an increasingly conformist, soulless government and society was taking over.

But as JR Rhine writes in the Fall 2021 Washington History article "The Free Space: Ian MacKaye and DC's hardcore, Straight Edge Scene," DC was primed to be a hotspot for punk: “DC proved to be the ideal place to incubate a punk scene. ‘You can have very powerful, creative forces in this town. It’s a petri dish for great ideas. They may not be sustainable, but you can always grow something here because—nobody’s looking.’”

Details:
🎸 $25 for members, $30 for non-members, pre-purchase required
🎸 Begins at 5:30 pm at the Gallery Place Metro Station exit at F and 7th Streets, ends at MLK Jr. Memorial Library at 6:30 pm.
🎸Link in bio for more info.

Photos:
📷 February 1991 show schedule at d.c. space, Bess Powell, Courtesy of Cynthia Connolly
📷 “District of Punk”walking tour, July 2022. Courtesy, Katrina Ingraham

08/03/2024

Did you know there are nearly two dozen Olympians competing in from the DC area?

A few names you might know: 🏀 Kevin Durant (Prince George’s County, MD), 🏊‍♀️ Katie Ledecky (Bethesda, MD), and 🏃 Noah Lyles (Alexandria, VA).

This weekend, we challenge you to learn about some of the local Olympians you may not know:
🥊 Jahmal Harvey (Oxon Hill, MD)
🏃 Quincy Wilson (Potomac, MD)
🚴 Taylor Knibb (Washington, DC)
🏊‍♀️ Torri Huske (Arlington, VA)
🤺 Hadley Husisian (Oakton, VA)
🤺 Kat Holmes (Washington, DC)
🚣‍♀️ Claire Collins (McLean, Virginia)
⚽️ Emily Fox (Ashburn, VA)
🤼‍♀️ Helen Maroulis (Rockville, MD).

📷 Event workers lay out the colored ground quilt squares for "America's Salute to Team USA" pre-1992 Olympics event, July 1992 (Jeremiah J. Spaulding photograph collection, SPL 132.02)
📷 Band stand for the "America's Salute to Team USA" pre-1992 Olympics event on the Mall, July 1992 (Jeremiah J. Spaulding photograph collection, SPL 132.09)

08/02/2024

in 1754, Pierre Charles L'Enfant was born in Paris. L'Enfant, who you probably know as the designer of the DC’s city plan, actually never finished the project.

The “L’Enfant Plan” laid out most streets in a grid. East-west streets were later named for letters and numbered streets would travel in the north–south direction. Diagonal grand avenues, later named after the states of the Union, crossed the north–south-east-west grid intersecting with the north–south and east–west streets at circles and rectangular plazas. The L’Enfant plan specified locations for the "Congress House" (later known as the United States Capitol) and the "President's House" (later known as the White House).

In 1791, Andrew Ellicott, directed by the commissioners overseeing the development of the federal territory, conducted the first survey of the boundaries when he determined L'Enfant did not have the city plan engraved (copied) and L’Enfant refused to provide him with an original version.

Ellicott then revised the plan.

Ellicott's revised plan straightened Massachusetts Ave, removed a square on the plan, and named the “Congress House'' as the Capitol. George Washington dismissed L’Enfant from the project. Ellicott and his assistants continued the city survey and had several versions of the revised plan engraved, published, and distributed in Philadelphia and Boston. As a result, Ellicott's revision became the basis for the capital city's development.

Ellicott’s plan does not mention L'Enfant's name and the numerical designations for the reservations that L'Enfant had placed in the plan. The legends in Ellicott’s plan conveyed less information than L'Enfant's plan.

📷 Andrew Ellicott’s 1792 Plan of the City of Washington (Kiplinger Washington Collection, KC4829.MP.ED.L.F.)
📷 “Design of the federal city, comparative plans of L'Enfant and Ellicott: Washington D.C.,” by William T. Partridge, Pierre Charles L'Enfant, Andrew Ellicott, and United States National Capital Park And Planning Commission, 1791. Courtesy, Library of Congress

07/29/2024

After completing our multi-year gaps analysis project, we now have a better understanding of the demographics of our 870 manuscript collections, who they represent, and whose stories remain hidden. Through this process, the collections team analyzed catalog records and descriptions. The result underscores an important lesson: absence is information.

