The Commercialization of the 17th Street Corridor

 

THE EARLY 1900s saw the birth of Washington's golden era of apartment living.  Apartments had been scorned by the well-to-do as well as by middle-class Washingtonians throughout most of the 19th century, but by 1900 that attitude had changed dramatically. For the working middle class, apartment living offered a more affordable and less permanent option than home ownership.  De-velopers soon responded with a proliferation of apartment buildings across the city. 

Zoning along 17th Street, one of the city’s wider north-south streets, allowed for taller apartment buildings to be constructed than on other, narrower streets.  In 1916, Washington’s premier devel-oper and apartment building builder, Harry Wardman, built a five-story apartment building across the street from the site of The Admiral Dupont at 1725 17th Street.  That same year, Wardman also built the six-story Copley Plaza at 1514 17th Street.  Other large, upscale apartment buildings [in the area] would follow, including the Chastleton at 1701 16th Street in 1919.

With the advent of apartment buildings, 17th Street [corridor] between Massachusetts and Florida Avenues began to change from residential to mixed residential and commercial.  As was the trend along Connecticut Avenue at the same time, commerce was slowly moving north, replacing what were once single-family residences with stores to service apartment residents.  By the 1920s, this commercial wave had reached the 1700 block of 17th Street.

Many of the homeowners in the 1700 block of 17th Street took advantage of the opportunity provided by the commercialization of the neighborhood, keeping ownership of their houses and leasing them to businesses and renting the remaining rooms to borders, with a preference for black borders. The result was a succession mom and pop businesses as well as several grocery stores catering to the needs of the many residents of the new apartment buildings.

Chastleton Market, circa 1969.  Photo: Historical Society of Washington, DC.

The building with the most consistent use throughout its lifespan was the corner grocery store at 1700 17th Street.  After C. C. McKinney sold his grocery business to Ernest Schmidt, the store changed hands several more times until it was bought in 1928 by Lebanese immigrant, Frederick Neam.  Neam promptly renamed it the Chastleton Market, undoubtedly to attract the attention and business of the residents of the Chastleton Apartments only a block away on 16th Street.  

The Chastleton Market was Neam’s second foray in the grocery store business, having opened Ne-am’s Market on the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and P Street in Georgetown in 1909 with two other brothers.  Fred and his brother, Toufeic, eventually left that business to start their own markets.  Neam’s Market in Georgetown would later become a place where famous Georgetown residents shopped for imported cheeses, caviar, and other fine foods and remained in business until 2000.  The building then became home to Marvelous Market until 2014.  In 1935, Fred Neam bought the building at 1702 17th Street and expanded the Chastleton Market into that building as well. 

Harry Kenner converted Wyatt Archer’s house into a store with second-floor four-room apartment in 1925.  In a classified ad he ran in the the Evening Star to lease the property, Kenner included the line: “Will consider colored.” This was an interesting comment for a neighborhood historically occupied by African-Americans and for a house built by a prominent African-American, who when he himself leased the house, specifically sought black tenants.

In 1926, Anna Cooper sold her house on 17th Street and moved to a house in LeDroit Park at 201 T Street, NW.  The house was immediately converted into a business property.

Around 1926, Richard Moss’s former house at 1704 17th Street was leased to the new Memphis-based Piggly Wiggly grocery store chain.  This was the first of two additional grocery businesses on the same block to compete with the Chastleton Market.  Piggly Wiggly was noted as the first grocery store in America to let customers get their own merchandise off the shelves rather than handing a list to the clerk behind the counter who would retrieve them.  Customers would then wait in line for a cashier to ring up their purchases.  By 1944, Piggy Wiggly was replaced by a cabinet maker’s shop called the Furniture Hospital, which was replaced the following year by McGee & Co., a radio repair service. In 1961, Fred Neam bought that building aw well.  

About a year after Piggly Wiggly opened, A&P (the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company) opened only three doors up the street at 1710 17th Street in Robert Mitchell’s former home, adding yet a third grocery store to the block.  A&P lasted on the site until 1952 when it became the Cairo Market, op-erated by Louis Maizel.  Maizel followed Fred Neam’s model and named the business after the nearby Cairo apartment building at 1615 Q Street.  Maizel’s Cairo Market was only in business for three years.  In 1955, the building became home to Louis Glickfield’s furniture business, Ali Babba’s Cave.  Glickfield renamed the business Marlo Furniture and moved to 1323 14th Street, NW.  In 1959, a bakery opened in the building that would close within a month.

