Overbeck History Lectures Resume in September

Our award winning Overbeck History Lecture Series will resume in September at the historic Naval Lodge hall at 330 Pennsylvania Avenue S.E. Please check back for specifics as they become available, or add your name to our email notification list by contacting OverbeckLecture@aol.com.

Also please share any suggestions you may have for future topics or speakers for this series, which focuses on the history of DC and of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in particular. We welcome your participation.

Local Legend Extols Capitol Hill Row House Designs

On April 8, 2008, historic restoration expert C. Dudley Brown delighted a capacity crowd at the Naval Lodge Hall on Pennsylvania Avenue with a pictorial presentation on the unique character and features of Capitol Hill’s historic row houses. A living legend in local historic preservation circles, Mr. Brown delivered trenchant commentary on the mistakes and misconceptions that have periodically threatened the neighborhood’s historic housing stock .

For decades Mr. Brown has been a tireless advocate for historic preservation in our neighborhood while heading one of the Washington area’s oldest firms specializing in historic restoration and traditional interior design. C. Dudley Brown & Associates has completed hundreds of projects for private residences, churches, clubs and public buildings and has won numerous awards and honors, including the DC Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Historic Preservation and the Designer of Distinction Award from the American Society of Interior Designers. For an interesting account of Mr. Brown’s career and his personal involvement in the community, read the transcript of our project’s interview with him, recorded in 2002.

John Vlach Returns to Discuss African American Housing

A sizable crowd braved an ice storm on the evening of February 12, 2008, to hear noted folklife and architectural historian John M. Vlach share findings from his recent studies of 19th century African American housing in the District, with a special look at the alley dwellings of Capitol Hill. This was a return appearance for Vlach, who delivered an outstanding Overbeck lecture five years earlier on the landowners and residents of Capitol Hill at the time of the federal city’s founding. (See the report on that April 2003 presentation below, along with a link to Vlach’s article on the subject for the U.S. Capitol Historical Society.)

A longtime Capitol Hill resident, Vlach is a professor of American studies and anthropology at George Washington University, where he has taught for 27 years. He has  authored 10 books, including Back of the Big House and The Planter’s Prospect, and is the curator of an exhibition entitled “Landscape of Slavery” at the Art Museum of the University of Virginia. He also serves on the DC Historic Preservation Review Board and is a valued adviser to the Overbeck Project, where he assists with the training of volunteers.

Janke Delivers November ’07 Lecture on “Capitol Hill’s John Philip Sousa”

The Overbeck Project celebrated John Philip Sousa’s birthday on November 6, 2007, with a lecture by Capitol Hill historian Lucinda P. Janke, whose knowledge of this local hero and international celebrity ranges from his stellar achievements as a composer and band leader to the ingredients of his mother’s spaghetti recipe. She presented a pictorial tour of Sousa’s several homes in the neighborhood and traced other aspects of his remarkable life.

A former curator of the Kiplinger Washington Collection, Janke is a longtime explorer of the city’s past and co-author, with Ruth Ann Overbeck, of a groundbreaking study of one of Capitol Hill’s founding landowners, William Prout. She serves now on the collections committee of the Historical Society of Washington and also on the Overbeck Project’s steering committee.

Wennersten Lecture Explores Our Neighborhood’s River

With a new baseball stadium and various waterfront development proposals focusing new attention on the river that partially bounds our neighborhood, Capitol Hill historian John R. Wennersten led off the Overbeck History Lecture season on September 11, 2007, with a look at the significance of the Anacostia to the city and the nation.

Based on a forthcoming book, Wennersten’s presentation explored the early days of capital-building, when the Anacostia figured largely in Pierre L’Enfant’s vision of Washington as a political and commercial center, and the Civil War-era transformation of the waterway into an urban river and sewage conduit whose problems continued into the modern era. The river, he noted, became a metaphor for regional racial divisions that extended from slavery days through the public housing controversies and urban discontent of the twentieth century.

