Civil War Camp to Victorian Neighborhood
City within a City
The Shaw neighborhood and the Greater U Street Historic District are rich in African American and Civil War history. They are the ideal place for the African American Civil War Memorial now located on this Metro plaza. The neighborhood was named for Robert Gould Shaw, the White commander of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, an African American unit featured in the film Glory.
When the first shots of the Civil War were fired, this entire area north of Washington’s downtown was still woods and open fields, with a few small wooden houses scattered here and there. The Union command chose this area for some of the city’s major encampments–Campbell Hospital at 6th and Florida Avenue, the Wisewell Barracks at 7th and P Streets, and Camp Barker near 13th and R Streets. These camps were safe havens for freedmen fleeing the South, and some chose to stay and make their homes in the area.
After the war, as the city’s population mushroomed, public streetcars began to run north from downtown through this neighborhood, opening it up for development. From the 1870s to 1900, builders filled its residential streets with the Italianate, Second Empire and Queen Anne style row houses that characterize the neighborhood today. Blacks and White built and lived in this neighborhood which became predominantly African American between 1900 and 1920.
The Prince Hall Masonic Lodge, the large building adjacent to the African American Civil War Memorial, was designed by the prominent African American architect Albert I. Cassell in 1922 and continues to be a center of civic and social activity.
Marker is at the intersection of U Street, NW and 10th Street, NW, on the right when traveling east on U Street, NW.
Courtesy hmdb.org