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IN 1960, ROBERT MITCHELL’S HOUSE at 1710 17th Street would find yet another a new use.  In the late 1950s and early 1960s, some rundown areas of the city such as Georgetown, Adams Morgan, and Dupont Circle became home to self-professed members of the Beat Generation, known commonly as Beatniks.  The Beatniks were inspired by such authors as Allen Ginsberg, William S. Bur-roughs and Jack Kerouac, whose writings influenced the post-World War II generation.  Rejecting what they considered the standard narrative values of materialism, they expressed their alienation from conventional, or “square” society through interests in avant-garde literature, art, and music.  Beatniks were stereotypically known for wearing black turtleneck sweaters, stove-pipe trousers, dark glasses, and berets.

Coffee houses provided the perfect venue for Beatniks interested in poetry, live music performances, art shows, movies, green “tea” (marijuana) and sometimes even coffee.  But the coffee house tradition began in Washington long before the Beatnik culture arrived. The Hamilton Arms Coffee House opened in 1939 at 1232 31st Street NW in the heart of old Georgetown.   Hamilton Arms, tucked away within the brick-lined streets of residential Georgetown, offered living and working space for an early bohemian enclave. Along with the coffee house, it was home to the Hamilton Arms Curiosity Shop, and a pottery shop, the Pottery. Georgetown’s first pot party took place there in the late 50s, along with several other recreational firsts.

When the Hamilton Arms Coffee House closed in 1957, the Beatnik coffee house culture found a new home in Coffee ‘n’ Confusion.  The first iteration of Coffee ‘n’ Confusion opened at 912 New Hampshire Avenue NW, a storefront that once housed a small grocery store, the Neighborhood Market.  It offered coffee, tea, poetry readings, debates, bongos, folk songs, checkers, and chess for its colorful clientele of students, poets, and musicians.  It was found to be in violation of numerous zoning laws and was closed down only a week after it opened.  It soon reopened in the basement of the Zantzinger Building at 945 K Street NW, a murky space which had previously housed a series of short-lived restaurants.  Jim Morrison, singer, songwriter, and poet, and best remembered as the lead singer of The Doors, was a frequent visitor and once read some of his poetry there.

Coffee ’n’ Confusion was followed the next year by the opening of the Cauldron at 3263 M Street, NW in Georgetown.  The Cauldron featured live jazz and folk music, open mic nights, primitive dance exhibitions, and showed classic movies.  That same year, Potter’s House opened in the for-mer Embassy Lunch Restaurant at 1658 Columbia Road NW.  It offered coffee, a simple food menu, poetry readings, live folk music, and displays and shows by local artists.

The open space created in converting 1710 17th Street into an A&P and then Marlo Furniture’s showroom provided an ideal space for a cafe. In January 1961, the Unicorn Café Expresso opened in the house adding to the list of Beatnik coffee houses.  Its founding owners were a technical writer and artist, George Kapralof, and a graphic researcher for the Smithsonian, Roger Kaufman.  Their initial menu offered coffee and tea, pastries, and from time to time borscht.  The Unicorn was proudest of its expresso machine that was capable of brewing at least 50 kinds of coffee.

The main room of the Unicorn featured a wall mural in the back commissioned by Kapralof and Kaufman. Entitled “The Virgin Feeding the Unicorn,” it was painted by Uruguayan artist Jorge Du-mas who settled in Buenos Aires and was a student of Argentina master, Jasquin Torres Garcia.  Other art featured an exhibit of paintings by owner George Kapralof on display on the walls and in the windows.

Washington artist Jack Dilinger hangs some of his
paintings along the sidewalk outside the Unicorn
Café for an outdoor art show.  Washington Post

The Unicorn featured flamenco guitarists, bongo drummers, and folk singers.  One evening, members of the Ukrainian Chorus, who were visiting Washington after performing in Baltimore, dropped by and sang until the early hours of the morning.  Patrons could also play chess, read the magazines and papers, talk or just take in the ambience.  The establishment made a splash, even with the non-Beatnik crowd.  As the Washington Post noted in a 1961 review of the Unicorn, “no one will bother you. It’s a lot of fun.”

Shortly after it opened, the Unicorn was purchased by a neighborhood resident Elliot Ryan who wanted to make the establishment even more of a venue for live music.  He initiated a Wednesday night “hootenanny” where folk singers gathered and sang. Jazz musicians were featured on Monday nights and on weekends.  Ryan booked such folk artists as Tim Cameron, Allen Damron, Mario Il-lo, John Everhart, Robbie Basho, Pete LaFarge, and Eric Darling of the Weavers. Local guitarists like John Fahey and Max Ochs regularly showed up for impromptu performances.  Joan Baez stopped in one night to sing onstage. 

Advertisement for a Hootenanny at the
Unicorn in the Washington Post. 17 Mar 1963

Following the example set by the Cauldron and Potter’s House, the Unicorn also showed Sunday afternoon movies, ranging from Charlie Chaplin to art films and foreign works, to more popular ti-tles like “The Room Upstairs” and “The Ruse.” Due to financial problems, Elliot Ryan closed the Unicorn in the spring of 1964.  Elliot would later become a significant figure in Washington, DC’s rock and roll scene as creator and publisher of Unicorn Times.  Named for the coffee house, the publication initially had its offices at 1721 21st Street, NW and covered the music scene in the na-tion’s capital from 1973 to 1986.  