A retired professor of history and government, Wennersten taught for 32 years on three campuses of the University of Maryland system, as well as in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan. His earlier books include The Oyster Wars of Chesapeake Bay; Maryland's Eastern Shore, a Journey in Time and Place; and Chesapeake Bay, An Environmental Biography.

April 10 Overbeck Lecture: “Hollywood on the Potomac”

On April 10, 2007, Hill Rag film critic Michael Canning delivered an Overbeck History Lecture on the strange, ill-informed and occasionally accurate ways that Hollywood moviemakers have depicted Washington, DC. With clips from films spanning most of the twentieth century, Canning presented amusing examples of mangled geography and cultural tone-deafness, along with some notable cases where the filmmakers actually got it right, and featured a number of scenes shot on Capitol Hill.  Canning has also left us his lecture notes.

A longtime Hill resident, Canning worked for 28 years as a press and cultural officer for the U.S. Information Agency both in Washington and overseas, and began writing movie reviews for the Rag upon his retirement from the Foreign Service in 1993. Since 1999 he has also served as a programmer and commentator for the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop’s classic films series. In addition, he has published a number of articles on the treatment of Washington and the U.S. Congress in American feature films, including a paper delivered to the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in 1997.

Feldman Explores the Past and Future of the National Mall

On the evening of February 27, 2007, Judy Scott Feldman delivered an excellent illustrated lecture on how the National Mall has evolved from Pierre L’Enfant’s original vision to its reality today and how it might look in the future. Ms. Feldman chairs the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, a nonprofit, all-volunteer citizens organization, and is a widely respected authority on issues surrounding the Mall’s further development.

According to Feldman, L’Enfant considered the Mall the most important element of his plan for the capital city, the nexus of federal and local life, but his concept was never really achieved. Feldman showed that the Mall’s history has been one of constant change, of L’Enfant’s democratic idea ignored, deferred, replaced, and recast to suit changing needs, and she also raised some provocative questions about how the Mall might best meet the needs of the next hundred years.

A native Washingtonian, Feldman earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in art history from Penn State University and a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Texas at Austin. After several years of teaching at the University of Dallas, she moved back to Washington in 1993 and taught medieval art history and Washington architecture at American University. She left AU in 1999 to devote herself to the work of the Coalition, educating the public about Mall history, current issues, and creative ideas for the Mall's future. She also lectures frequently on art history and Washington topics for the Smithsonian’s Resident Associates program. You can learn more about her organization at savethemall.org.

Wadsworth Marks Project’s Five-Year Anniversary With Memories of Capitol Hill in the 1920s and 30s

In observation of the five-year anniversary of our oral history project, our Overbeck History Lecture on November 14, 2006, took the form of a staged interview with one of our more remarkable interviewees, Margaret Wadsworth, who delighted her audience with recollections of Capitol Hill in the 1920s and 30s. The dialogue was conducted by Beth Eck, who interviewed Mrs. Wadsworth for our project in April 2005, and was accompanied by projected scenes of the neighborhood as it appeared in Mrs. Wadsworth’s childhood and as it appears today.

Born Margaret Fleming in 1920, Mrs. Wadsworth spent her childhood in her family’s home in the 500 block of 8th Street S.E., in the heart of the Barracks Row business corridor, and later on Bay Street S.E. She attended the Holy Comforter/St. Cyprian elementary school, graduated from Eastern High School, and made an early attempt at a singing career, auditioning for band leader Bob Crosby and performing briefly on Arthur Godfrey’s radio show. She and her late husband raised their family in the neighborhood, but moved to Arlington after the 1968 riots. She worked for many years at the Naval Historical Center at the Washington Navy Yard and also at the Smithsonian. She serves now as a volunteer teacher’s aide, reading to children at Glen Forest Elementary in Fairfax.

Ackerman Recounts the History of Eastern Market

The Overbeck History Lectures launched a new season on the evening of  September 19, 2006, with Capitol Hill author Stephen J. Ackerman presenting an illustrated history of Eastern Market. The lecture was based on Ackerman’s forthcoming book on the subject and coincided with the 200th anniversary of the market’s founding at its original site near 6th and L Streets S.E. Publication of the book is being supported by the Overbeck Project.