“The gaps analysis ultimately resulted in a dataset that is opaque, flawed, but nevertheless representative of its purpose: highlighting the systemic and deliberate silences within our past collecting and cataloging practices. In doing so, we surface our complicity in symbolic annihilation of our neighbors, and our history.”

In “Committing to Repair” (the second part in her blog series), senior manager of collections Autumn Kalkin expands on the challenges of the project’s format, the lessons learned, and how the conclusions of gaps analysis are already informing our work.

So where do we go from here? Transformative justice work is ongoing and never done. It is organic, always shifting, generating new questions and demanding fresh perspectives. How can we work to combat archival silences while avoiding extractive collecting practices, developing trust within communities, and collecting ethically?

Read more: https://bit.ly/46uCCle

📸 Photograph from the William J. Thompkins collection (MS 606). Thompkins was an African American physician and District of Columbia Recorder of Deeds.

📸 From catalog description: Blanche Steward in Charles Wagner’s clothes in the backyard of the Wagner house (WA 086).

07/27/2024

Soaring into the weekend! 🪁

Albums like the Fristoe family’s give us a peek into DC life of bygone eras. The album also includes houses and churches in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood, Great Falls, and the former Florence Crittenton Home on Reservoir Road.

📸 Boy with a kite posed in front of the Fristoe House at 3209 16th Street NW, ca. 1892-1897 (Luther Fristoe Family photograph album, AL 019.05B)

07/22/2024

Harry Chow grew up in DC’s Chinatown in the 1970’s and 1980’s and held a number of roles in the community, including a youth program leader with the DC Recreation Department; an aquarium store employee; a designer for a mural honoring the many generations of Chinatown; and a leader of the Courtesy Patrol. Harry was witness to and a participant in the peak of activity and local engagement for young Chinese-Americans in the neighborhood.

From 1974 to 1979, the Youth Courtesy Patrol existed in conjunction with Chinatown's Creative Workshop which provided arts and crafts classes to neighborhood children. Both were part of the DC Recreation Department’s summer program. The Courtesy Patrol was a crime watch group that patrolled the neighborhood during the day. It was based on a crime prevention technique that was successful in other neighborhoods in DC and in Philadelphia.

Harry was often asked to chronicle his work through photos and videos, leaving DC with a collection of moments in everyday life in Chinatown. Many of his photos included the youth programs he worked with.

📸 1: Members of the Chinatown Youth Courtesy Patrol, posed, ca. 1970s (CHN 064)
📸 2 & 3: Members of Eastern Wind complete and install the mural "The Chinese in America: Past, Present, and the Future," which hung for eight years in Chinatown, ca. 1970s (CHN 066 and CHN 067)

07/21/2024

Who has donated to our collection? Who created the catalog records? And who do those records represent? These are the questions our collections team set out to answer in our multi-year gaps analysis project.

We created the gaps analysis project to better understand the demographics of our 870 manuscript collections, who they represent, and whose stories remain hidden. When creating the structure of the gaps analysis, we were motivated by a central question:

➡️ Whose stories are we already responsible for, and whose are missing?

In order to resist deeply ingrained colonialism, projects like the gaps analysis require intentionality and care, and should—more than anything else—result in actionable change that disrupts past practices of archival erasure.

In assessing the conclusions, we confirmed quantifiably what we already knew to be true. The DC History Center is a 130-year-old institution started by predominantly white men, with collecting practices that reflected the interests and demographics of its founders. When archives fail to collect the histories of communities of color, they participate in the symbolic annihilation of those communities.

👁️‍🗨️ Read more in our recent blog post “Reckoning with Archival Silences – The Gaps Analysis Part I” from our senior manager of collections Autumn Kalikin.

