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Georgetown's first African Americans were brought as slaves to labor for the tobacco industry and for domestic service in the houses of wealthy tobacco merchants. Others came as freed men and women before and after the Civil War. Over time, in the face of laws and customs restricting right of African Americans, a self-reliant community formed that was centered on the church. Mount Zion United Methodist Church, at 1334 29th, is the oldest of the four African American churches remaining in Georgetown. Founded in 1816, it was a school, neighborhood meeting place and a stop on the Underground Railroad.
Land for Mount Zion was purchased from Alfred Pope, a prominent member of Georgetown's new African American leadership, who represented Georgetown in Congress in 1870. Originally a slave, Pope owned a wood and coal yard on 29th Street as well as real estate. By the 1920s, other African American businesses included an ice house on P Street, cobbler and tailor shops on O Street, the Districts largest feed store, and three pharmacies. The three black doctors made house calls even when signs put out warned of scarlet fever, diphtheria or smallpox. On a smaller scale, stands offered lemonade, grapes from backyard vines and local figs.
Rose Park, at 26th and O Streets, included an interracial playground,
but when in 1945 the DC Recreation Department tried to impose new rules restricting the park's use to African Americans, residents of both races defeated the attempt. Nationally ranked tennis players Margaret and Roumania Peters, known as Pete and Repeat, honed their skills at Rose Park. They went on to play at Tuskegee University, and won 14 national doubles championships. Occasionally the sisters played here with their friends, movie star Gene Kelly, who in the 1940s, rented a house nearby.
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Restoration of Georgetown's
Georgetown's Call Box restoration project is part of a city-wide effort to rescue the District's abandoned fire and police call boxes. Known as Art on Call, the project has identified more than 800 boxes for restoration. Neighborhood by neighborhood, they are being put to new use as permanent displays of local art, history and culture. The Georgetown project highlights the anecdotal history of Georgetown and its unique heritage as a thriving colonial port town that predated the District of Columbia.
Fire alarm such as this one (originally painted red) were installed in the District after the Civil War. In most boxes, the alarm was activated by opening a door on the front of the box and pulling a lever. An automatic telegraph system transmitted the box number to a central office that directed
the closes fire station to dispatch a fire truck to the vicinity of the call box. After almost 100 years, the system began to decline in the 1960s with the advent of two-way car radios and walkie-talkies. The alarms were finally turned off in the 1960s and replaced with the 911 emergency system.
Art on Call is a program of Cultural Tourism DC with support from
DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, DC Creates Public Art Program
District Department of Transportation
Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development
Citizens Association of Georgetown
The Charles Churchill Read Family
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