The Evolution of a Community, Part 1: 1608-1955
City of Washington from beyond the Navy Yard, about 1833, by George Cook. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Washington, DC
Travel back in time to a street corner in the closeknit community of Anacostia in the early 1900s. The purpose of this exhibition is to create a special feeling in our visitors: we want you to feel the history of Anacostia, to walk through it, to hear it, to see it, and to participate in it. With a little poetic license, we have recreated the corner of Nichols Avenue, Sheridan Road and Howard Road as it was when Douglass Hall was there instead of a gas station, and the old electric trolley went up the hill to Congress Heights. We hope that our visitors will understand what life was like, then, in Anacostia, and through this understanding may gain a new and better sense of their community.