The physical structure of Northern Liberty Market came as a result of the 1870s development initiatives of then DC governor, Alexander Shepherd (1835-1902). An earlier incarnation of Northern Liberty Market existed in Mount Vernon Square starting in 1846, consisting of a collection of "dilapidated sheds" according to a later 1901 Washington Post article. Shepherd planned to destroy the market in 1871, but vendors learned of the plan and appealed for an injunction. In the middle of the night on September 3, 1872, Shepherd and a force of men from the Board of Public Works arrived "with picks and axes and rapidly tore down the buildings and sheds and cleared the square," as recounted by Washington Topham in the Records of the Columbia Historical Society (Vol, 24, 1922). Designed by architect James H. McGill (1853-1908), a new Northern Liberty Market was built two blocks east of the old market site in 1875. Many of the vendors from old Northern Liberty Market moved to the new market with 284 stalls. By 1891, the building expanded upwards to include a large hall above the market, becoming one of the biggest venues at the time. The new Convention Hall served numerous purposes: a movie theater for silent films, meeting space for religious conventions, a roller/ice skating rink, and a bowling alley. The Convention Hall also hosted the annual Pure Food Exhibit, the Washington Auto Show, and dog shows organized by the Washington Kennel Club. In March of 1946, a fire destroyed the top floor of Northern Liberty Market where the Convention Hall was located. While the fire did not spread underneath, thanks to the reinforced cement ceiling, products in the market below were severely damaged. By mid-April, Northern Liberty Market reopened solely as a market until it closed in 1963, due to the expansion of commercial supermarkets in the area. The National Historical Wax Museum occupied the building from 1964 until 1975; the museum's departure left the building vacant. Eventually, the empty building was demolished in 1985. Today, the site is a mixed-use development of residential and ground floor retail. DC Inventory: November 8, 1964, omitted from list July 24, 1968
]]>Dating back further than most other houses of worship in the city, Fletcher Chapel is notable as a representation of early DC's simple wood frame architecture, as well as the site of the founding meeting of the Anti-Saloon League, an important Temperance organiztion that would prove instrumental in achieving the passage of the 18th Amendment, on June 23, 1893.
Built between 1854 and 1857 as a mission church of McKendree Methodist Church, which had been established in 1845, Fletcher Chapel later became the first building associated with the Church of God and Saints of Christ, an African American denomination founded in 1903 by William Saunders Crowdy. Since its 1904 purchase by Crowdy, who is now regarded as a founder of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, the chapel has served a tabernacle, or congregation, of the church.
DC Inventory: September 26, 1996
National Register: August 14, 1997
]]>Founded in 1870 as the Preparatory High School for Colored Youth in the basement of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church, the school became the country's first public high school for African Americans. By 1891, the school became known as M Street High School when it moved to this new location. When it relocated again in 1916, the school was renamed for the noted African American poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906). As more high schools established in DC, Dunbar remained the city’s academic high school for African Americans while additional schools provided more vocational and technical training. Dunbar High School educated generations of Black leaders in fields such as law, education, science, and engineering. Celebrated graduates include Sterling Brown, H. Naylor Fitzhugh, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Charles R. Drew, William H. Hastie, Charles Hamilton Houston, Robert Heberton Terrell, Benjamin O. Davis Jr., Paul Capel III, Robert C. Weaver, and James E. Bowman. Additionally, some of its noted faculty included Anna Julia Cooper, Kelly Miller, Mary Church Terrell, A. A. Birch Jr., Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the father of "Black History Month," and Julia Evangeline Brooks, who was a graduate of the school herself. Despite protests by members of the DC Council and community members, the historic Dunbar building located on 1st and N streets NW was torn down in 1977 and a new Dunbar High School opened that same year. Built in the popular "open" concept of the time, the new school building was built without interior walls to separate classrooms. In 2013, the 1970s building was demolished and replaced with a modern high school that took design cues from its 1916 predecessor. DC Inventory: April 29, 1975
]]>Built between 1899 and 1902 by architects Ackerman & Ross, who had been selected in a national design competition, the Central Public Library was the first public building in DC to be built in the Beaux Arts style. The library is one of 1,679 libraries built in the U.S. using funds provided by Andrew Carnegie, and it served as DC's Central Public Library until 1970, when overcrowding moved the library's main branch to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library. It was the first desegregated public building in DC.
In 1999, Congress granted a 100-year lease of the Library to the Historical Society of Washington, DC. Since 2019, the Historical Society has occupied the second floor of the building with the DC History Center, while an Apple Store occupies the first.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
DC Inventory (Updated Documentation): April 30, 2020
National Register: December 3, 1969
This site is included on the Women's Suffrage in Washington DC tour for its role as a meeting space for suffragists and a common place to hand out pamphlets promoting the cause.
]]>The Yale Steam Laundry building housed the main offices and central plant of one of the handful of laundry companies that once dominated the industry in Washington. Such “power” laundries were high-volume mechanized operations catering primarily to hotels, restaurants, and other businesses, and employing several thousand workers, many of them women. Founded in 1885, the business was sold to the Liberty Laundry Company in 1917, but continued to operate until 1976 under the Yale name.
The original structure, built in 1902, housed the washing and dry cleaning equipment, presses, and hand finishing rooms in a vertically organized operation that moved laundry from the bottom of the building to the top. The garage, built in 1919, provided space for trucks as well as for stables, feed, and wagons. The 1924 addition housed newer machinery in a more modern, horizontally organized operation.
The main building is three stories, steel-framed, with facades of limestone and red brick, in Italian Renaissance Revival style with Georgian Revival windows and detailing (Thomas Francis, Jr., architect). Of particular note are the corbelled smokestack and the large molded brick sign in the frieze. The garage is two stories, concrete-framed with large multi-light industrial windows and red brick facade; the utilitarian addition is similar (both A.B. Mullett & Company, architect).
DC Inventory: December 17, 1998National Register: March 18, 1999
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