Explore Five Years of Funkstown!

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 Americans first lived in Foggy Bottom over 5,000 years ago.

·        Jacob Funk (Originally of Swiss-German ancestry, but from Pennsylvania) established the town of Hamburg, also known as Funkstown, in Foggy Bottom in 1765, but the town didn’t develop and became part of the new City of Washington.

·        George Washington departed for the French and Indian War from Braddock Rock (now at the bottom of a well) and spent his last night in Washington at the Peters house in Foggy Bottom in 1799. He really did sleep there.

·        The George Washington University was founded in 1824, but moved to Foggy Bottom in 1912 and had a big impact on the neighborhood, preserving some sites, but not others.

·        Foggy Bottom farms were worked by enslaved people, but the area also features several important sites relating to the underground railroad including the site of the house of abolitionist Leonard Grimes, and the F Street house whose owner Alexander Ray retained Emily Edmundson before her escape on the Pearl in 1848.

·        During the Civil War, Camp Fry at Washington Circle housed the U.S. Veterans Reserve (Invalid) Corps which helped save Washington from confederate attack.

·        The “fog” in Foggy Bottom comes from its proximity to the river, but also industries, including early glass works, lime kilns, Heurich and other breweries, and the Washington Gas Works.

·        The industries employed African Americans, Irish Americans, and German Americans, generally from the 1870s to the 1920s.

·        The U.S. National Observatory was originally located in Foggy Bottom (across from what is now the State Department) and its astronomers discovered the moons of Mars in 1877.

·        The Foggy Bottom Historic District area housed 11 African American churches and still is proud to have the James Renwick-designed St. Mary’s Episcopal Church.

·        Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post columnist Colbert King grew up in Foggy Bottom/West End when it was a majority African American neighborhood and shared his story in our interview.

·        There were many stores (and bars, funeral homes, and bakeries) in Foggy Bottom – from the early Western Market (1803) to Russian Jewish immigrant-operated corner groceries (early 1900s)

·        Foggy Bottom had its share of charitable institutions, including the Columbia Hospital for Women, St. John’s Orphanage, and the House of Mercy (a home for fallen women).

·        “The Manila House” on K Street was a Filipino gathering site and is now a literary landmark.

·        Notable women residents of Foggy Bottom included architects/designers and community leaders.

·        Foggy Bottom experienced urban renewal in the 1950s – some of its historic housing, including alley houses were preserved, but much of neighborhood – including Martha Briggs Elementary School - was destroyed and its people displaced for new buildings and the Potomac Freeway.

·        Foggy Bottom is known for its Victorian Rowhouses, but you can also find Art Deco apartments and modern buildings like the Lisner Auditorium,  Kennedy Center,  Watergate, the National Academy of Sciences, and U.S. Institute for Peace.

·        Foggy Bottom’s Northwest Rectangle features its own “Avenue of the Americas” anchored by the Organization of American States building with statues of Latin American heroes including Spanish Count Bernardo de Galves and Mexican President Benito Juarez along Virginia Avenue.

·        Just north of – and part of our neighborhood – is the West End whose sites include Duke Ellington’s birthplace, Thaddeus Stevens School, and the Alfred Mullet Rowhouses and T.S. Schneider Triangle.

·        Our Funkstown site also features student and other guest posts, events and updates, and you can review 50 years of the FBA’s Foggy Bottom News newsletter and learn about preservation in the Historic District.

We hope you have time over the holidays to explore Funkstown the blog as well as the Foggy Bottom and West End neighborhoods.  Musical Coda.

You can search the Funkstown webpage by typing your term in the search box.