Ackerman disclosed a wealth of detail from the market's improbable history, including the period when the building’s north hall served as a stable for the firehouse next door and another when the basement served as a rifle range.

A Capitol Hill native and sixth-generation Washingtonian, Ackerman has pursued a varied career, moving from college English teacher to congressional aide to federal civil servant, and has worked for the past twenty years as a free lance writer. His highly readable historical articles have appeared in American Heritage, Smithsonian, Preservation, American History, Washington Post Magazine and many other publications. He can be reached at sja@sjackerman.com

The Navy’s Top Historian Gives History of the Navy Yard

A near-capacity crowd gathered at the Naval Lodge meeting hall on April 11, 2006, for an illustrated history of the Washington Navy Yard, presented by the U.S. Naval Historical Center’s lead historian, Edward J. Marolda.

Few people today are aware of how great a role the Navy Yard has played in the life and development of Capitol Hill. The walled facility at the foot of 8th Street was once the biggest builder of Navy ships in the country, and then became the biggest manufacturer of munitions. For roughly 150 years it was our neighborhood’s largest employer and a much more significant driver of the community’s growth than Congress and the Capitol.

Dr. Marolda is the author and editor of several books on U.S. Navy history and traditions, including The Washington Navy Yard: An Illustrated History, which is generally available for purchase at the gift shop of the Navy Yard museum.

Janke Depicts “The Breweries of Capitol Hill”

On February 7, Capitol Hill historian Lucinda Janke treated a capacity crowd at the Naval Lodge meeting hall to a charming look at the breweries that thrived in our neighborhood in the days before Prohibition.

Although hardly a trace of them remains today, in the late 19th century the Hill boasted two of Washington’s largest breweries – one in the block where Stuart Hobson Junior High stands today, the other at the site of the present-day 14th Street Safeway. The latter facility, which operated under various names and owners and had a beer garden that seated more than a thousand customers, greeted Prohibition by successfully converting to the manufacture of ice cream.

Ms. Janke showed an array of photos and other brewery memorabilia, and introduced about a dozen members of the audience who are direct descendents of Washington’s 19th century brewers, most of whom were German immigrants. A former curator of the Kiplinger Washington Collection and board member of the DC Historical Society, Ms. Janke is a longtime explorer of the city’s past and co-author, with Ruth Ann Overbeck, of a groundbreaking study of one of Capitol Hill’s founding landowners, William Prout. She also serves on the steering committee of the Overbeck Project.

Smithsonian Curator Salutes "The Instrument Makers of Capitol Hill"

On November 15, 2005 , Deborah J. Warner of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History delivered an interesting talk on a group of Capitol Hill residents who contributed greatly to the advancement of American science, surveying and geodesy. In the 19th century, Warner noted, a number of scientific instrument makers lived and worked in this neighborhood, supplying the needs of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey and a variety of other government and private clients. These highly skilled craftsmen, most of them German immigrants, turned out telescopes, surveyor's transits, heliostats and other precision devices that were needed for mapping, astronomy and other scientific pursuits. Among the craftsmen featured in the talk was Edward Kübel, whose workshop in the three hundred block of First Street N.E. produced the heliostat that Albert Michelson used for measuring the speed of light.

Warner is curator of the History Museum 's Physical Sciences Collection, which includes a number of instruments that were made by Kübel and other Hill manufacturers. The collection can be browsed at www.americanhistory2.si.edu/collections/surveying.

September Lecture Profiles “The Communist Who Designed Eastern Market”

 The 2005-06 season of Overbeck History Lectures opened on the evening of September 13 with a charming look at Adolf Cluss, the visionary Navy Yard engineer and architect who designed Eastern Market and many other 19th century Washington landmarks. Joseph L. Browne, director of a new Cluss exhibition at the Sumner School Museum, delivered the lecture to a near-capacity crowd at the Naval Lodge Hall on Pennsylvania Avenue.