The gaps analysis project has helped us understand the demographics of our collections, who they represent, and whose stories remain hidden.

07/15/2024

Have you met the Three Graces?

The McMillan Fountain, featuring “The Three Graces” on a pink marble base, is a public artwork collaboration between American artist Herbert Adams (1858-1946) and architect Charles Platt (1861-1933). The monument was completed in 1912 and dedicated in 1919. It was dismantled in 1941 when the site was fenced up during WWII.

The fountain was a gift to DC from Michigan’s citizens—notably public school children who donated their coins—in memory of their U.S. Senator James McMillan. McMillan had chaired the Senate Park Commission (1902), which established an urban development plan for DC to expand the city's park system and redesign the National Mall. Popularly called the “McMillan Plan,” this update to the 1792 L'Enfant plan is one of the key city planning documents in the nation’s capital.

In the late 1970s, Rick Sowell, a DC Recreation Department leader, worked with teenagers in the city's summer jobs programs to uncover the fountain's 77 pieces which by then were covered in mud and blackberry brambles. Sowell received authorization to take the nymphs, basin, pedestal, and two benches for exhibit in Bloomingdale's Crispus Attucks Park where he had created a makeshift museum.

Last month, the new recreation center and the Memorial Fountain opened to the community. Twenty sand silos and two underground filter beds are preserved from the former sand filtration facility that helped purify the city’s water. The partially reconstructed fountain currently resides near its original location at McMillan Reservoir in the Bloomingdale neighborhood.

Read more from the 2002 article in Washington History magazine, “The McMillan Memorial Fountain: A Short History of a Lost Monument.” https://bit.ly/3Y4EzTk

📸 McMillan Fountain in McMillan Park. View west up the stairway from 1st Street NW, ca. 1925 (Montague photograph collection, MN 061)
📸 The reconstructed fountain today. Photo by Maren Orchard.

06/28/2024

ICYMI: Interns from US Naval Academy Hannah, Kinaree, and Rashiya took us behind-the-scenes in the DC History Center’s collections space to show us some of their favorite LGBTQ+ materials during our June 18th In the Works program.

For the last four years, we’ve collaborated with the U.S. Naval Academy and Rainbow History Project on this crash course in LGBTQ+ archives for US Naval Academy midshipmen. The students learn collections work and help make these archives more accessible to the public. The DC History Center is the archival home for the Rainbow History Project.

🎥 Watch “In the Works: Processing LGBTQ+ Collections!”

On Tuesday, June 18, three interns from the U.S. Naval Academy shared their experience with the Rainbow History Project collections housed at the DC History ...

06/21/2024

We’re taking a walk down memory lane to 1960s Shaw to celebrate the first day of summer! 🛝 ☀️ DC’s Kennedy playground was quite the place with a merry-go-round, swings, basketball court, a splash pad, a clubhouse—and surplus military equipment?

Formerly a police impoundment lot for abandoned vehicles, the block between Sixth, Seventh, O and P Streets NW had become an empty lot. Robert F. Kennedy, then attorney general, started a plan to build a playground in a neighborhood with little amenities for children. Funding came from O. Roy Chalk, the head of DC Transit, who also chaired the nonprofit National Committee on Playgrounds for Young America.

The Air Force donated two T-33 training jets and the Army donated a tank. A 64-foot tugboat, the Blue Horizon III, was towed through the city from Navy Yard. There was a World War II-era landing craft, two streetcars, and an 1876 Baldwin steam locomotive called the Jupiter that had spent its career hauling bananas and coffee in Guatemala.

By the 1970s there was minimal regular upkeep, things started to deteriorate, and the playground was closed.



📸 The Emil A. Press Slide Collection, 1959-1979, consists of 4000 35mm color slides, taken by Press between 1959-1979. The images are mainly of Washington, DC south of Florida Avenue, but some outlying areas are included. Press often photographed buildings that were slated for, or in the process of demolition.

