In 1997, D.C.’s Department of Public Works issued a transportation plan that called for a network of light rail lines to be built across the District. The goal was to facilitate crosstown travel, which was largely overlooked by the commuter-oriented Metro subway. The city proposed three light rail lines, including one from Georgetown to the Navy Yard that would have partially mirrored the city’s original Washington & Georgetown railway. The other two lines would run from Adams Morgan to Minnesota Avenue and from Georgia Avenue to Barney Circle. The total cost for these three lines was estimated at $425 million.228 Although no action was taken directly as a result of the plan, it laid the groundwork for future developments.
In 2002, with light rail systems being proposed both in nearby Maryland (the “Purple Line”) and Virginia (a streetcar line along Columbia Pike in Arlington), D.C. officials began actively promoting streetcars for the District. In addition to improving crosstown transit, streetcars were touted as stimulating economic development and relieving capacity issues on the subway and bus systems. D.C. government officials took their cue from Portland, Oregon, which in 2001 had started a downtown streetcar loop that was drawing rave reviews. Just as Charles Glover and Henry Hurt had toured western cities in 1887 to reassure themselves that cable was the right technology choice for the Washington & Georgetown Railroad, so D.C. officials visited Portland in 2002 and came away convinced that a modern streetcar system would do wonders for the District. Excited by what they found, they began planning new streetcar lines that would target underdeveloped and isolated areas of the city that seemed ripe for regrowth.
Anacostia and other “east of the river” communities were first on their list. In November 2004, Mayor Anthony A. Williams thrust a shovel in the ground across the street from the Anacostia Metro station where the first new streetcar tracks in almost half a century were to be laid. The planned “demonstration” line was to run south to Bolling Air Force Base, connecting the underserved community of Barry Farms and aiming to spur economic development in southeast D.C. But just as the original Anacostia & Potomac Railway was delayed for years after it first won construction approval, so the new Anacostia line likewise faced delays. Track construction did not begin until 2009, five years after the ceremonial groundbreaking, and then stopped the following year as plans continued to change.
Perhaps the most striking parallel with the past was the controversy that erupted over the use of overhead wires. Just as the city’s first mechanized streetcar line—the Eckington & Soldiers’ Home Railway—used overhead electric wires in 1888, so would the new streetcars. Despite all the advances in technology over 120 years, this was still the most practical method for powering streetcars and was used by virtually all other modern systems. Yet the 1889 law banning overhead wires in downtown Washington was still on the books, so a new overhead wire system presumably would be illegal.
By 2010, attention had shifted from Anacostia to a 2.2-mile stretch of H Street Northeast that was within the downtown boundaries established in the 1889 federal law. The city council ducked the problem by passing a new city law allowing overhead wires on this segment. Whether the city had the authority to overturn a federal law was argued by critics but never challenged in court. However, a longer-term solution to the problem remained unclear. If the streetcar network were to be built across the city, the problem would come up again, and no easy solution was at hand. One idea was to adopt a hybrid system using batteries to power the cars over track segments where overhead wires couldn’t be used. Battery-powered streetcars had been tried unsuccessfully in the 1890s. Modern batteries would certainly be more reliable, but would they be good enough? At the time this book was written, the question had not been answered.
It was fitting that the new streetcars were destined to make their debut on H Street Northeast, a thoroughfare that once hosted the Columbia Railway, one of the city’s earliest streetcar lines. H Street was a rising commercial corridor that had been devastated in the riots of 1968 but was beginning to rapidly redevelop. Streetcar installation began in 2009, when tracks were laid as part of road reconstruction. The first cars were set on these rails in December 2013. The city purchased three streetcars from a manufacturer in the Czech Republic in 2007 and three more in 2012 from Oregon-based United Streetcar LLC. Testing of these cars began on H Street in 2014.
