A Neighborhood For Everyone
Tour of Duty
THE BUILDINGS NEAR THIS CORNER were built during a wave of private development that began after the United States won the Spanish-American War in 1898, and became a world power for the first time. As America flexed its muscles, the world — and Eighth Street — felt the impact. In response, the Marines began rebuilding the Barracks in 1901, and the Navy Yard expanded the following year. The growing work force needed more housing and services too.
New buildings soon filled in vacant lots or replaced old structures along Eighth Street. In 1908 the Washington and Mechanics Savings Bank, later the City Bank, went up on this corner as the row’s first bank, reflecting the area’s bright economic prospects.
Eastern European and Asian immigrants, as well as American-born blacks and whites, joined the area’s already diverse pre-Civil War population. Diagonally across the street from this sign stands 701 Eighth Street, built in 1902 by Irishman James O’Donnell as a combination store and apartment building. O’Donnell ran a drugstore on the first floor and rented the second- and third-floor “flats.” Ten years later, Louis Rosenberg built 545 Eighth Street, across Eighth from this sign, as four independent stores (one of which was his shoe store) topped with apartments. Rosenberg was one of many Eastern European Jews to choose the neighborhood. By 1939 the Southeast Hebrew Congregation (organized in 1909) was large enough to purchase a permanent meeting place at 417 Ninth Street. In 1962, the old Academy Theater became the home of the purposely bi-racial Peoples Church, a Christian ministry of reconciliation.
Marker is at the intersection of Eighth Street, SE and G Street, on the right when traveling north on Eighth Street, SE.
Courtesy hmdb.org