06/19/2024

On June 19, 1865, Union troops in Texas announced the news of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, more than two years after it was issued. Today, Juneteenth is a federal holiday, but what did emancipation look like for enslaved persons in DC?

The DC Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862 ended slavery in DC and freed over 3,000 individuals. Every April 16th we celebrate DC Emancipation Day.

As for our neighbors, Maryland adopted a new state constitution on November 1, 1864 that abolished slavery. On April 7, 1864, a constitutional convention for the Restored Government of Virginia, then meeting in Alexandria, abolished slavery in the part of the state that remained a loyal member of the United States. The General Assembly of the Restored Government ratified the proposed 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which abolished slavery, on February 9, 1865. When the amendment was ratified by the required two-thirds of state legislatures on December 6, 1865, slavery ceased to exist everywhere in the United States.

Do you know when Emancipation Day is in your home state?
⠀
Happy Juneteenth weekend DC!

📸 Marching band in Jubilee Day Emancipation Parade, April 16, 2002. (Elvert Barnes photograph collection, BA 089)

📸 Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury in answer to a resolution of the House Representatives, of the 11th of January 1864, transmitting the report and tabular statements of the commissioners appointed in relation to emancipated slaves in the District of Columbia. (Printed Materials Collection, P 1403)

06/18/2024

Introverted pride celebration tonight! 🙋“In the Works: Processing LGBTQ+ Collections'' is this Tuesday, June 18th both in-person AND virtually! Grab a BTS look at this LGBTQ+ collections initiative at the DC History Center with the and .

This year’s interns, Hannah, Kinaree, and Rashiya will greet us on Zoom to give a behind-the-scenes look at the collections spaces and some of their favorite LGBTQ+ materials. Register here: https://bit.ly/3zapKnF

The relationship between the military and its LGBTQ+ members—and those who have been deterred from joining or forced from their ranks—is for many a devastating one. For the last four years, the DC History Center and the Rainbow History Project have collaborated on this crash course in LGBTQ+ archives for U.S. Naval Academy interns. The students learn collections work and help make these archives more accessible to the public. The DC History Center is the archival home for the Rainbow History Project.

Learn more about the program on our blog: “Building A Crash Course in Archives and LGBTQ+ DC Records” : https://bit.ly/3Rx52or

📸 USNA Interns processing collections. From left to right: Rashiya Howell, Kinaree Adkins, Hannah Sarver

📸 USNA interns with Rainbow History Project’s Vincent Slatt exploring Dupont’s LGBTQ+ history.

Behind-the-scenes look at this LGBTQ+ collections initiative at the DC History Center with the U.S. Naval Academy and Rainbow History Project

06/16/2024

To shift your perspective: this photo, taken in the 1890s, existed before the creation of Father’s Day. The first Father's Day was celebrated in 1910 in Spokane, Washington at the YMCA!

Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers and father-figures!

📸 Fristoe family members posed near the Fristoe House at 3209 16th Street NW, circa 1890 (Luther Fristoe Family photograph album, AL 019.04C)

06/14/2024

Three Stars. Two Bars. What do you think of when you see the DC flag? ⭐⭐⭐

A series of designs were submitted in February 1924 to the Evening Star newspaper among them was a white flag bearing two red horizontal stripes and three blue five-pointed stars. Charles Dunn based his design on the personal coat of arms of George Washington, which was similar but had red rowels (sharp-pointed disks at the ends of spurs) instead of blue stars. The Washington family coat of arms dates back to 16th-century Sulgrave, England.

A special flag commission was established by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1938. It considered a version of the Dunn flag (with red stars instead of blue) and another flag submitted by the Daughters of the American Revolution, before choosing the flag. The flag we know today was first flown on October 23, 1938. It has been suggested that the stars symbolize the three commissioners who once ran the District.

Read more about the DC Flag in our Fall 2018 edition of Washington History Magazine: https://bit.ly/3KJHSqR



📸 Flag bearers in Jubilee Day Emancipation Parade on Freedom Plaza on April 16, 2002. (Elvert Barnes photograph collection, BA 089)

06/14/2024

Connect. Empower. Inspire. We’re looking for ✌️ new teammates! Do these sound like you?

