DC's First African-American Fire Station at 931 R Street

The District of Columbia Fire Department was officially organized on September 23, 1871, although several neighborhoods had volunteer and paid crews prior to that date.  These began with a fund raiser held in 1789 to purchase a hand pumping engine and buckets for the Georgetown community.  Fire Station No. 4 at 931 R Street, NW was built between 1884 and 1885, and later became notable as an all-black engine company. 

The first firefighter in the District to lose his life in the line of duty occurred on May 6, 1856, when Benjamin Grenup, a member of the Columbia Engine Company, fell from a vehicle on the way to fighting a fire at the Shreeves’ Stables on capitol Hill.  His grave in Glenwood Cemetery is marked with life sized fire hydrants carved in stone at each corner of his plot. 

Regulations for the department were first introduced in September of 1856, and a short time later, Mott style fire call boxes were placed in strategic locations throughout the city, recognized by their harp shaped cast iron poles and gas lights.  Citizens would pull a trigger at these locations to send a telegram like alarm to a central station, which noted a fire in progress near that particular pole.  The call boxes cost an estimated $200 each to purchase, install, and wire.  The Gamewell Company later expanded the system to include more than 1,500 such call boxes in the city, expanded to include police call boxes using a similar system.  We did a blog post just on the callboxes themselves HERE.    

Records kept by the Fire Department were meticulous, as reported on a yearly basis in the Report of Commissioners of the District of Columbia.  In 1880, for example, salaries totaled $71,840, and the Department had 15,600 feet of hose in good condition, 3,700 feet in fair condition, and 3,400 feed in bad condition.  They had a total of 38 horses, of which 32 were in active condition.  Each firehouse had an inventory of all items on the premises, down to the number of pliers and combs.  Gas jets, chimneys, and gas stoves seem to have caused most of the fires reported in 1880.            

Fire Station No. 4 at 931 R Street became the first all-black fire fighting company in Washington on April 3, 1919.  Prior to the forming of this company, the fire department had been racially integrated, but it was difficult for blacks to pass arbitrary and impromptu physicals and exams sprung by white leaders effectively preventing them from advancing ranks within the Department.  The request for the all-black company was instituted by one of the four black firefighters working for the city at the time who apparently believed that his only opportunity for advancement was within an all-black unit.

 

 In January of 1943, Gordon Parks photographed the fire company at Station No. 4, recording their daily activities and routines, seen here.  He included pictures of Lt. Mills and Captain J.B. Keyes, and other crew members.  Parks followed them to calls and fires, including one in front of the Mid-City Theater in the 1200 block of 7^th Street, built in 1913. 

The Department was integrated again in the early 1960s, but advancement for blacks remained difficult, often conflicting with a multiple generation immigrant population.  Following the 1968 riots, however, an aggressive recruiting campaign resulted in a more racially balanced department.  Washington, DC had its first black fire chief appointed in 1973.   Fire Station No. 4 was later changed to Fire Station No. 7, but is today a private artist studio and residence.  As reported by Urban Turf, it can be yours for just $2.65 million.  See the listing HERE.  

Copyright Paul K. Williams

Google Maps of our completed house histories

We've created Google maps of our many house histories completed to date.  Too many, in fact to fit on one map!  You can find the house histories done in NW Washington DC HERE, and the house histories completed in SE, NE, and SW Washington, DC HERE.  Note that there are so many, each map has several tabs, so be sure to click through at the bottom of the (left side) listings to see each version.  We'll always have them at the bottom of the blog, as well.  You may learn a bit about the house on your block!

And, as always, we offer a $100 discount on a new house history if we have completed one on your block!

Architect & Counterfit Money Maker Frank R. White

Architect Frank Russell White was born in Brooklyn, New York on May 2, 1889.  He attended public schools in New York, and attended the Pennsylvania Military College between 1903 and 1904.  He first came to Washington in 1908 to work as an architect for the Harry Wardman Company, for whom he worked for the next twenty-five years. 

He specialized in apartment building designs for Harry Wardman, but also designed more than 5,000 single dwelling houses for the Wardman Company.  He and his wife Carolyn resided for most of his career at 4645 Alton Place, NW. 

Perhaps his best known apartment building is the Wardman Park Hotel & Apartments at 2660 Woodley Road in Woodley Park, completed in 1917.  White also designed three of the buildings at Clifton Terrace, 14^th and Clifton Street, in 1917, and the famed Chateau Thierry at 1920 S Street, in 1918.      

White established his own practice in 1922 with an office at 1340 F Street.  One of his primary clients included Christian Heurich, for which he designed the Heurich Building at 1627 K Street in 1939. 

The Great Depression was difficult for many of the country’s architects, but apparently especially so for Frank White.  He was arrested on October 26, 1931 in Baltimore, on the charge of altering and raising $1 notes to represent $100 notes.  He pleaded guilty in December of that year, and served a two year prison sentence.    

