Description
Spring 2018 | Volume 30, Number 1
Cover: The 1978 NBA championship Washington Bullets showed off their stuff on basketball trading cards, a recent donation to the Historical Society. Donor Joe Judge is the grandson of Joe Judge, first baseman on the Washington Senators team that won the World Series in 1924. Montage by Debra Naylor
Envisioning Community
The Struggle to Preserve Cleveland Park, 1978–2018
By MALGORZATA J. RYMSZA-PAWLOWSKA
In 1910 a developer of what would become Cleveland Park published an advertisement featuring this utopian image of elegant houses in tree-lined neighborhoods set apart from the central city. Much of the neighborhood eventually fulfilled the developer’s promise, and late 20thcentury residents worked hard to maintain a sense of small-town community.
Home . . . Where the Soul Is and After the Fires
By MARITA GOLDEN
Editor’s Note: Back in 1969, when acclaimed novelist Marita Golden was known as “Bernette,” the native Washingtonian was a student at American University. A little more than a year after the rage and destruction that followed the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Golden wrote a reflection for the student newspaper, the Eagle. In it she described conditions in the 14th Street area and reflected on the riots’ impact. Fifty years later, the editors of Washington History invited Golden to revisit the subject.
Preserving Our Early Architecture
The Historic American Buildings Survey in the District of Columbia, 1933–42
By MARK SCHARA
In November 1933, a young National Park Service architect delivered a remarkably eloquent proposal to the head of the Civil Works Administration. “Our architectural heritage of buildings from the last four centuries diminishes at an alarming rate,” he wrote. “The ravages of fire and the natural elements, together with the demolition and alterations caused by real estate ‘improvements, form an inexorable tide of destruction destined to wipe out the great majority of the buildings which knew the beginning and first flourish of the nation.”
The C
ost of Integration
The Contentious Career of Garnet C. Wilkinson
By TIKIA K. HAMILTON
While Wilkinson’s conservatism was a key to his success within the segregated D.C. school system, he became an unpopular symbol of the old-school willingness to settle for its inherent inequities.