⭐Manager of Education (Full-time)
⭐Library Services Coordinator (Part-time)

Learn more + apply: https://bit.ly/3XiTSat

05/29/2024

Where are our book lovers at?✋🏻✋🏽✋🏿We’re teaming up with our friends at DC Public Library's People’s Archive to bring a book talk you won’t want to miss. “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts” is part biography, part mystery. Through compelling storytelling, author Gregg Hecimovich weaves together his decades-long research journey with the life story of Hannah Crafts, a formerly enslaved woman who escaped to freedom with her manuscript in hand. Her book, “The Bondwoman’s Narrative” is the first known novel by a Black woman, having honed her literary skills while enslaved.

Hecimovich brings his book, named one of the 10 Best Books for 2023 by , to MLK Library this Thursday for a one-time only talk with National Gallery of Art's Steven Nelson. We hope you will join us to learn more about his tireless archival research (like you could do at the DC History Center and the People’s Archive) and find out how Crafts’ story fits into DC’s pre Civil War history.

Register: https://events.humanitix.com/booktalk-hannahcrafts

05/17/2024

in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ended legal segregation in public schools. But Brown v. Board of Education didn’t apply to Washington, DC. Why?

Brown v. Board included five individual cases. Four of them were decided on the basis that state-sanctioned school segregation violated the 14th Amendment. But because DC wasn’t (and still isn’t) a state, that ruling didn’t apply here.

Instead, the Supreme Court used the 5th Amendment in deciding the fifth case—Bolling v. Sharpe—to apply to Washington, DC students. In 1951, Howard University law professor James Nabrit, Jr. filed on behalf of a group of African American parents and students in Anacostia, including the plaintiff Spottswood Bolling, who had petitioned to gain access to the new John Philip Sousa Junior High School.

Read our blog to find out how Bolling v. Sharpe was decided, along with a reflection from native Washingtonian and former Oyster Elementary School student Earl P. Williams, Jr. on school integration post-Bolling. See our link in bio!

📷 1: Girls at Barnard Elementary School stand in a line while their male classmates sit behind them at desks. This photo was taken on May 27, 1955, just over one year after the Bolling v. Sharpe decision. Courtesy Library of Congress

📷 2: An integrated classroom at Anacostia High School, September 10, 1957. Courtesy Library of Congress

📷 3: Linda Brown Smith, Ethel Louise Belton Brown, Harry Briggs, Jr., and Spottswood Bolling, Jr. during a press conference at Hotel Americana, 1964. Courtesy Library of Congress

05/01/2024

We are thrilled to announce that the DC History Center has received a 2024 Visions Grant. With this grant, we will focus on community archiving within DC's Latino/a/x communities, offering digitization services and training to those who are interested in digitizing their personal collections. This process will address archival silences at the DC History Center, while preserving personal collections that can remain under the stewardship of community memory-keepers. We are excited for the impact this project will have on our city and look forward to sharing this important history!

04/14/2024

Let's play! 🎉 The DC History Center will be at 's Day of Play on Tuesday, April 16 from 12 to 4 pm. Come to The Fields at RFK and check out sports clinics, field activities, and some of DC's favorite food trucks. Find us at our booth to learn more about the DC History Center!

Image: Young children play in front of a decommissioned train at John F. Kennedy Playground at 6th and O Streets NW, September 1964 (Emil A. Press slide collection, PR 1023A)

04/02/2024

Join the Capital Jewish Museum and its community partners for an untraditional seder on April 11. The DC History Center's contribution to the program is to set an intention to come together to gain understanding and empathy through learning history.

Note: If you wish to attend and the ticket price is a barrier to entry, please reach out to Lisa Del Sesto at [email protected].

