Dear Colleagues,
As we approach the end of the school year, I thought I would write one more email to bring you up to date about the I-395 project. The Mayor’s official groundbreaking for the project will take place on May 12 at 10:00 a.m. on the 3rd Street side of the highway. Of course, we know that ground was really broken a long time ago. Moreover, the dirt in front of the Law Center is disappearing as the excavators slowly remove the earth adjacent to the current retaining wall, and workers slowly lodge and secure the lagging boards into place between the piles. As I explained in a prior email, once the lagging boards are in place all the way down to the highway surface, the current retaining wall will be demolished to permit BBC to build the new 2nd Street off-ramp from the highway.
As that work progresses above the highway, the center barrier wall on the highway surface will be demolished and the street lights down the center of the highway will be removed.
That work has already begun on the north end of the highway work zone. The demolition of the barriers will allow BBC to begin drilling the holes and sinking in the caissons that will ultimately support the deck over the highway. I will write more about that once that phase of the work begins. There will be some pile driving occurring on the current 2nd Street ramp in the days ahead, but as you recall, the vibratory pile driver does not produce disruptive sounds. In addition, this work will be done on the south end of our campus, away from any classrooms. Weekend work will occur only on Massachusetts Avenue between 3rd and 4th Streets so that will not affect our campus, except for traffic detours if you use Massachusetts Avenue.
The specter of tearing down retaining walls and demolishing barriers might make you worried about noise during final exams. Don’t be! First of all, there will be no night work along
2nd Street or on the highway surface during the final exam period so Gewirz residents will be able to get a good night’s rest before their morning exams. The BBC schedule and our campus rhythms seem to be playing in concert these days. The daytime noise will be no louder than the sounds we have been hearing this week. The excavators will continue to remove the earth behind the retaining wall and the wall itself will not be knocked down until after final exams are completed. I have visited the classrooms along the 2nd Street side of McDonough Hall and the sounds from the outside, even those from the demolition work down on the highway are minimal and do not rise above the normal ambient sounds of the highway. Nonetheless, we will continue to monitor the sound and will baffle the window frames if we need to do so. As always, ear plugs will be provided by the Registrar’s office.
By the way, we are also hoping to have the Tower Green restored before graduation weekend. Your parents will be impressed by the beauty of the neighborhood – well, at least within our confines.
The BBC/PGP Construction team has surely altered the neighborhood since they began, and by the time you return in August, they will have altered even more. If you return in 2021, you will probably not even remember that a highway runs along the Law Center’s western edge.
As dramatic as these changes will be, they are not the first and perhaps, not even the most dramatic. Geologically speaking, the Law Center is in the Atlantic Coastal Plain, formed millions of

years ago by ancient oceans, sweeping down along a region of metamorphic rock called the
Piedmont -- meaning the foot of the mountains. The fall line of the Piedmont, where it meets the coastal plain, runs through Great Falls and Rock Creek Park, and then continues through Washington to our north near Meridian or Malcolm X Park.
Great Falls of the Potomac River between Evidence of the Fall Line can best
Virginia and Maryland, along the Atlantic seen along a steep segment of Rock
Seaboard Fall line Creek between Military Road and
Tilden Street
If you were to dig deeply into the earth surrounding the Law Center, you would see three layers of deposits: a thin upper layer of soil, broken bricks, and other evidence of human occupation; a middle layer, pink to brown in color, composed of mostly clay that is evidence of a swamp that covered much of this area well into the 1800s; and then at the bottom, sand of a quality usually found around moving water. The top layer reflects the presence of the white man, beginning around 1800. The second layer reflects the swamps that began to form in this area millions of years ago as antediluvian waters flooded the area and then receded, destroying forms of animal life and vegetation, and leaving them to decay. The deep layers are sand, deposited by the many swift-moving rivers, caused by rain and the melting glaciers that covered the coastal plain.
As the rains gradually ended, the water receded and its power diminished. The remaining deep channels formed many rivers and creeks. Remnants of those rivers remain -- some wide and flowing like the Potomac and the Anacostia, some merely hidden meanders or trickling streams like Goose Creek and Tiber Creek that flowed in this area until the 1900s. The area where the water receded slowly expanded the swamp. The swamp remained late into the 1800s and gave rise to this neighborhood's nickname, Swampoodle.
Although Native Americans roamed the land which we now occupy, they did not form permanent settlements here. Their settlements were farther south along the Anacostia River. The earliest sighting of Native Americans by Europeans occurred in 1608 when Captain John Smith saw members of the Powhatan band on the Potomac River just north of what is now Georgetown. Many of the Nacosin Indians, of Algonquin lineage, lived on the banks of the Anacostia
River in a large village called Nacotchtank. The village stretched from near Bladensburg, Maryland, to the confluence of the Anacostia and Potomac rivers. Another band lived in a smaller vil-