Copyright Paul K. Williams

Washington's Largest Apartment Building - Razed

The Portner Flats apartment building once dominated the low rise residential intersection of 15^th and U Street, and when it was completed in 1902, it was crowned as Washington’s largest apartment building.  Completed in three stages beginning in 1897, it was located on the northeast corner, with a main façade extending 320 feet north to V Street.

 Built by millionaire brewer Robert Portner and designed by architect Clement Didden, construction of the first of three phases began in 1897 at the intersection of 15^th and U Street.  Portner had purchased the land for $45,000, and had formed the Capitol Construction Company to build it to avoid union disputes during the project.  Skeptics coined it “Portner’s Folly” due to its location far from the urban center of town. 

However, the first section of luxury, three bedroom apartments rented quickly, and Portner commenced building a northern wing at 15^th and V Streets in 1899.  Incredibly, with only one vacant apartment remaining in the two sections, work began on the middle section in 1901.  It was built one story taller than the previous sections, and in a slightly more Romanesque style that was popular at the time.  It featured a large, two story balcony in the central penthouse.

The middle section was built atop a swimming pool and tennis court that was one of the more unusual features for an apartment complex at the time. Unlike the large apartments built earlier, the central section contained a series of smaller efficiencies and one bedroom units.  To make up for the loss of the pool and courts, only a few years after they were built, Portner included large ballrooms, a huge dining room and private rooms that renters could reserve for parties. The entire complex cost an estimated $350,000 and contained a total of 123 apartments with 515 individual rooms.                 

            

In addition to the Portner Flats, Clement August Didden (1837-1923) was architect of a significant number of homes in the immediate area, but curiously never received much national recognition.  Born on May 13, 1837 in Brakel, Germany, Didden left Germany in 1862 for England and the Cape of Good Hope to practice architecture.  He moved to New York City in 1866 to work for Fernbach, Hunt, and Post, a firm with prominent architect Richard Morris Hunt.  After leaving New York in 1870 or 1871, Didden became affiliated with the influential Philadelphia firm of Fraser, Furness, and Hewitt.  He worked in Philadelphia until 1872 when he moved to Washington and eventually established his own practice. 

Didden is attributed with numerous residential designs within the area, including 1207-1219 Q Street, 1609-1615 13th Street, 1329-1335 N Street, 1223-1229 15th Street, 1520 to 1524 Kingman Place, 1604-1606 Vermont Avenue, 1224 13^th Street, and 1453-1455 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.   

Didden's career as architect in Washington lasted for nearly 50 years.  He lived most of his life at 710 13^th Street, N.W.  At the age of 86, in 1923, Didden died leaving behind works in Washington, Philadelphia, New York, South Africa, England, and Germany.  His relative George Didden III is President of the National Capitol Bank on Capitol Hill.  

Owner Robert Portner

Robert Portner (1837-1909) had arrived in the port of New York in 1853 from Westphalia, Prussia, where he had been born just sixteen years earlier.  He became a citizen in 1859 and proudly voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

As a risk taker, Portner decided to take his small savings and settle in Alexandria in the late spring of 1861, where he opened a grocery store.  Selling goods to commanders for the army stationed throughout the area proved to be a huge success, and within a year, Portner bought a small brewery, from which he then sold beer to the armed forces. 

      

Expanding the brewery naturally followed, and soon he was renting a schooner to ship goods and beer down the Potomac to soldiers stationed in nearby Fredericksburg.  With a staff of five, he quickly expanded to produce 1,000 barrels of Tivoli beer, making deliveries to local pubs in and around Alexandria.  Tivoli is “I lov it” spelled backwards.  

In the next ten years, Portner continued to expand the brewery, built an ice plant, bought a shipyard, started a construction company, and established a German-speaking bank while also dabbling in real estate.  In 1880, Portner and Edward Eils invented a cooling device that used a steam-driven fan to force air over refrigerated pipes that is recognized as one of the earliest air conditioning inventions. 

By 1895, the brewery extended over four blocks on either side of Pendleton Street between North Street, Asaph and North Washington Streets.  Portner and an investor formed the National Brewing Company at 13th and D Streets, Kentucky and South Carolina Avenues, NE.  The Main building was 135 feet tall, 94 feet wide and 137 feet deep with stables and a huge icehouse, which produced 50 tons of ice per day.  The brewery produced 100,000 barrels of beer annually, or 24 million pints a year.  

Portner and his family lived at an estate in Manassas coined ‘Annaburg.’ Its grounds included a dairy, deer park and a man-made lake, complete with swans.  When he died in 1906, Portner's estate was worth $1.9 million.

