Worthy Ambition
—LeDroit Park/Bloomingdale Heritage Trail —
Front:
To your right is Lucy Diggs Slowe Hall, a Howard University dormitory. It opened in 1942 as U.S. government housing for African American women who came to DC to take new war-related jobs or fill in for men who left to join the military during World War II (1941-1945). These women and their white counterparts were known as "government girls." Housing was tight, so the few government-built residences were in great demand. Following local custom, they were segregated.
Slowe Hall honors a celebrated Howard University women's dean, tennis champion, and co-founder of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the first national sorority for African Americans. In addition to housing young women, Slowe Hall offered meeting spaces that brought notables to the neighborhood. Constance Allen, who grew up nearby, recalled greeting Eleanor Roosevelt in 1943 when the first lady met here with Mary McLeod Bethune, a member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet."
Charles E. Fairman, curator of the U.S. Capitol's art collection, lived at 325 U Street with his wife Mary from 1887 until the 1940s. Their neighbor across the street at 320 was Julia West Hamilton, founder and longtime president of the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA and mother of Col. West Alexander Hamilton. In 1941, Mathilde Smith Gray opened the LeDroit Park
Nursery School one block west at 404 U Street.
On your way to Sign 5, you will pass original McGill Victorian style houses and some replacements that mimic them. The nonprofit Manna, Inc., built 319-325 U STreet in 1997. Turn left on U Street to reach Sign 5.
Back:
LeDroit Park and its younger sibling Bloomindale share a rich history here. Boundary Street (today's Florida Avenue) was the City of Washington's northern border until 1871. Beyond lay farms, a few sprawling country estates, and undeveloped land where suburban communities would rise. Nearby Civil War hospitals and temporary housing for the formerly enslaved brought African Americans to this area in the 1860s. Howard University opened just north of here in 1867. Boundary Street (today's Florida Avenue) was the City of Washington's northern edge until 1871.
Around this time, a Howard University professor and trustee and his brother-in-law, a real estate speculator, began purchasing land from Howard University to create LeDroit Park, a suburban retreat close to streetcar lines and downtown. It took its name from the first name of both Barber's son and father-in-law. Bloomingdale was developed shortly thereafter.
For its first two decades, wealthy whites set up housekeeping in LeDroit Park. By 1893, African Americans began moving in. Soon LeDroit Park became
the city's premier black neighborhood. Bloomingdale remained a middle- and upper-class white neighborhood until the 1920s, when affluent African Americans began buying houses in the area south of Rhode Island Avenue.
Among the intellectual elites drawn here was poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. The trail's title,
Worthy Ambition, comes from his poem, "Emancipation":
Toward noble deeds every effort be straining./Worthy ambition is food for the soul!
Although this area declined in the mid-20th century as affluent homeowners sought newer housing elsewhere, revitalization began in the 1970s. The stories you find on
Worthy Ambition: LeDroit Park/Bloomingdale Heritage Trail reflect the neighborhood's — and Washington's — complicated racial history and the aspirations on its citizens.
Worthy Ambition: LeDroit Park/Bloomingdale Heritage Trail is an Official Washington, DC Walking Trail. The self-guided, 2.5-mile tour of 16 signs offers about 90 minutes of gentle exercise. For more DC neighborhoods, please visit
www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
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