In 1895, Michael Holzbeierlein (1860-1939) opened his bakery at the rear of his house at 1849 7th Street, after having worked for several years as a foreman for the Charles Schneider Baking Company at 5th and I Streets downtown. After Holzbeierlein’s 1899 purchase of John M. Reuth’s ovens on Wiltberger Alley East, he transferred his business there, expanding it until his children took over the business in the 1930s. As sanitation and machine-made standardization became selling points during the Progressive Era, Holzbeierlein Bakery fared well. Holzbeierlein, along with other bakers, showcased his bread-making machinery at the 1909 Pure Food Show and invited his customers to visit his bakery, where "Cleanliness, Goodness and Order" prevailed.
In 1913, Holzbeierlein hired local German architect, Julius Wenig (1872-1940) and built a new two-story bakery building to expand his operations. The following year, Holzbeierlein erected a garage to house a fleet of delivery trucks. Holzbeierlein Bakery survived war-related cost increases and the 1920 baker’s strike. In 1928-29, Holzbeierlein built two apartment buildings nearby to house his workers, which consisted of sixty employees in the early 1930s. As a marker of its success, Holzbeierlein Bakery survived competition with several large-scale commercial bakeries for the first half of the twentieth century.
Eventually, the competition proved too much, and in 1953, at a time when baking was the city’s largest processing industry, Holzbeierlein & Sons Bakery declared bankruptcy, as family-owned business could no longer compete with the larger corporations. At that time of its dissolution, the bakery had seventy employees and thirty delivery trucks still working out of the Wiltberger Street/Alley bakery complex.
In 2021, a rehabilitation of the Holzbeierlein Bakery building was completed. The former bakery building is now part of The Adora, a mixed-use development with nine condominiums and a green roof. Designed by PGN Architects, the redevelopment included preservation of the bakery building, and the incorporation of a new building above (three additional stories) and on the north elevation (five stories tall) of the original construction.
DC Inventory: January 26, 2017
National Register:April 10, 2017
]]>The Hebrew Home for the Aged was constructed in 1925 to provide social support for destitute Jews, many of whom were immigrants who neither spoke nor understood English. The Hebrew Home, located in what was at the time considered the northern fringe of Washington, DC, was built to serve Washington’s growing Jewish community, particularly in the nearby Columbia Heights, Petworth, and Park View neighborhoods.
In 1922, the board of directors of the Washington Hebrew Home for the Aged announced their intentions to move the Home from the Shaw neighborhood to their newly purchased site on Spring Road between 10th and 13th Streets, NW, which would include both a residential facility and a hospital. Construction commenced in June 1924 to the designs of noted architect Appleton P. Clark, Jr., who planned the building to be erected in phases. The building was to have a central synagogue flanked by symmetrical residential and hospital wings. However, only the westernmost portion of Clark’s design was realized when the Home opened in 1925 with 35 beds for residents.
The building was subsequently expanded between 1951 and 1953 to the designs of Washington architect William St. Cyr Barrington. In 1940, the Jewish Social Service Agency was constructed to the west of the Hebrew Home to the designs of Washington architect Julius Wenig. The Hebrew Home for the Aged moved to a new site in 1968, at which point the building was sold to the DC government, who used it as a mental health facility for years before the building fell vacant in 2009.
Since 2020, the former Hebrew Home for the Aged and surrounding site have been redeveloped and now include mixed-income and affordable housing. The historic building was rehabilitated into The Appleton at Spring Flats — the new name being a reference to the building's architect. The award-winning adaptive reuse project was designed by Wiencek + Associates Architects + Planners. The Appleton houses 88 apartment units for senior citizens. New buildings were constructed on the surrounding site: The Robeson at Spring Flats, an 87-unit apartment building, and The Rows at Spring Flats, ten town homes along Spring Road.
DC Inventory: May 22, 2014
National Register: July 25, 2014
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