A friend and follower of Karl Marx in his native Germany, Adolf Cluss arrived on Capitol Hill in 1849 with grand ideas for reforming society and becoming a major architect. He eventually cooled on Communism, but succeeded spectacularly as a designer of some of Washington’s most distinctive buildings, including the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries building and Wallach School, which stood where Hine Junior High stands today. Working with Alexander “Boss” Shepherd and others, he played a major role in changing the face of Washington in the latter half of the 19th century.

Our speaker, Joseph Browne, earned a Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Maryland and taught history for thirty years at schools in the U.S., Germany, England and Italy. He’s the author of a Maryland regional history, Sotweed to Suburbia, and co-author of the Cluss exhibition book. You can learn more about Cluss at the exhibition’s web site: www.adolf-cluss.org.

Authors Recall the 1932 "Bonus Army"

At our Overbeck History Lecture on April12, 2005, Washington writers Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen vividly described how tens of thousands of impoverished World War I veterans descended upon Washington in 1932 to seek payment of a bonus (basically one dollar per day of service) that Congress had promised them but had put off paying until 1945. These “Bonus Army” petitioners camped for months in tents and shacks along the Anacostia River and in empty buildings elsewhere around the city, only to be forcibly evicted eventually by the very Army in which most of them had served. Dickson and Allen explained how the men ultimately won their bonus and instilled in their country a new sense of obligation to military veterans, which led to passage of the GI Bill in World War II.

Dickson and Allen are co-authors of the highly praised The Bonus Army: An American Epic, and are collaborating on a documentary film on the Bonus Marchers for public television. Allen is a longtime contributor to National Geographic and the author of numerous books and articles on U.S. and military history. Dickson is a contributing editor to Washingtonian magazine and a consulting editor at Merriam-Webster, Inc. You can learn more about these writers at tballen.com and pauldicksonbooks.com

Rimensnyder Asks for New Respect for Washington’s “Boss” Shepherd

At our Overbeck History Lecture on the evening of November 9, 2005, Capitol Hill historian Nelson Rimensnyder offered a compelling portrait of the legendary 19th century territorial governor who turned Washington, DC into a modern city. Alexander R. Shepherd was an unjustly maligned civic leader, Rimensnyder contended, whose statue should be restored to its previous place of honor in front of the District building on Pennsylvania Avenue. The statue was, in fact, returned to the site in January 2005 due to Rimensnyder's efforts and other public pressure.

As Rimensnyder noted, as late as 1870 Washington remained an embarrassing backwater marked by mud streets, open sewers and wandering livestock, lending credibility to the serious movement then underway to have the national capital moved to St. Louis. More than any other individual, Alexander Shepherd changed all that, with a massive effort to grade and pave the streets, improve the parks, and install new lighting, water and sanitation systems. But by plunging forward with this effort without the expected level of financial support from Congress, he also left the city bankrupt and incurred the derision of partisan press lords, who dubbed him Boss Shepherd.

Rimensnyder says it was grossly unfair to lump Shepherd with the likes of New York’s Boss Tweed, and notes that this urban visionary also worked to change the social landscape as an outspoken supporter of women’s suffrage and racial equality.

Rimensnyder has been a student of DC history and a champion of DC home rule since his high school days in Pennsylvania, where he lobbied his state legislators to approve the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution giving District residents the right to vote for President. Later, working at the Library of Congress (1970-1975) and then as director of research for the U.S. House Committee on the District of Columbia (1975-1992), he compiled what he describes as “the only existing comprehensive archive on the history of the complex DC-Federal relationship.” He has been intensively involved in local historic preservation efforts and has served on the boards of the Historical Society of Washington, DC and the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia.

Brad Snyder Opens Our 2004-05 Season With “ Washington’s Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball”

Award-winning sports reporter and author Brad Snyder led off the Overbeck Project’s 2004-05 lecture season on September 14 with a look at professional baseball in Washington in the 1940s. In those years the city’s fans could choose between the Washington Senators, who hovered near the bottom of the segregated major leagues, and the Homestead Grays, one of the greatest teams in the history of the Negro Leagues, with legendary sluggers Josh Gibson and Buck Leonard, among others.