Challenges and setbacks, both technical and political, abounded. While some city officials were highly enthusiastic, others were skeptical. Budget cuts kept the project scrambling and ultimately quashed hopes for an extensive thirty-seven-mile citywide network. A 2012 opening date, announced in 2010, proved wildly unrealistic. More delays were experienced getting approval to build a car barn at the end of the track. Also, a method for collecting fares on the cars, which have multiple entrances and exits, had not been worked out. Once cars began making test runs on H Street, further issues developed. Washingtonians rediscovered the fact that streetcars move slowly and inevitably tie up traffic behind them. In addition, because the tracks were laid close to parking lanes on H Street, improperly parked vehicles could bring the cars to a complete stop. Several minor accidents ensued in the tight quarters. To skeptical observers, the project had a helter-skelter quality to it. “It was ill-planned, ill-thought-out, ill-engineered, ill-everything,” council member and former mayor Marion Barry (1936–2014) told the Washington Post.229
In early 2015, the tracks on H Street Northeast stood empty, awaiting the much-delayed arrival of streetcar service. Photo by the author.
In early 2015, after the project had missed several promised opening dates, newly inaugurated mayor Muriel Bowser called for a thorough review, throwing into question whether the cars would ever go into public service. While Bowser subsequently pledged to open the H Street line, it remained unclear how extensive D.C.’s streetcar network ultimately would be.
There can be no going back to the days when streetcars were the transit glue that held the capital together, but much of the psychology of modern streetcar investment—the hopes for connecting and energizing isolated neighborhoods and spurring economic development—remains remarkably similar to the aspirations of past streetcar promoters. Henry A. Griswold, George Truesdell and Francis G. Newlands all had faith in the transformative power of streetcars, envisioning economic prosperity blossoming along their routes. They all achieved some measure of success, but none of their streetcar investments was as profitable as people expected it to be. Perhaps the fate of the modern D.C. streetcar will be similar, and history will yet again repeat itself.
NOTES
CHAPTER 1
1. A detailed discussion of the L’Enfant Plan and L’Enfant’s thinking is in Gutheim and Lee’s Worthy of the Nation.
2. Hunt, Writings of James Madison, vol. 8, 394, n.2.
3. Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation, chapter 8.
4. Daily National Intelligencer, March 10, 1830.
5. Quoted in Muller, Mark Twain in Washington, D.C., 23.
6. Evening Star, “Atrocious Conduct,” June 7, 1855.
7. Ibid., “Beef’s Blood and Mutton Tallow vs. Italian Silks and Valencia Laces,” October 29, 1855.
8. Daily National Intelligencer, March 14, 1853.
9. James Goode stated that the horse used as a model was Clark Mills’s own Thoroughbred, named Olympus. However, Mills may have obtained Olympus from Vanderwerken’s Arlington farm. Goode, “Four Salutes to the Nation.”
10. Evening Star, “The New City Railroad,” February 1, 1854.
11. Daily National Intelligencer, “The City Railroad,” February 9, 1854.
12. Evening Star, “The City Railroad,” February 9, 1854.
CHAPTER 2
13. Washington Post, “Street Railway Stock,” May 10, 1890, 9.
14. The aqueduct project, carried out under the direction of Captain Montgomery C. Meigs (1816–1892) in the 1850s, brought running water for the first time to Georgetown and Washington.
15. Daily National Intelligencer, �
�City Railroad,” July 14, 1862.
16. Evening Star, “Cars for the Passenger Railroad,” July 12, 1862.
17. Ibid., “The Passenger Railway,” July 29, 1862.
18. Scott and Webb, Who Is Markie?
19. Daily National Intelligencer, “The City Railroad on Seventh Street,” July 21, 1863.
20. King, 100 Years of Capital Traction, 5.
21. Capital Transit Company Records, 1862–1956, MS 442, Box 108, collection of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.
22. Evening Star, “The Metropolitan Railroad Company,” November 28, 1864.
23. Ibid., “Old Horse Car Days,” November 3, 1906.
24. Ibid., “The Heat and Street Railways,” July 3, 1868.
25. Ibid., December 31, 1864.
26. “A Little Girl’s Experience of the War,” manuscript in the special collections of the Gelman Library, George Washington University, presumed to have been written by Anna Sherman. I became aware of the manuscript reading part of this excerpt in Furgurson, Freedom Rising.
