Funkstown Blog

By Frank Leone   Washington D.C. appropriately named its first purpose built Junior High School for African American students after John R. Francis (now Francis Education Center ). He was a notable African American doctor, civic leader, educator who was familiar with the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, having operated a private sanitorium at 2112 Pennsylvania Avenue. Known as “Washington’s leading colored physician,” Francis practiced medicine in D.C. for 35 years and his sanitori

By Frank Leone   Francis School (2426 N St. NW) was built in 1927 with additions in 1929,1953 and 2024, but its historic core retains sufficient integrity to convey its architectural and historical significance. The D.C. Historic Preservation Office granted it historic landmark  status on December 18, 2025 with a period of significance of 1927-1953. Formerly Francis Junior High School, the building is important as the first Junior High purpose-built for African American stude

By Denise Vogt and Frank Leone   If the walls could talk, imagine the history we could share. Let’s start with what we have discovered. For example, in 1922, 2400 I Street resident Alan Phillips, age 20, was one of three enterprising FBWE boys who attempted to hike to New York City to see Babe Ruth in the World Series. They were arrested in Baltimore as runaways, but were released and told to return to Washington, so they did (see articles below). This is just one of the stor

By Denise Vogt & Frank Leone, Co-Chairs It’s hard to believe, but the Foggy Bottom Association History Project  has completed five years of researching and sharing Foggy Bottom neighborhood history. In 2025, we retained and supervised two student interns  from George Washington University to provide content for the House History pages , updated the Historic District Study Area House Map Project , continued our regular posts on the Funkstown  history blog (which now has 150 en

By Frank Leone and Denise Vogt The Foggy Bottom Association History Project   Funkstown blog  is now five years old and contains 150 posts! The articles appear in the Foggy Bottom Association ’s Foggy Bottom News  every two weeks and are then posted at our Funkstown blog site , which you can explore using the search function or just scroll through. Here are some interesting stories covered in Funkstown. (Click the links to read the articles with photos.) ·        Native Ameri

By Denise Vogt Check the FBA Instagram daily as posts cover a variety of subjects .    The FBA’s Instagram ( @foggybottomdc ) account documents the Foggy Bottom and West End neighborhood events, the unusual and the interesting. If you are out and about in FBWE and take photos and short videos, we’d love to post them. Submit your images to denisev@foggybottomassociation.org .  The FBA IG account posts 2-3 times a week, has 973 followers with 23.1K views in the last 30 days. He

Did you know that you can view over 50 years of the Foggy Bottom Association’s Foggy Bottom News online ?  Here’s our Holiday issue from December 1972  featuring an article on St. Mary’s Episcopal Church  and a solicitation for the second FBA Art Show.