lage called Tahoga in what is now Georgetown. The closest Native American village to the Law
Center was at 2nd and Duddington Streets, SE, just south of the House office buildings and near
Garfield Park. These bands were farmers and fishermen, but they also hunted along the Tiber and
Goose Creeks and in the swamps that covered our neighborhood.
Captain John Smith’s map of Nacotchtank (1612)
Nacotchtank disappeared from European records in the early 1630s as the villagers moved further down river to a spot near Nanjemoy, Maryland. It was among these Native American bands living along the Potomac that the Jesuit missionaries led by Reverend Andrew White began their work in 1639. The villages are all long gone, but the presence of their inhabitants is remembered in the name Anacostia, -- both the river and the section of the city -- an English corruption of the name Nacosin.
Our neighborhood no longer bears any resemblance to the land where Native Americans hunted or where streams and creeks swelled into swamps and marshes. The history of this neighborhood, however, is rich, vibrant, and complex, and reflects the nineteenth and early twentieth century American experience. Before the Law Center moved to this neighborhood in 1971, European settlers and former slaves, and their descendants, had lived and worked here for almost two hundred years. When Washington City was carved out of Maryland in 1791, Benjamin Oden became the original proprietor of our land. During that time, it was called Bealls Levels. Later, it would be called the East End. Few people lived in the area during the first half of the nineteenth century. Early maps of our neighborhood show few buildings before 1850. Even when the Law
School was founded in 1870, the land to the northeast of our present site remained rural and sparsely settled, due in part to the swamps surrounding the Tiber Creek. The map at http://www.geographicus.com/P/AntiqueMap/WashingtonDC-m-1850 shows the sparse settlements.
Some of the earliest buildings in the neighborhood were started by George Washington in
1798, and completed shortly after he died. The houses, built at about North Capitol and Constitution Avenue, NE, remained standing until 1914. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad came to this area in 1835. The tracks ran through what is now Union Station and down Delaware Street be-

fore depositing travelers at New Jersey Avenue. In 1852, the B&O Railroad built a charming train station in the Italianate design at New Jersey Avenue between C and D Streets, NW, about where the Japanese-American memorial stands today. Abraham Lincoln, fearing a possible
B & O Railway Station attack or kidnapping, arrived warily at this station to assume his Presidency in 1861. His funeral entourage departed from this same station in 1865, taking his body from a mourning Washington to his home in Illinois.
After a brief period of Northernization during the Civil War, Washington slowly returned to its Southern roots at the War’s end. Attempts at integration, a main goal of the Reconstructionists, fell by the wayside after 1870. De facto segregation in hotels, restaurants, hospitals, and theaters re-emerged and Southern congressmen later joined by those of the North fought for segregation in the public transit system. By 1906, Henry James would describe Washington as a place where “the North ceases to insist [and] the South may begin to presume.” The myth of the
“Southern Lost Cause” had blotted out the Northern victory of emancipation and nationhood.
The battle continues today.
Class distinctions re-emerged as well and were apparent in this neighborhood. Stephen
Douglas built a house called Mount Julep (named for Douglas’ partiality to whiskey), and two other homes in 1857 at 2nd and I Street, NW, After the war, Generals Grant and Sherman joined
Douglas as residents in what was then called Douglas Row. Sherman soon became a prominent resident of Washington and addressed a class of Georgetown Law students in 1873. The wealthy continued to live even further west at Judiciary Square and Blagden Row, and in boarding houses and homes along C Street between 1st and 4th Streets, NW. Millard Fillmore, John Calhoun,
Henry Clay, Francis Scott Key, John Fremont, and Thomas Hart Benton all resided in that neighborhood either before or after the war.
To the northeast of the Law Center lived poor whites, recent immigrants, and African
Americans who had moved north during and after the war. Land values to the north and east of our site were among the lowest in the city because of the swamps and marshes caused by the Tiber Creek. Until 1880, the only street paved in the northeast quadrant of D.C. was H Street, which linked Washington with the Bladensburg turnpike. The notorious Swampoodle neighborhood, a shantytown bounded by 1st Street, NW, and 2nd Street, NE, between G Street and K

Street, NW, was home to poor, mostly Irish, immigrants. During the Civil War, soldiers were warned to stay out of the area because it was so dangerous. By 1880, it was well-known for crime, tuberculosis, typhoid, and malaria. Because of the rowdiness and mayhem of Swampoodle and its adjacent neighborhoods, the old No. 6 police station was located on New Jersey Avenue between D and E Streets, NW, just south of the existing fire station. The proximity of the police
Swampoodle houses on 1st St NE did not disturb one of the area’s most successful crime organizations whose work was grisly but necessary for the advancement of medical science. At 419 New Jersey Avenue, where the Liaison Hotel now stands, Maude Brown led a group of body snatchers called “resurrectionists” who stole bodies from the city’s burial grounds and then sold them to out-of-town medical schools.
Their exploits were uncovered and finally ended in 1894 when a barrel labeled “pork,” but containing pickled human remains, was found in a warehouse at the B&O train station. To learn more about our colorful neighbors to the northeast, visit http://whenwashingtonwasirish.blogspot.com/2010/11/swampoodle.html
The late nineteenth century was an era of tumult and growth in Washington, and our neighborhood experienced it all. Between 1870 and 1900, development brought many people and jobs to the neighborhood. Boss Shepherd brought corruption, or at least fiscal adventurism to
Washington in the 1870s, but he also brought roads, streetlights, and sewers to the East End.
Most of the Tiber Creek was enclosed in a sewer by 1877, although it was not completely tamed and consigned to the deep earth until 1907 when Union Station was built. Even professional baseball could be found in the area. From at least 1886 to 1892, the immortal Connie Mack