Portner’s life and legacy is the subject of a book titled The Shortest Dynasty: 1837-1947 by Michael Gaines.  The author chronicles the fascinating events of the Portner family, their trials and triumphs, and provides in-depth look into the brewery business and the many innovations that Portner helped create.  Portner’s Lager beer is today now made by the Old Dominion Brewing Company.   

Portner’s son, Paul V. Portner, began a real estate company in 1910, and lived at the Portner Apartment building for some time. He purchased and rented houses in the area, including 1750 and 1752 Swann Street.  He died of complications from excessive drinking in 1919, at the age of 36.  The Portner family sold the apartments to investors in 1945.

It reopened the Dunbar Hotel, after a massive, $800,000 reconfiguration of the 123 apartments into 485 hotel rooms.  Incompetent management led to a liquor license suspension in 1950, at a time when the hotel was renting to prostitutes and vagrants.  In the years following, the building was transformed again, and became Washington’s leading elite black hotel, welcoming entertainers playing on U Street.  Named after LeDroit park resident and literary figure Paul Lawrence Dunbar, it remained a popular gathering place for debutante balls, weddings, and musical performances. 

The Dunbar slowly declined after the city’s other hotels were integrated, and partially closed its doors in 1964.  It was sold to the city in 1970, and remained vacant for four years, and despite the efforts of preservationists, it was razed in 1974.  In 1978, the Campbell-Heights apartment complex was built on the site, with a seven story high rise building and low rise garden apartments.

Copyright Paul K. Williams

No Need to Empty the China Cabinet: Just Pick Up and Move Your DC Townhouse in 1907.

When we begin a house history and literally hit a brick wall when we start researching, something is amiss.  We double checked lot numbers, house numbers, and even the Square number, but one recent project left us stumped.  Of all possibilities, we never would have guessed that the three story, 114 year old townhouse we were researching had been moved just eight years after it had been built.  Moved only 25 feet, that is, without the need to even empty the china cabinet.     

The owner  of the vacant lot where 2108 Bancroft Place, NW was to be constructed beginning in 1899, John James Hemphill (left) likely never envisioned that his soon to be built house would be astonishingly moved in its entirety to the adjoining lot just eight years later, in 1907. The house he constructed at 2108 Bancroft was indeed painstakingly relocated next door, where it is found at 2110 Bancroft Place today (right). 

 “JJ” Hemphill as he was known, applied for and was granted an Application for Permit to Build numbered 1778 for the house on June 7, 1899.  He listed architect Lemuel Norris (1838-1940) as responsible for its design, and William P. Lipscomb as the general contractor. It was estimated to have cost $12,000 to construct.  

John James Hemphill (August 25, 1849 - May 11, 1912) was a U.S. Representative from South Carolina, elected as a Democrat to the Forty-eighth and to the four succeeding Congresses (March 4, 1883-March 3, 1893).

 

The Moving of 2108 Bancroft Place to 2110 Bancroft Place

Shortly before April of 1907, Hemphill’s neighbor to the east constructed a high brick wall that Hemphill felt obstructed his views. A good brick (fence) wall apparently did not make good neighbors, and Hemphill took the drastic step of planning to move his house twenty-five feet west onto an adjoining vacant lot. It was a risky maneuver, and had not been accomplished in Washington prior to 1907. In addition to the move, the house had to be raised eighteen inches to accommodate the street grade. It would cost $4,500.  Remember, the house cost $12,000 to build!

Hemphill obtained a Permit to Repair or Reconstruct Buildings numbered 3346 on April 24, 1907. He indicated that a mechanic at the Sheeler Company would oversee the operation and an article in the May 26, 1907 Washington Post revealed that the move took about three weeks to accomplish.  They planned on supporting the wood bay on the east side with copper, and would add a rear brick addition measuring twelve by sixteen feet once the house was in its new location. The text from the Post appears here.

Mary Clements recalls in her oral history interview with homeowner Elizabeth Hemphill that she had indicated that she didn’t even have to empty her china closet the move went so smoothly. Interestingly, despite the fact that the house had been moved to its new location at 2110 Bancroft Place and a new house was under construction at 2108 that began in 1909, the 1910 census still refers to the Hemphill family as residing at 2108. It was likely due to the address number still affixed to the exterior, replaced when the house to the east was finished. In any event, it showed Mr. and Mrs. Hemphill as occupants, along with their 17- year-old son John. They had one live-in, Mulatto servant names Sarah J. Johnson, who had been born in Virginia about 1872.  

Somewhat surprisingly, just two years after the drastic move due to his loss of view to the east, Hemphill himself obtained a permit to construct a new house on the lot where his own had been moved. He once again hired Lemuel Norris to design 2108 Bancroft Place, which was constructed shortly after the permit was issued on March 23, 1909. It was built by the Lipscomb Company at a cost of $15,000. The front elevation plan was included along with the permit, illustrated at left.

   

Copyright Paul K. Williams