Then
How U Street was built, from DC's historic building permits, and what the newspaper said about it a hundred years ago this week.
When it was built
Buildings by decade of permitCounts by decade
| Decade | Buildings |
|---|---|
| 1870s | 237 |
| 1880s | 618 |
| 1890s | 528 |
| 1900s | 402 |
| 1910s | 350 |
| 1920s | 143 |
| 1930s | 39 |
| 1940s | 33 |
| 1950s | 19 |
| 2010s | 3 |
At a glance
Each record is one building listed on a historic DC building permit; a single permit can cover many buildings. The busiest decade is highlighted in the chart.
Top architects
Buildings designedTop builders
Buildings builtFeatured block
One builder, one yearIn 1903, T. L. Lewis built 51 buildings on the 700 block of Gresham Place NW under 4 permits, designed by Hunter & Bell. The largest permit covered 14 buildings at an estimated $31,500 in total.
100 years ago this week
October 31 – November 6, 1926Mentions of U Street in the Evening Star, October 31 – November 6, 1926. Searched for "Howard University", "Lincoln Theater", "U street", "Florida avenue".
No clips matched this week.
The Library of Congress search could not be reached this run (HTTPError). Clips are machine-read text (OCR) from scanned Evening Star pages on the Library of Congress's Chronicling America, lightly cleaned (line-break hyphens rejoined, stray symbols removed); misspellings are the scanner's. Newspapers this old are public domain. Each clip links to its page at loc.gov. Clips that mention race, covenants, deed restrictions or slurs are skipped automatically (keyword list: race, races, racial, colored, coloured, negro, negroes, white only, whites only, for whites, white people, white persons, white residents, caucasian, segregation, segregated, covenant, covenants, restricted, restriction, restrictions, plus a list of slurs), because they need an editor's context; legal notices and lists of private individuals are skipped too.
Neighborhood voices
Oral histories, held by the archivesWe haven't found a recorded oral history about U Street in a public archive yet.
Search the archives yourself: The People's Archive, DC Public Library · Historic Chevy Chase DC Oral History Archive · Humanities Truck Community Archive, American University · Tenleytown Historical Society · Boundary Stones (WETA). Summaries are ours; the recordings and their rights stay with each archive.