The condominium building on the southeast corner of 13th
and T Streets has a storied past, and a respectable place in the history of
black Washington. It opened in July of
1919, offering African American travelers a stay in a first class hotel often
for the first time, in the segregated nation’s capital. The Washington Bee newspaper described it as
the “first hotel apartment of its size built for the exclusive use of colored
people in this country.” It was
constructed beginning in July of 1918 at a cost of $158,000.
The Whitelaw Hotel (and the Whitelaw market across the
street) both take their name from the financier and owner of the Hotel, black business
entrepreneur John Whitelaw Lewis. He had
formed and built the Industrial Savings Bank building at 11th and U
Street that remains to this day. Both
the Whitelaw Hotel and the bank were designed by a black architect, Isaiah T.
Hatton. Whitelaw created the Whitelaw
Apartment House Company with private stock to finance its construction.
The Whitelaw was constructed by J. C. Reeder, a black
builder who had a team of carpenters in which “every workman is colored,”
according to the Washington Bee. The
building operated as a hotel with entrance on 13th Street, and an
apartment building, with an entrance along T Street.
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| Duke Ellington's signature on the registry |
The Washington Bee newspaper of October 5, 1919 described
John Whitelaw as “the first colored financier that has ever been a success in
Washington,” and revealed that Whitelaw had formed the stock company for blacks
to invest instead of the usual white financiers “so when this
prosperity…passes, they can see buildings towering skyward and say to the world
‘this is what we have gotten out of prosperity.’ ” Whitelaw had first come to Washington in 1894
with Coxy’s Army of the unemployed.
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| The kitchen |
The Whitelaw featured an ornate lobby, and a restaurant/ballroom
that was a favorite choice for elite dinner parties and dances. Its clientele included many of the famous of
the day that performed at the Howard Theater and other venues on U Street - Cab
Calloway, Joe Lewis, and the neighborhood’s own native son, Edward Kennedy
(Duke) Ellington. The ballroom ceiling
was composed of an intricate domed skylight made of stained glass in yellow and
green hues.
The Whitelaw was purchased by Tally Holmes and others in
1934, who owned the building for the next several decades until it finally
became abandoned in the 1970s and 1980s, home to a wide variety of prostitutes
and drug dealers. The building was
documented as part of the Historic American Buildings Survey by the Library of
Congress in 1979, often a signal of its ultimate demise. It suffered a devastating fire two years
later, on December 15, 1981, in which two firefighters were injured.
Nearly ten years later, local black architect Rhonnie McGhee
designed a renovation of the Hotel into affordable apartments created by Manna,
Inc. The stained glass doom in the
ballroom was located in a neighbor’s garage, restored, and reinstalled into the
building. The early apartment renters
eventually were able to purchase their units as a conversion into a condominium
was implemented as envisioned by Manna.  |
| Add caption |
Copyright Paul K. Williams
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