Snyder described how the contrast between the two teams, and the dogged advocacy of local sports reporter Sam Lacy, made Washington, D.C. a focal point in the campaign to integrate major league baseball well before the Brooklyn Dodgers broke “the color barrier” with the signing of Jackie Robinson.

Brad Snyder is author of the widely acclaimed Beyond the Shadow of the Senators: The Untold Story of the Homestead Grays and the Integration of Baseball (Contemporary Books, 2003). The New York Times Book Review called it “a rich panorama of Washington as it evolved from a Southern provincial town to a large city with a black majority … Snyder’s book is not just the history of a team but the tale of one city in all its social complexity.” You can find out more about the book at beyondtheshadow.com.

In the early 1990s, Snyder was a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, where he covered the Orioles and also Baltimore city crime and Capitol Hill. He left the Sun to earn a law degree at Yale and later practiced briefly with Williams and Connolly LLP, but he has since returned full-time to his first love – writing about the business and sociology of sports.

Tom Kelly Recalls “Capitol Hill in the Jazz Age and the Great Depression”

The 2003-04 season of the Overbeck History Lectures concluded on the evening of April 13 with a charming look at life on Capitol Hill during the 1920s and 30s. Hill native and longtime journalist Tom Kelly offered vivid memories of his childhood here in the Jazz Age and the Great Depression. His descriptions were mainly excerpts from the early chapters of his memoirs – a work in progress.

Mr. Kelly grew up on the 400 block of Constitution Avenue N.E. (then known as B Street), where he and his wife Marguerite later raised their family and still reside today. He was recently interviewed for the Overbeck project by one of our volunteers, Andrea Kerr, and the transcript of that exchange will be posted soon on our Interviewees page.

Tom Kelly’s first newspaper job was as a copy boy at the Washington Post in 1939. After serving in the Navy during World War II, graduating from Penn State, and reporting for two papers in Louisiana, he covered the White House during the Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations for the old Washington Daily News. He later served in the federal Office for Economic Opportunity and as Director of National Affairs for the newly formed VISTA program. From 1970 to 1986 he free lanced, and then worked part time for the Washington Times until 1993, when he retired at age 70.

C.R. Gibbs Tells of DC's Black Civil War Regiment

On November 18, 2003, our Overbeck lecture audience heard Capitol Hill historian C.R. Gibbs deliver a moving presentation on the First Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, the black Civil War regiment that was recruited and trained in Washington, D.C. In the spring of 1863, Israel Bethel AME Church, which stood approximately where the Rayburn House Office Building stands today, became the main recruiting station for this brave collection of fugitive slaves and freedmen from throughout the region who volunteered to fight for the Union cause.

Mr. Gibbs is the author of five books on African American history, including the recently published Black, Copper & Bright: The District of Columbia 's Black Civil War Regiment . He has also written for dozens of newspapers and magazines, lectured at schools and universities throughout the Washington region and beyond, and mounted a variety of historical exhibits for museums and other organizations. His expert guidance has been sought in connection with a variety of video and television productions, and his anecdotal history tours for the Smithsonian Associates and other groups are among the best in the city.

Copies of Black, Copper & Bright and other books by Mr. Gibbs were available for purchase and author signature at the end of the lecture.

Anthony Pitch Describes the 1814 Burning of Washington

The 2003-04 season of of Overbeck History Lectures got off to a dramatic start on Tuesday evening, September 16, as the highly regarded author and lecturer Anthony S. Pitch told the gripping story of the British capture of Washington, DC in the summer of 1814, with a special focus on events on Capitol Hill. The burning of the Capitol, the White House and most other government buildings in the District brought our new country precariously close to extinction and of course were devastating blows to this fledgling community.

The lecture was held, as usual, in the visually striking Egyptian Revival style meeting hall of the Naval Lodge building at 330 Pennsylvania Avenue S.E.