Bob and Adelina Callahan bought 1710 17th Street in 1964 and leased out the storefront to City & State TV for several years.  In 1968, the building had been raised and the lot was serving as auxilia-ry parking for El Bodegón.

* * * * *

BY THE EARLY 1960S, crime was becoming worse along the 17th Street corridor.  The 1600 and 1700 blocks of Corcoran Street became known as “Stab Alley.”  In a Washington Post interview, Adelina Callahan recalled during her youth, Corcoran Street was too dangerous to walk on, but Corcoran Street was soon to become a showcase of renovated Victorian town houses. 

In spite of the crime, parts of the neighborhood began to recover by the mid-1960s.  In 1965. Charlotte Levine and John Gerstenfeld undertook the rehabilitation of old row houses in the 1700-block of Corcoran Street.  The resulting development, Corcoran Mews, featured gas-lit entrances and a total of 35 rental apartments, intended primarily for young singles.  Similar conversions were happening on nearby P, Q, and Church Streets, north of Scott Circle and to the east of Dupont Circle.   

In 1965, Jack and Sylvia Kotz began to aggressively buy up derelict buildings along the 17th Street corridor between Corcoran and S Streets.  The Kotzes bought the Chastleton Market from Fred Ne-am as well as 1706 17th Street.  The building on 1704 17th Street had probably already been razed by this time as the deed mentions a right of way had been granted over the entire lot of 1704 17th Street for access to the alley behind.

The following year the Kotzes’s motives in buying up contiguous lots along 17th Street became clear.  In 1966, they successfully had the lots they had bought up between Corcoran and R Streets rezoned to allow for both commercial use and parking.  In June of that year, the Kotzes were granted a permit to erect a 11,680-square-foot, one-story masonry building for a Safeway store at 1701 Corcoran Street.  The new store was noted for its early American design both inside and out, complemented inside with chandeliers, drapes, coach lanterns, exposed brick and wood-grain paneling.  Safeway then closed its store at 1619 17th Street when the new one was finished.

The gradual gentrification of the 17th Street neighborhood came to a sudden halt with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1969.  Soon after the assassination, the 1968 DC riots began. They began near what was then known as “Black Broadway” along the U Street Corridor near Howard University and then spread through black neighborhoods down 14th and 17th Streets, NW and along H street, NE and Anacostia.

With much of the 17th Street strip suffering from the aftermath of the riots, Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse and Trio Restaurant stayed open.  ”We were one of the only ones left down here, other than Trio’s,” Annie Kaylor told MetroWeekly in 2006.  ”People wouldn’t cross Q Street at that period…. When the riots started, they stormed 17th Street.” “That’s when the gay community made this area gay,” added longtime Annie’s bartender Leigh Ann Hendricks told MetroWeekly.  “No one else would come over here. This was bad. Along the strip, businesses had their windows broken out…. The gay community, they still came here. They continued to come here because this is where they felt comfortable. This is where they could be themselves. They said, ‘Riots aren’t going to keep us out. This is our place. This is where we like to go.”’

Eventually, the gentrification process began again and continued to the west of 14th Street, around many of the older black residents.  Yet, the 17th Street neighborhood remained somewhat edgy and crime-ridden.  In December of 1973, 33-year-old Curtis Boyd who lived at 1706 17th Street, along with two other friends, was gunned down at the corner of 17th and R Streets at 2:00 am.

In 1973, Wyatt Archer’s house at 1703 R Street became home to Earl Robert “Butch” Merritt, Jr.  Merritt was from humble beginnings outside Charleston, West Virginia and had come to Washington as a young man, not long after President Kennedy was assassinated.  He then discovered Dupont Circle, and as a gay male felt at home with its diversity of people, and decided to first take an apartment at 1818 Riggs Place and then one at 2122 P Street.  He found work as a clerk at a drug store at 15th and H Streets. 

Photograph of Earl Robert "Butch" Merritt, Jr.
atop his CIA file.  MetroWeekly, March
2008.

In 1970, Merritt had become friends with Carl Shoffler, who was also hanging around Dupont Circle at the time.  Shoffler was a hippie with long hair, blue eyes, and a couple of years older than Merritt.  But he was actually Detective Shoffler of the Metropolitan Police Department, who was working un-dercover to recruit Merritt to spy on the District’s GLBT community. Merritt also worked as a in-formant for the FBI and ATF as an undercover agent spying on the ”New Left,” the Weathermen, and the Institute for Policy Studies.  Shoffler would then go on to make a name for himself as the detective who arrested those breaking into Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate in June 1972.  To this day, Merritt claims he is the one who tipped off Shoffler to the Watergate break-in two weeks before it happened.

