For over 100 years, the American Theater (also known more commonly as the Sylvan Theater) operated as an entertainment hub and community anchor in the Bloomingdale neighborhood of DC. Designed by prominent local architect Nicholas T. Haller, the Neo-Classical Revival style building is located adjacent to the intersection of Rhode Island Avenue and First Street NW.

The American Theater opened in 1914 in response to national and local desires for spaces built intentionally for viewing films. The motion picture business had grown immensely since the first theater in the District opened in a former storefront in 1906. In the years between 1909 and 1914, fifty-eight new movie theaters opened in the nation’s capital.

In 1930, the company rebranded as the Sylvan Theater, named for manager Sylvan V. Dietz, a prominent local deeply connected to the decade’s film scene. Outside of providing a space for films, the theater hosted local community activities (Boy Scouts events, fundraisers, civic rallies, etc.) from its earliest days.

The Sylvan survived the local decline of movie theater popularity in the 1950s, but closed in 1965 due to a succession of untenable mortgages. The property was sold at bankruptcy auctions in 1967 and 1969 before the renovation of the space by the Back Alley Theater (BAT). Begun in a Capitol Hill garage and literal alleyway, the BAT offered theater programs and educational workshops in playwriting for audience members. Established in 1967, the BAT formed in response to the complete lack of a suitable Black theater program or physical location. With the help of a $5,000 grant from the Institute for Policy Studies, the Back Alley Theater Company renovated the run-down Sylvan theater and offered its first production in 1971.

While the Sylvan had been built for the explicit purpose of viewing films, BAT members reimagined the space, breaking down barriers between audience and performers through the construction of a rough-hewn stage close to seated attendees. The energy was entirely unique and described as such:

“The sound of gospel music fills the air, and from that point on, the audience is as active as any sanctified church congregation during a revival meeting. Foot-patting and hand clapping, this black audience shows its appreciation by participating…It has been said that to be successful black theatre must encompass all the ‘pleasure and passion’ of the church.”

The BAT left the Sylvan by 1973, but the influence it had on the surrounding community was enormous. Research indicates that the BAT’s productions may well have been some of the earliest stage shows in DC to showcase cultural expressions of Black pride that accompanied the political empowerment of the African American community in the 1960s and 1970s. The Back Alley Theater was Washington’s first African American theater company that possessed its own commercial theater, and operated it as a center of community pride and cultural regeneration.

After the BAT’s departure, the Sylvan Theater became a rental space once more. A series of businesses have occupied the building and it continues to hold various stores and restaurants inside its walls today.

DC Inventory: April 25, 2019

Within Bloomingdale Historic District

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When James and Mary Hurd bought 116 Bryant Street in 1944, neighbors sued. Neighbors also sued the Hurds’ real estate agent, Raphael Urciolo, who had subsequently sold three more houses on the block to African Americans. All four properties had restrictive covenants. Charles Hamilton Houston represented the Hurds in court, while Urciolo defended himself.

Houston called expert witnesses to testify that race had no scientific basis, that covenants were having deleterious effects on American neighborhoods and society, that housing was extremely scarce for African Americans, and that covenants were no longer keeping the neighborhood white. Houston’s innovative strategy in Hurd v. Hodge did not sway the DC and federal appeals courts, which upheld the Bryant Street covenants. However, the strategy represented a critical turning point in the legal campaign to dismantle segregation, and Appellate Judge Henry Edgerton’s lengthy dissent would also prove influential. In 1947 the Supreme Court agreed to hear Hurd v. Hodge as a companion to a St. Louis case, Shelley v. Kraemer, and a Detroit case, McGhee v. Sipes. The latter would be argued by Houston’s former student, Thurgood Marshall.

With assistance from the NAACP, Howard University Law School, and other academic and legal experts, Houston compiled the most thorough brief of any he had ever prepared for the Supreme Court. The U.S. Department of Justice and numerous advocacy groups supported the appeal, and in May 1948 the decision came down: enforcement of covenants by the courts violated the 14th Amendment, which requires states to treat citizens equally. In DC, which is not a state, enforcing covenants violated the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Racial covenants also ran contrary to the public policy of the U.S., the Court said.

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African Americans began moving to the 100 block of Adams Street around 1925, despite covenants on some properties. At least nine houses on the block were the subject of lawsuits brought by white homeowners, who argued that the presence of black residents would depress real estate values. However, in part because much of the housing at the west end of the block and along Flagler Place had never been racially restricted, almost all of Adams Street was black-occupied by the early 1940s.

In 1941-42, civil rights attorney Charles Hamilton Houston represented several clients here in an effort to persuade the courts that racial covenants no longer served their intended purpose of keeping the neighborhood white. He also argued that black buyers, who faced a severe housing shortage, were willing to pay a premium to live here, while white demand had declined.

Houston partnered with anti-covenant real estate agent and lawyer Raphael Urciolo, who was sued for selling several racially restricted houses to black clients with the help of broker Romeo Horad. Urciolo represented himself in court, while Houston represented the homebuyers. Although the court upheld the covenants here, the evidence Houston collected would soon prove useful for another case (see Stop 14).

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Clara Mays bought 2213 First Street in February 1944, after the house she had been renting was sold. Mays defied a racial covenant because she couldn’t find another place for her large household. Especially for black families, housing was in extremely short supply during World War II. Several white and African American households here on First Street and around the corner on W included up to 15 people each, counting lodgers.