27. McShane and Tarr, Horse in the City, 11.
28. Evening Star, “The Old-Time Hill-Horse Boys,” June 18, 1911.
29. Ibid., “Fined for Cruelty to Horses,” April 25, 1893.
30. Washington Post, “Reveries of the Horsecar, Dreams of Atom Trolleys,” September 11, 1949.
CHAPTER 3
31. Carpenter, Carp’s Washington, 7.
32. Evening Star, “Old-Time Hill-Horse Boys,” June 18, 1911.
33. Peck, Walt Whitman in Washington, D.C., 102.
34. Calamus, 23.
35. Brooks, Washington in Lincoln’s Time, 191.
36. Evening Star, “Street Car Abuses,” January 3, 1885.
37. Washington Post, “A Petition and a Pledge,” July 23, 1888.
38. Masur, Example for All the Land, 44.
39. Ibid., 100. Masur’s detailed and scholarly assessment of the streetcar issue in Washington is highly recommended.
40. Evening Star, “War Meeting of the Colored People,” June 10, 1863.
41. Ibid., “Cars for the Colored,” November 28, 1863.
42. For example, National Republican, “An Outrage,” February 10, 1864.
43. Congressional Globe, February 10, 1864, 553.
44. Evening Star, February 23, 1865.
45. Ibid., “Freedmen’s Affairs in the District,” September 2, 1865.
46. Painter, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, 124–26.
47. National Republican, “Alleged Assault Upon Sojourner Truth,” September 22, 1865.
48. Masur, Example for All the Land, 108.
CHAPTER 4
49. National Leader, “The Crowded Street Car,” reprinted, March 2, 1889.
50. Evening Star, “Underground Wires Again,” August 17, 1888.
51. Washington Post, “Bad Streetcar Service,” January 24, 1889.
52. Evening Star, editorial, August 10, 1888.
53. Griffin, Motive Power for Street Cars.
54. Washington Post, “The Overhead Wires,” August 17, 1888.
55. D.C. appropriations acts for 1890 and 1891, reprinted in Laws Relating to Street Railway Franchises in the District of Columbia, U.S. Congress, 1896, 192–94.
56. Washington Post, “President Hurt Returns,” May 15, 1887.
57. Evening Star, “The New Cable Road,” August 6, 1892.
58. Washington Post, “Cable Cars and Accidents,” September 7, 1893.
59. Evening Star, “Rapid Transit,” October 22, 1892.
60. Ibid., “Trolley Logic,” July 25, 1893.
61. Ibid., “A Successful Trip,” July 26, 1895.
62. Ibid., “Running Regularly,” July 29, 1895.
CHAPTER 5
63. Evening Star, “Street Railroads,” March 19, 1892.
64. Ibid., “Street Railway Projects,” April 23, 1890.
65. Washington Post, “Tribute to Henry A. Griswold,” April 27, 1909.
66. Evening Star, “The Anacostia Railway Company,” July 3, 1876.
67. King, 100 Years of Capital Traction, 14.
68. Muller and Levinn, “H.A. Griswold and Anacostia’s Streetcar Story.”
69. Evening Star, “A Complaint Against the Anacostia Railway,” February 10, 1892.
70. King, 100 Years of Capital Traction, 14.
71. Evening Star, “Anacostia Street Cars,” May 14, 1896.
72. Washington Post, “Strike Declared Off,” July 20, 1895.
73. King, 100 Years of Capital Traction, 56.
74. Washington Post, “Rose by Magic’s Wand,” December 7, 1890,
75. Ibid., “The Eckington Railroad,” October 19, 1888.
76. In 1895, the Capital Railway, chartered as a rapid transit alternative to the Anacostia & Potomac Railroad, also briefly experimented with a surface contact system on a portion of its line on Capitol Hill. Its results were equally disappointing.