Merritt’s association with the Watergate affair continued after tipping off Detective Shoffler.  In July of 1972, acting under an undisclosed higher authority, DC Metropolitan Police detectives asked him to find out all he could about Douglas Caddy, the gay and pro-Cuban attorney who lived across the street from Merritt at the time at 2121 P Street, and who was representing some of the Cuban Watergate defendants. It was to be Merritt’s biggest job, but he never enjoyed being a spy.  The follow-ing year, he had quit the spy business and was again working as a cashier at Whelan Drug at 1201 Connecticut Avenue, NW.

* * * * * *

THE GROUNDWORK FOR THE CONSTRUCTION of The Admiral Dupont began to be laid in 1975.  That year, Dupont Associates, registered only as a general partnership, purchased the lots along the 1700 block 17th Street from the Kotzes.  They then moved ahead to clear the entire southeast corner of the block.  In 1976, Wyatt Archer’s house at 1703 R Street was condemned and razed.  

In 1980, the Callahans sold the last lot on which The Admiral Dupont would be built at 1710 17th Street to Dupont Associates.  Their hold out on selling the last lot may have forced The Admiral Dupont developer, Simon A. Hershon, to pursue a project elsewhere.   In 1979, Hershon along with another general partnership, Circle Associates, began the process to build the Chancellor, a Victori-an-Style condo building with  51 luxury-priced units across town at 3 Washington Circle. 

The Foggy Bottom and West End Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) objected to the plan to tear down the Lewis Hotel School at 2301 Washington Circle and six townhouses located at 2305-2315 Washington Circle to build the Chancellor.  They had hoped to landmark the buildings, but Hershon sought a court order to force the city to grant the needed demolition permits.  In a con-cession to the ANC, Hershon agreed to preserve the facades of the six row houses and retain the historic low scale around the circle.  Construction on the Chancellor began in 1980, but the redesign of the original project escalated Hershon’s costs and the units were priced out of the market.  Unable to sell the units, the project was taken over by First National Bank of Maryland and auctioned off.  It was then bought by First National for $7.3. million—the bank was the only bidder.

Undaunted by his failure at Washington Circle, in 1980 Hershon turned his attention back to 17th Street, and in association with Dupont Associates, again attempted another large condominium pro-ject, The Admiral Dupont, on the site of the former townhouses at 1700-1710 17th Street.  The six-story, mixed-use building was completed in 1981. 

Admiral Dupont under construction in 1981. 
Photo:  Washington Post

The ground floor of The Admiral Dupont was designed to house shops, cafes, and offices.  The upper floors were mixed residential and office suites. Condominium units were priced from $110,000 to $135,000.  

The building’s earliest tenants on the ground floor were the Aster Florist shop, the Women’s Com-prehensive Health Center, and 7-Eleven.  Aster Florist was started by Constance and Wesley Beahm in 1934 at 1528 Connecticut Avenue.  When the Beahms retired in 1979, the business was taken over by their son, John, who soon moved the business to the Admiral Dupont.

Chung Do Hahm, a Korean immigrant, opened a 7-Eleven store in The Admiral Dupont in 1982.  When it opened, Hahm, his wife and three of their four children were initially the only employees, and Hahm found himself in the store around the clock.

In the early 1980s, 7-Eleven stores were not always a welcome addition to a neighborhood.  A 7-Eleven that opened on 8th Street, NE was the target of robberies, muggings, shoplifting and homicides and was forced to close.  In 1982, with a population that at the time was 70 percent black, only five of the 27 7-Eleven store were operated by black owners.  The rest were Asian-born and were viewed as outsiders who employed only family members and not community residents.  Yet, historically immigrants coming into the neighborhood as entrepreneurs, such as Fred Neam and Ernest Schmidt, was nothing new for the neighborhood.  The year his store opened, Hahm told the Washington Post that he got along with his neighbors, his business was doing well, and he did employ others besides family members.

Ten years after Hahm opened 7-Eleven, his store was one of six ordered to be handed over immediately
to the parent company, Dallas-based Southland Corporation, after an arbitration panel found that they had defrauded the company by manipulating their sales figures.  The franchises countered that the move was racially motivated, as all the accused were of Korean, Thai, and Ethiopian back-grounds.  Hahm denied that he had defrauded Southland and told the Washington Post that he did not know what he would do once Southland reclaimed his store. “They say I cheated them out of money but I didn’t cheat them.  I feel so bad.  I don’t have a future.  I can’t even think about it.”  

Today, The Admiral Dupont remains a prestigious address for both residents and businesses. On the ground floor, Aster Florist is now home to Panini Café and Lounge, the Women’s Comprehensive Health Center has been replaced with Medics USA, and the 7-Eleven store is once again open for purchase by an enterprising entrepreneur.