Anthony Pitch is the author of The Burning of Washington : The British Invasion of 1814, along with numerous other books and publications, and is noted for his excellent anecdotal history tours for the Smithsonian Resident Associates and other organizations. He has worked as a journalist in England, Africa and Israel, served as senior writer in the books division of U.S. News & World Report, and is now at work on a new history of the Lincoln assassination. He can be reached at dcsightseeing.com.

George Didden, Jr.,

This is the story of two incredibly productive and successful Washingtonians of German descent who came to Washington after the Civil War. Their collective energy and business acumen substantially shaped our great city, as we know it today. Albert Carry was a self made man, a prominent Washington brewer, real estate investor, banker and philanthropist. Mr. Carry hired Clement August Didden, a prominent Washington Architect to design buildings to their highest and best use on corners all over downtown to house National Capital Brewing Co.'s many wholly owned pubs. The building in which we celebrate Washington 's history tonight is testament to the profitability of a pint of liquid bread at the turn of the century. On May 24, 1905 (exactly 95 years ago today), the Brewer's oldest daughter Marie married the Architect's oldest son, George. These were our paternal grandparents.

April 8 Overbeck History Lecture
Looks At “Capitol Hill Before L’Enfant”

At our Overbeck History Lecture on April 8, 2003, noted author, GWU professor and longtime Hill resident John M. Vlach took a spellbound audience back to “Capitol Hill Before L’Enfant” – to the woods, streams and plantations that were here before the grand design for a federal city was superimposed. Vlach treated a capacity crowd at the Naval Lodge Hall to a pictorial tour of the Hill’s perimeter, where most of the 18th century landowners had their homes, slave quarters and tobacco barns.

Click here for the text of Vlach's lecture, along with the many maps and slides that he showed. Also, check out the very interesting article Vlach wrote for a recent issue of the newsletter of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. In it he thoroughly debunks the oft-repeated claim that Capitol Hill was once known as Jenkins Hill

Vlach is a professor of Anthropology and American Studies at George Washington University and the author of ten books, including Charleston Blacksmith, The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts, Folk Art and Art Worlds, and Back of the Big House: The Architecture of Plantation Slavery. He also has curated a number of exhibitions for the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History and other institutions around the country and has generously assisted the Overbeck Project as a conceptual adviser and as a trainer of our volunteers.

February History Lecture Explores "Our Neighborhood's River"

Few people today are aware that Washington's founders sited the federal city in this particular place along the Potomac not so much because of what the Potomac had to offer but because of its Anacostia tributary. It was the Anacostia that had the best harbor, and it provided passage for ocean-going ships, in those days, all the way up to Bladensburg.

Since then, of course, the river has silted in from agricultural runoff and suffered other serious degradation. To find out more about the river's ecology and what can be done to clean it up, go to www.cbf.org/anacostia.

Don Hawkins is an architect by profession, but he’s probably better known locally for his avocation as a historian of early Washington and its topography. He’s drawn and published dozens of maps and illustrations showing how our area looked to early European settlers and how it evolved over the years. His many other research projects include a reconstruction of William Thornton's lost design for the U.S. Capitol, which is on display today in the crypt under the Capitol's rotunda.

Hawkins grew up in Arlington, and studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London, the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, and Catholic University, where he also received a master’s degree in urban design. He's a frequent lecturer on D.C. history at the Smithsonian, at local historical societies, and at most of our area's universities.

Sam and Kathy Smith Spark Memories of the 60s

On the evening of November 12, 2002, husband-and-wife team Sam Smith and Kathryn Schneider Smith presented one of our most successful Overbeck History Lectures yet, a very entertaining and informative look at Capitol Hill in the turbulent 1960s.

Sam and Kathy were prominent activists here in those days, and their lecture – "Cauldron and Community: Joining the Hill in the 1960s" – looked back on a decade when Congress grappled with civil rights and the war on poverty while people living in the shadow of the dome struggled to save a neighborhood hit hard by neglect, misguided development, and middle class flight to the suburbs.