Passover is closer than you think! Don't forget to join us for Nights at the Seder Table!🍷🥚🍗🍽

Thursday, April 11, 6-8 pm
Tickets $36-$72

Nights at the Seder Table reinterprets a Passover seder to reflect the work of the Museum and its program partners (social justice, community, and cultural organizations). Enjoy reimagined rituals—custom blessings, untraditional songs—delicious food, and a Haggadah with themes of civic engagement.

Learn more: https://capitaljewishmuseum.org/events/nights-at-the-seder-table/

02/12/2024

Historic maps reveal multitudes—such as proposed and changed roadways. You won't find Yale or Princeton streets in this particular corner of today's DC, but there they are on this circa 1882 Columbia Heights map.

📷 General Map Collection, M 0394

To learn more, check out Ghosts of DC: https://bit.ly/3uz6XR1

01/17/2024

Evalyn Walsh McLean bought the Hope Diamond (pictured here) from Pierre Cartier himself for $180,000 (today, that's about $5.8 million). But why own just one diamond? She also owned the Star of the East diamond and would keep them in her couch cushions.

Learn more fun facts from DC History Center Senior Manager of Collections Autumn Kalikin on Saturday, January 20 at 11 am. Join us from the comfort of your home for this cozy, virtual, behind-the-scenes collections orientation! As we walk through the stacks, we'll run into guest stars to introduce you to iconic individuals and peculiar personalities. These larger-than-life Washingtonians left behind archival materials that teach us about their lives, work, and passions. At the end of the program, Autumn will give you some research tips and tricks and answer your pressing collections questions. Register here: https://bit.ly/3vAZdy1

01/16/2024

Have you considered applying for the Totman Fellowship? Join us on Wednesday, January 17 from 5:30 to 6:30 pm to learn more about the fellowship! This program has been moved to Zoom to be more accessible to attendees. Register here: https://bit.ly/47ECYEA

01/04/2024

The DC History Center will reopen this Saturday, January 6. We look forward to welcoming you back after the holiday season!

12/31/2023

Put on your best hat to gather with friends and ring in the new year! These friends are gathered on Minniesha "Minnie's" Island circa 1923.

📷 Clarence R. Shoemaker photograph collection, SH A12A-K.

12/27/2023

Who is dreaming of a snowy winter in DC? We're ready to bundle up like Mary Taft pictured here circa 1897 to 1898 on 9th Street NW for snowball fights, making snowmen, and of course, shoveling the sidewalks.

📷 Henry Arthur Taft photograph collection, TA 62.

12/25/2023

Rocking around the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse in 1954. Warm holiday wishes to everyone celebrating today!

📷 Cleveland Park, Georgetown, and General Architectural Slide collection, CPG C019.

12/20/2023

In a city that's always changing, ask yourself: what used to be here? Before it was Capital One Arena, it was the Verizon Center (2006-2017) and before that, the MCI Center (1997-2006). But what did 7th Street and Chinatown look like before that? We're sharing a few historic photos to help us look back in time at what the neighborhood looked like before the Capital One Arena that we know today.

For a more in-depth discussion, check out https://bit.ly/3S0NUYV.

Photo 1: Verizon Center in 2015. Photo by John DeFerrari.

Photo 2: The corner of 7th and F Streets NW between 1910 and 1920. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540

Photo 3: Commercial buildings on the east side of the 600 block of 7th Street NW circa 1965. Emil A. Press slide collection, PR 1114B.

Photo 4: The same view, just a few years later, of commercial buildings on the east side of the 600 block of 7th Street NW circa 1971. Buildings include the Bargaintown DC Store (1966-1971) and the Barrister Building. Miriam E. Johnson photograph collection, JO O169.

12/15/2023

For all those burning the toy-building midnight oil this holiday season, take a look at how the pros did it. This is James Butcher, the craftsman behind Butcher-Built Doll Houses, active 1926-1950. Learn more about this local business through the James W. Butcher papers (MS 0507).

12/13/2023

Thank you for celebrating DC history with us this year! Share something you loved most about DC history or your favorite program in the comments.

If you'd like to make a donation to help support more programs, exhibits, and research next year, please visit https://bit.ly/4837MzB.