Eckington, Washington, D.C.

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Eckington is a neighborhood in Northeast Washington, D.C. located south of the Prospect Hill and Glenwood Cemeteries. Eckington is less than one mile southeast of Howard University and exactly one mile north of the United States Capitol. Eckington is also the home of XM Satellite Radio.

The boundaries of Eckington are Rhode Island Avenue to the north, Florida Avenue to the south, North Capitol Street to the west, and Washington Metro's Brentwood Yard to the east.

[edit] History

The land which became Eckington was the country home of Joseph Gales, Jr. At the age of 21, Gales began working at the National Intelligencer newspaper, and two years later, in 1809, became a partner in its publication. The following year Gales bought out his partner and ran the paper until his death in 1860. Gales served as Mayor of Washington from 1827 to 1830. Gales took on as business partner his brother-in-law Colonel William Winston Seaton, who himself was mayor from 1840 to 1850.

Gales bought a lovely wooded Northeast tract in 1815, and in 1830 erected a two-story house on the hilltop, about where Third and U Streets intersect today. Gales named his estate Eckington after the village in England in which he was born. Mrs. Gales was the former Sarah Juliana Marie Lee, a cousin of General Robert E. Lee.

During the American Civil War, the house was used as a hospital for the 7th Regiment of New York. After the war, Eckington, commonly known as Gales Woods, was a popular picnic ground. According to the Evening Star newspaper, February 25, 1934, "immense cans of ice cream and barrels of lemonade were always on hand to refresh the children with, when they were tired out from running in the woods, playing games and swinging in the grapevine swing."

In 1887, Eckington was bought by George Truesdell and his wife Frances, who subdivided the property, improved it substantially for habitation, sold lots, and built several houses. George Truesdell was a Civil War veteran of the 12th New York Volunteers. He had made the rank of captain a little over a year after enlisting. Badly wounded in Virginia, Truesdell was held in the infamous Libbey Prison in Richmond. He remained in the Army, serving as paymaster, until 1869, and was known thereafter as “Colonel”. Col. Truesdell worked as a civil engineer in New Jersey for two years before coming to Washington in 1872 and entering the real estate business.

Truesdell undertook extensive grading operations to level the landscape of his 87-acre Eckington subdivision. He laid down water and sewer pipes, paved streets in asphalt and concrete, and erected a stand pipe near the old Gales house. A steam pump brought water to the stand pipe, which distributed water throughout the new neighborhood. Truesdell erected five “pretty cottages” which, according to an 1888 newspaper account, were “all fitted up as city houses,” with steam heat and hot and cold running water. Eckington was wired for electricity in 1889, two years before electricity was installed in the White House! In three years Truesdell spent $500,000 improving the subdivision. (Compare that with the $5,000 it cost to build each of Truesdell’s fine houses for sale).

The contractor for Truesdell’s houses was John H. Lane, who moved from Dupont Circle into one of those houses at 1725 Third Street. From 1889 to 1897, Lane developed nearly twenty properties in Eckington. None of Truesdell’s original five houses exists today, although several detached houses from the late 1800s, by Lane and others, dot the streetscape of Eckington. The first three decades of the twentieth century brought a boom in rowhouse construction to Eckington, as it did in many parts of the District.

Truesdell placed restrictive covenants in the deeds of Eckington’s residential properties which required that each house cost at least $2,000 and be set back 15 feet from the building line. There was to be no manufacturing, “nor shall spirituous liquors be sold therein.” The Union Army veteran did not place racial restrictions in the deeds, although as late as 1930 there were no African American families living in Eckington.

The Eckington & Soldiers Home Railway Company began service on October 17, 1888. The president of the company was George Truesdell. It was Washington’s first electric railway and followed by just a few months the first practical electric railway in Richmond. The line ran from Seventh Street and New York Avenue NW to Fourth and T Streets NE in Eckington. The line was extended in 1889 up Fourth Street to Michigan Avenue and the new Catholic University.

Col. Truesdell’s subdivision straddled the narrow tracks of the Metropolitan Branch of the B&O Railroad. The Met Branch was a line which brought commuters into the city from Maryland beginning in 1873. In 1888 the B&O bought 13 acres just north of Florida Avenue and built a passenger station. Passengers were to disembark and ride the new electric line into the city. A few years later the B&O built a huge freight depot next to the passenger station. This freight center spurred the development of manufacturing and warehousing along the west side of the tracks from Florida Avenue north to Rhode Island Avenue, Truesdell’s covenants notwithstanding. The National Biscuit Company (Nabisco) was at 4th and S Streets and Judd and Detweiler printers was at Florida Avenue and Eckington Place. There were as many as 20 warehouses, mostly for groceries and home and building supplies.

When the tracks were greatly expanded after the construction of Union Station, the east side of Eckington disappeared under them, including two of Truesdell’s original houses. One could no longer travel east from Eckington between New York and Rhode Island Avenues.

The Fourth Street streetcar line would eventually turn onto Rhode Island Avenue and head toward Maryland. Catholic University was then served by a line that went straight out North Capitol Street to Michigan Avenue. Those lines were removed in the late-1950s, and with them went much of Eckington’s charm and desirability.

Consider North Capitol Street. The streetcars attracted residents from both Bloomingdale to the west and Eckington to the east, bringing them together for a pleasant excursion or daily commute. But after the streetcar line was removed, North Capitol Street was dug into a trench to facilitate high-speed, high-volume traffic. The entrenched highway formed a nearly perfect neighborhood divider, separating Eckington from Bloomingdale. North Capitol Street remains noisy, difficult to cross, and a supremely uninviting streetscape which is not at all conducive to neighborly interaction. This, along with the railroad tracks on its east, gives Eckington its relatively isolated quality.

[edit] External links

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Reporters_Debate_Congressional_Record.htm] http://www.congressionalcemetery.org/PDF/Obits/G/Obits_Gales.pdf