White neighbors sued Mays, and a DC court gave her 60 days to get out. She appealed, but the covenant was upheld in Mays v. Burgess (1945) for serving its intended purpose: the blocks east of First Street were “an unbroken white community of nearly a thousand homes under restrictive agreements, most of which are still in effect.” Dissenting Judge Henry Edgerton argued that racial lines were in flux, citing the impending expiration of the covenant on this block and the recent expiration of a covenant on the next block south.

Top civil rights attorneys had been working for decades to bring a covenant case to the Supreme Court, but the Court declined the NAACP’s petition on Mays’ behalf. Mays also lost a second appeal, and when she still could not find another house large enough for her family—including three sisters, six nieces, and a nephew recently discharged from the military—was held in contempt for remaining in the house. An anti-covenant attorney and real estate broker named Raphael Urciolo finally found Mays a new home.

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The houses along this block were among the first to be built in Bloomingdale, and defined First Street as the neighborhood’s premier architectural corridor. Deed covenants restricted the block to white residents, but in 1907 black civil engineer Francis deSales Smith bought 2206 First Street. A neighbor sued, alleging the sale would “do irreparable injury to the residents and depreciate the value of the adjacent properties,” reported the Washington Post.

The Washington Times declared that Harrison v. Smith would be “the first case brought before the local courts in which the citizenship of a whole community had banded together to prevent a colored person from occupying a residence among them.” The contributors to a fund supporting legal action against Smith included American Federation of Labor President Samuel Gompers, who lived down the street. Smith apparently succumbed to the pressure. By 1910, he and his family had moved out of the neighborhood to 1216 Girard Street NW and a white government clerk and his family had replaced them at this address.

In the 1920s, white residents of this block and throughout much of Bloomingdale circulated agreements obligating signers and future owners to sell or rent only to white people. This form of covenant covered properties that had not been restricted when first developed, or in some cases reinforced existing covenants, and became legally binding when filed with DC’s Recorder of Deeds. In 1924, white residents also launched the North Capitol Citizen, a newspaper “devoted to antinegro propaganda,” according to the Washington Post. In its first issue, the paper announced the availability of “For White Occupants” signs to residents selling houses.

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Although some builders used racial covenants west of First Street when they began developing these houses in the 1900s, numerous black households occupied the 100 block of V Street by the 1930s, including John R. Pinkett’s family. In 1932, Pinkett founded what would become one of the largest black-owned companies in the metro area—a real estate and insurance firm—in the basement of his home here at 122 V.

Diplomat and scholar Will Mercer Cook, son of famed composer Will Marion Cook and singer Abbie Mitchell Cook, lived a block north of here at 127 W Street while teaching at Howard University between 1945 and 1961. That year President John F. Kennedy appointed him ambassador to Niger. Acclaimed performer Chita Rivera grew up around the corner at 2134 Flagler Place in the 1940s.

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In 1943, the well-known religious leader Solomon Michaux purchased 101 U Street for his church and was sued for violating a racial covenant. However, in this case, the covenant prevented only black occupancy, not ownership, and Michaux was allowed to keep the property. The court also noted that the blocks west of First Street were largely black-occupied by this time, dubbing this area “a definitely colored section.”

In a companion case, the court upheld the covenant on a house just two blocks north of here, but on the opposite side of First Street (Stop 12). The court cited the “striking difference between the two cases” in that 2213 First Street was “located in a neighborhood which, as provided by the restrictive covenants covering the properties, has remained exclusively white.”

Two decades earlier, in November 1923, more than 500 white Bloomingdale residents gathered here at First and U for a march to the nearby homes of three black families. Although none of these houses were subject to racial covenants, the marchers told the owners, in a letter, that they had “invested all we have in our property, and … will not sit quietly by while all we have is threatened.” They also stoned at least one of the houses, prompting DC's district attorney to warn that “Washington is likely to have another riot unless police are active in suppressing attacks on colored homes,” according to the Afro-American. At least two of the families who were threatened refused to leave.

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In 1965, Marion Barry moved to DC to open a branch of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) here. Soon after his arrival, Barry helped launch a successful city bus boycott to protest a fare increase; initiated a boycott of businesses that did not support home rule for DC residents; and founded Pride, Inc., which trained and employed mostly young black men in a variety of public works projects. Barry was elected to the school board in 1971 and, three years later, to the City Council. He would go on to serve four terms as the city's mayor.

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Mount Bethel Baptist Church is among several congregations in Bloomingdale that moved into buildings originally constructed by white congregations. Mount Bethel bought this church in 1958, after outgrowing its original home at Second and V streets in neighboring LeDroit Park. By this time, the racial covenants that had limited the sale of property to whites were no longer legally enforceable.

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John S. Melton blanketed the unit block of T Street with racial covenants when he built rowhouses here in the early 1900s, but middle-class black families filled the 100 block of T and other nearby streets by the 1930s. First Street remained the eastern limit of black settlement until 1942, when two lawsuits to uphold racially restrictive covenants on this block of T Street were unsuccessful. Duffy v. McCray and Duffy v. Matthews attempted to prevent black families from living at numbers 37 and 21 T Street, respectively. The latter case targeted newspaper editor Ralph Matthews and his wife Selma Sampson Matthews, who produced “musical extravaganzas” at the nearby Howard Theatre to raise funds for charitable organizations, according to her Washington Post obituary.

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