77. Washington Post, “Easy Riding on the Cars,” December 14, 1890.
78. Ibid., “Brookland’s Complaint,” February 4, 1892.
79. Ibid., “Back to Horse Cars,” September 12, 1895
80. Ibid., “Ride by Easy Stages,” September 30, 1895.
81. Ibid., “Their Burden of Debt,” October 3, 1896.
82. Ibid., “Air Motors Now in Use,” March 21, 1897.
83. Ibid., “New Car Line Opened,” April 25, 1890.
84. Evening Star, “The District in Congress,” February 28, 1888.
85. French, “Chevy Chase Village,” 322.
86. Washington Post, “Rock Creek Road Is Ready,” September 17, 1892.
87. Bolles, “Rock Creek Electric Railway,” 24.
88. Washington Post, “Both Lines Combined,” September 22, 1895.
89. Ibid., “Massive Building in Ruins,” September 30, 1897.
90. Cunningham, “Cable Cars in the Nation’s Capital,” 49.
91. Atwood, Francis G. Newlands, 38–39.
92. Washington Post, “Francis G. Newlands,” December 26, 1917.
CHAPTER 6
93. Evening Star, “The End Seat Question,” July 28, 1899.
94. Clarence L. Cullen, “Open Car Etiquette,” Evening Star, April 13, 1907.
95. Evening Star, “The ‘End Seat Hog,’” June 17, 1898.
96. Washington Post, “The Hog in the Street Car,” August 12, 1898.
97. Jack Eisen, “Trolley Runs Out of Juice After 99 Years,” Washington Post, January 28, 1962.
98. King, 100 Years of Capital Traction, 206, 216.
99. Evening Star, “Citizens Complain of Noise,” July 18, 1900.
100. Washington Post, “Seek Wreck Blame,” August 2, 1919.
101. Washington Times, “Car Steps Too High, Women Protest,” August 6, 1908.
102. Washington Post, “Ask New Type of Car,” January 4, 1912.
103. Evening Star, “The Street Railway Service,” July 28, 1900.
104. Ibid., “Street Car Facilities,” December 9, 1902.
105. Ingham, Biographical Dictionary of American Business Leaders, 1,685.
106. Washington Times, “No Seat, No Nickel Exponent in Cell,” February 14, 1911.
107. Washington Post, “Tied Up the Entire Line,” June 14, 1901.
108. Streetcar and Bus Resources of Washington, D.C., 64.
109. History of the Amalgamated Transit Union, 11.
110. Washington Post, “Trolley Pole Struck Him,” September 21, 1903.
111. Washington Times, “Man in the Electric Pit—Washington’s Oddest Occupation,” April 10, 1904.
112. Washington Post, “Agreement Reached,” December 15, 1894.
113. Ibid., “Strikebreakers Quit,” March 19, 1917.
114. Washington Post, “Stirs Union Carmen,” March 27, 1917.
115. Evening Star, “For Public Ownership or Absolute Control of Capital Car Lines,” October 6, 1917.
116. Street Railways in the District of Columbia, 32.
CHAPTER 7
&n
bsp; 117. Washington Post, “Burned in a Conduit,” June 27, 1900.
118. Evening Star, “Burned by Electric Wire,” June 27, 1900.
119. Washington Post, “Sat in Negroes’ Seat,” June 14, 1902.
120. Ibid., “Jim Crow Street Cars,” November 7, 1902.
121. Chicago Defender, “No ‘Jim-Crow’ Street Cars in Washington,” December 21, 1912.
122. Evening Star, “Plans 40 Days’ Prayer Against Jim Crow Bill,” February 16, 1915.
123. One of the best analyses of the 1919 riots in Washington is Krugler, “A Mob in Uniform.” See also McWhirter, Red Summer.
124. Krugler, “Mob in Uniform,” 56.
125. Gilbert, Selected Writings of John Edward Bruce, 149.
126. Evening Star, “Colored Men Shoot at Patients and Sentry,” July 21, 1919.
127. Washington Times, “Negros in Automobile Fire at Group of Sailors; Escape,” July 21, 1919.
128. New York Times, “Service Men Beat Negroes in Race Riot at Capital,” July 21, 1919.
129. Krugler, “Mob in Uniform,” 59.
130. Washington Post, “Mobilization for Tonight,” July 21, 1919.
131. Evening Star, “Colored Men Shoot at Patients and Sentry,” July 21, 1919.
132. Washington Times, “Negros in Automobile Fire at Group of Sailors; Escape,” July 21, 1919.
CHAPTER 8
133. Washington Post, “Motor Carriage Here: The Horseless Vehicle Caused a Street Sensation,” April 3, 1897.
134. Ibid., “The Street Car of the Future,” May 2, 1900.
135. Washington Times, “Muck Raking for Old Herdic Line,” April 23, 1911.
136. Evening Star, advertisement, February 27, 1921.
137. Washington Post, “Buses in Capital Will Be Increased,” September 25, 1921.
138. Evening Star, “Plans and Scope of Local Merger,” September 29, 1912.
139. Kohler, Capital Transit, 9.
140. See Kohler, Capital Transit.
141. Ibid., 9–12.
142. Washington Post, “The Traction Merger,” December 23, 1932.
Capital Streetcars Page 21