If you missed the event, click below for a full transcript of their remarks. Kathy gives a great description of her involvement with Friendship House and other community efforts. And Sam, who was founder and editor of the Capitol East Gazette, gives a very colorful view of a community awakening to change, culminating in a gripping account of the 1968 riots.

Kathy today is executive director of the D.C. Heritage Tourism Coalition, which she helped start five years ago to bring more of Washington's visitors into the city's downtown and residential areas. She's the author and editor of a number of books on the history of our city, including Washington at Home: Neighborhoods in the Nation's Capital, and is the founding editor of Washington History, the journal of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., which she also served as president.

Sam, who helped to found the D.C. Statehood Party and the national Green Party, today is editor of The Progressive Review and a prominent critic and commentator on D.C. life and politics. The first of his four books, Captive Capital, which he wrote in 1974, is still one of the basic books about Washington.

To read Kathy Smith's lecture Click Here
To read Sam Smith's Lecture Click Here

September Lecture Looks At Civil War Capitol Hill

Our Ruth Ann Overbeck History Lecture Series began its new season on the evening of September 10, 2002, with a fascinating look at life in our neighborhood during the Civil War. A capacity crowd at the Naval Lodge Hall was held spellbound by American University professor and Civil War authority Edward C. Smith as he described how the conflict to preserve the Union profoundly altered the life of our community.

Among other things, he pointed out, the Navy Yard down at the foot of 8th Street brought in hundreds of new workers to service the ships and churn out munitions for the war effort. A neighborhood church became a recruiting station for U.S. Colored Troop #1. And on the site of present-day Lincoln Park, the largest hospital in the city sprang up, treating thousands of wounded soldiers.

Professor Smith is a third-generation Washingtonian and the Director of American Studies at AU, where he's taught since 1969. He's also achieved a wide following as a Civil War, African-American cultural heritage and art history lecturer and study tour leader for the Smithsonian Institution, the National Geographic Society, the National Park Service and the D.C. Historical Society.

April 2002 Lecture Explores Freemasonry on the Hill

Another capacity crowd gathered at the Naval Lodge hall at 4th and Pennsylvania on the evening of April 9, 2002, to hear Barbara Franco deliver the second in our series of Ruth Ann Overbeck History Lectures - a fascinating look at the role of Freemasons in our neighborhood's history.

Franco, who became an expert on Freemasonry and other fraternal organizations in American history while serving at the Museum of Our National Heritage in Lexington, Massachusetts, spoke in some detail about the history of the Naval Lodge itself, and used the hall's elaborate interior to illustrate Freemasonry's symbols and beliefs. Naval Lodge #4, which was founded in 1805 by officers and workers at the Navy Yard, has played a major role in the social and economic life of Capitol Hill.

As president of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., Franco also provided an update on the society's plans for the new D.C. history museum, which is scheduled to open on Mount Vernon Square in 2003.

New Lecture Series Is a Hit

An enthusiastic, capacity crowd gathered at the Naval Lodge Hall on Pennsylvania Avenue on the evening of February 5, 2002, to hear Edmund and Sylvia Morris deliver the first of our Overbeck History Lectures, a fascinating presentation on "Washington in the time of Theodore Roosevelt."

Edmund Morris is the author of The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and its widely praised sequel, Theodore Rex. His wife Sylvia Jukes Morris wrote the highly regarded biography of TR's wife, Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady. The Morrises also are our Capitol Hill neighbors.

All of our lectures are held at the Naval Lodge Hall at 330 Pennsylvania Avenue S.E. This intact 1895 Masonic temple, decorated in the Egyptian Revival style, is one of our neighborhood's architectural treasures.

Our thanks to the Lodge, and to all our volunteers who helped make our first lecture a great success.

Kiplinger Backs Our Lecture Series

In December 2001, the Overbeck Project received a generous grant from the Kiplinger Foundation to support our new lecture series on Washington, D.C. history. The Overbeck Lectures began on February 5, 2002, with a presentation by Edmund and Sylvia Morris on "Theodore Roosevelt's Washington."