played baseball for the Washington Nationals at Swampoodle Stadium. Aficionados agree that home plate was at the corner of North Capitol Street and Massachusetts Avenue. Some people think that the third base line went north up North Capitol Street and that centerfield was located where Union Station now stands. My own assessment of the only existing photo of the park, showing the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad trains and tracks in left field, favors instead a southern orientation, with the first base line going south down North Capitol. In either case, professional baseball has returned to the city and would have returned nearly to its neighborhood roots if then
Mayor Anthony Williams had succeeded in building a stadium for the Washington Nationals at
Florida Avenue and M Street, NE. instead of along the river in Southeast.
Development did not bring prosperity to everyone. African Americans, who had enjoyed real freedom and opportunity during and just after the Civil War, found the grip of segregation tightening anew as the Southern culture of the city regained its pre-eminence. The concept of separate education for white and black children was affirmed by Congress in 1870. Nativists and immigrants lived side by side but uneasily, always fearful of gang attacks. Nonetheless, jobs were available and communities began to develop. The M Street School, the first school for black students constructed with public funds, was built in the Romanesque style with colonial accents between 1890 and 1891 at M and 1st Street, NE. It served as a high school until it was replaced by Dunbar, also in our neighborhood, in 1916. Between the two schools, they educated many of Washington’s twentieth-century African-American intellectuals. The M Street School became Perry Elementary School and educated students until the 1950s. It is a now community center at which Georgetown University undergraduate and law students volunteer. Many Irish and other Catholic children attended St. Aloysius Elementary School and Gonzaga High School.
Gonzaga moved to North Capitol and I Streets, NE, in 1881 and remains a premier private school in the city. The Romanesque style Gales School, named after the eighth mayor of Washington, also opened in 1881 to serve white children in the neighborhood. It continued to educate students until 1944. The recently renovated Gales School building still stands across from the Law Center

on the triangle north of Massachusetts Avenue at 1st Street, NW. It now houses the Central Union Mission.
In 1856, the first Government Printing Office was opened at North Capitol and H Streets,
NE, again expanding economic opportunity to the neighborhood. The current building was erected in 1903. Hotels such as the Commodore (now the Phoenix Park), the Dodge, the Continental, the Pennsylvania, the Capitol Park, the Bellevue (now the George), and the Strathford (home to the Georgetown clinics in the 1980s), and numerous boarding houses all served the streams of people arriving at Union Station. New apartment houses, such as the Pierpont, the Navarre, and the Lundberg, were built where the I-395 highway now runs. A few weeks ago, BBC discovered some of their foundations while excavating and pile driving.
European immigrants poured into the neighborhood after 1880, still the Irish but also the
Italians who came to build the City Beautiful. Public buildings, such as the Library of Congress
Jefferson Building (built in 1897) and Union Station (built in 1907), and Washington’s beautiful cathedrals all felt the touch of the Italian masons’ skilled hands. New parishes and congregations were formed. St. Aloysius Church was completed by the Jesuits in 1859 at North Capitol and I
Streets, NW and a German parish, St. Mary Mother of God, opened at 7th and G Streets, NW, in the early 1900s. Holy Rosary, formed in 1913 in a house at 83 H Street, NW, served the Italian immigrants. This parish quickly became the center of East End social life and continues to be a thriving parish today. I will have more to write about Holy Rosary in another Construction Note.
Second Baptist built its church at 3rd and H Streets, NW, in 1898. Washington’s oldest synagogue, Adas Israel, was built between 1873 and 1876 at 600 5th Street, NW. That building was moved to 3rd and G Streets, NW, in 1969. It is now a museum of Jewish heritage. In the early
1900s, three synagogues operated between 5th and 8th Streets on I Street, NW. Jewish merchants from the East End, including my wife’s ancestors, joined the merchants from 7th Street as they walked to Shabbat services, literally closing I Street on Friday nights. I will have more to write about Adas Israel in a later Construction Note when BBC begins to lift and then move the historic Temple to a new location.
The story of this neighborhood is long and deep. Its history is rich and reflects the everchanging fabric of the city. There is still more to tell but it is time to start studying for final exams; so I will stop here and give you a rest. I will complete the tale before you leave for the summer.
Sources
Ghosts of D.C., “A 17th Century History of Anacostia: Captain John Smith, Nacotchtank and
Settlement http://ghostsofdc.org/2012/02/13/a-17th-century-history-of-anacostia-captain-johnsmith-natcochtank-and-settlement/
Henry James, T
HE
N
ORTH
A
MERICAN
R
EVIEW
, Volume 183 (1906)
Mlyniec, C ONSTRUCTION N OTES , T RANSFORMING A C AMPUS IN W ASHINGTON , D.C. (2006)