October 30, 2007

The second meeting was an impressive one. Of particular note were the memories shared with the group by Ms. Evelyn Kogok Hier, a long-time resident with a very active memory to say the least, and Mr. Anwar Saleem, also a long-time resident who gave a touching personal account of the day the 1968 riots broke out in the nieghborhood.

Below are the notes:--

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Neighborhood Stories/Research Topics

Mary Bakota talked about her Elliott Street neighbor, Pete (she couldn’t remember his last name), whose family was the first African American family in the neighborhood. Pete’s father worked to build the Smithsonian but was injured on the job. She also mentioned an 87-year-old brick mason.

Marqui Lyons said lots of musicians had played along H Street, including Shirley Horne and the Malachi Brothers. The Kavakos hosted famous musicians.

Evelyn Hier, who was born in 1926 and grew up at 1328 Maryland Avenue, NE, said she had operated Jo’s beauty shop at 500 H Street, NE. Her parents immigrated from Lebanon and settled first in Southwest, soon relocating to the Maryland Avenue address. Her father arrived first, in 1906, carrying $500. Then he brought his wife (in 1909?). He returned to Lebanon only once to visit.

Ms. Hier was the youngest of nine children; she moved from Maryland Avenue in 1951 when she married. This was a small, tight-knit Lebanese community with at least 30 families. The priest (Salloom – his granddaughter lives on East Capitol) lived next door. After church on Sundays (St. George’s Antiochian, 1009 H Street, NW – it moved to 16th and Webster in the 1950s) people would sit out on their porches and smoke hookahs, passing them around. People were outside all the time, Ms. Hier remembered, and were in and out of each other’s houses. As a teenager, she would sneak out of the house at night and eat hotdogs. She went to Elliott Elementary School and Eastern HS with Chuck Levin.

Ms. Hier’s father’s confectionery was on 4-1/2 Street, SW, on the site later occupied by HEW. It made sugar-coated peanuts and chocolate-covered nuts, and sold sandwiches as well.

Ms. Hier presented a long list of places she remembered. Spellings will be corrected.

- Fussell’s ice cream through the alley from the Atlas Theatre

- Mr. Ferris’s candy (Lebanese) next to Peoples - Kavakos Confectionery

- Kopy Kat Department Store – 11th and H (“Their stockings were rotten!” according to Gloria Corbitt.)

- Kresge’s 5 & 10

- Princess Theater

- Open market next door to theater. There were lines strung up with cut-open rabbits.

- 1417 H – Ms. Hier’s father owned a property at that address, and his tenant put a barbershop there.

- Coin arcade, pinball place

- Chinese restaurant

- Sanitary Grocery

- Curtis’s barbershop

- Kay Jewelers (or its predecessor)

- Henry G-something’s restaurant

- A fantastic seamstress next door to Brown’s dry goods.

- Club Kavakos at 8th and H

- Hamilton Bank next door

- Duke & Cooksy’s auto dealership

- Ourisman’s Chevrolet

- Gas station on corner going toward Bladensburg.

- Little Tavern, nickel hamburgers, at 8th & H. Later it was a seafood place.

- Tiny rowhouses with no front yards where poor people lived and a street preacher walked up and down.

The Hiers have photographs and will provide them for the project.

Mr. Gallo said he had talked to the Kokino family, who lived on 13th and Maryland and owned a candy store at 1103 H Street, NE. He passed around copies of photos of the store. They moved the store to NW about the time that some of the larger stores consolidated and drove out some of the smaller businesses. Ms. Hier knows the Kokino family.

Helen Wood said she remembered Packard’s restaurant, Sealtest Ice Cream Co., a recycling (or salvage) place on or near Fenton Street near GPO (Swampoodle), and some horse troughs where the bus station is now. She used to live at 96 K Street, NE. The 5th police precinct used to be on 10th Street, and the Little Sisters of the Poor had a soup line.

Ms. Levey asked whether the bridges and viaduct acted to cut off and/or define the neighborhood, and several people responded yes, they had created a divider.

Marqui Lyons suggested adding to the list of sites the Washington Brick Yard near the arboretum, which used local clay. Mr. Saleem said the bricks produced here were soft and required a special mortar. Mr. Gallo mentioned that Richard Layman had written a history of the area and mentioned a Washington Machine Brick Co.

Other ideas added to the list of sites:

- Beverly Theater on 15th Street near Miner School

The group clarified that Miles Long was a submarine sandwich place with two locations: one at 8th and H and another on North Capitol.

Ms. Lyons said blacks had moved to the H Street area from Southwest and from Foggy Bottom because of urban renewal in those two neighborhoods. Ms. Levey explained that H Street, where Jewish merchants dominated, had never been segregated. Morton’s at 7th and H was an example.

Anwar Saleem remembered knowing everybody. Doors were open at night and the neighborhood was very safe. You only had to worry about mosquitoes.

Ms. Levey explained that DC has seen a couple of eras of urban renewal, including Georgetown in the 1930s and Southwest in the 1950s, also Foggy Bottom. During the Civil War, blacks walked away from slavery, came to Washington, and settled around the forts. Those settlements were later wiped out; for example, the community around Fort Reno was replaced by Wilson High School.

Mr. Saleem mentioned that Italians had lived in the neighborhood, too: stone carvers who worked on the Capitol. Italians dominated the police department into the 1950s and 1960s, he said.

Ms. Levey asked for stories about the 1968 riots. Ms. Wood said she saw the fires on H Street from Linden Street. She was pregnant and stayed home. “It was horrible. You could feel the heat and couldn’t open the windows for the smoke.” The south side of H Street from 8^th Street to 14^th Street burned, she said.

Mr. Saleem said he’d been in 5^th period band class in junior high April 4, 1968. “They told everyone to go home and lock their doors. We decided to go investigate. We saw folks begin to loot on H Street and at the new Safeway behind Capitol Hill Hospital (it was 1-2 years old then). We defied our parents and watched what was going on, saw fires being set. I was in Morton’s when it was set on fire.” Mr. Saleem’s friend, Vernon Marlow – who was 12-14 years old at the time – died in the store and his body stayed there in the rubble for 10 years. Mr. Saleem “watched Kay Jewelers burn to the ground. The bricks were red hot. You could see where buildings had come down in back – the facades stayed – and you could see red-hot steel beams.”

Ms. Wood said, “When the National Guard came we wanted to give them something to eat because they only had C-rations, but they wouldn’t accept anything because of so much mistrust. My husband was in the military.”

Mr. Saleem: “They locked people up in the Armory. It was like a concentration camp.”

Ms. Wood: “The draft was in effect then.”

Mr. Saleem: “Many enlisted in the military service just to get out of the trouble they’d gotten into here. Kids getting off the bus from school couldn’t get home because of the fires and smoke, so people took them in. Some people looted food because there was nowhere to buy food. You couldn’t move around. The suburban malls weren’t there then.”

Ms. Wood: “You couldn’t even get to the farmers’ market because of smoke. People soaked towels and put them around the windows to seal out the smoke. This was over a two-week period.”

Mr. Saleem: “There was a little bit of everything going on. Some business owners burned their own store if it wasn’t doing well to collect the insurance money and get out. Others didn’t have insurance and were out of luck.”

Ms. Hier said her family’s business (run by her mother’s brothers), Kojak’s Liquors and a carryout on Mt. Olivet Road near Gallaudet, were burned out.