Photo by Gayle Krughoff

Bette and Peter Glickert

When Bette and Peter Glickert married in 1959, they bought the end house of Philadelphia Row. At the time, the house, now a familiar beauty, had been condemned.

In their interview with Ev Barnes, the Glickerts describe life as it was typically lived by the first wave of late 20th century people who came to Capitol Hill to renovate an old house and make it a home. Notable among their many experiences was Peter’s successful effort to stop the East Leg of the Inner Loop freeway from being built and destroying Philadephia Row, an effort that won him the Evening Star’s trophy for the “Citizen of the Year” at the time.

Read Transcript
Interview Date
June 2, 2003
Interviewer
Ev Barnes
Transcriber
Jack Womeldorf
Editor

Full Directory

TAPE 1/SIDE 1

[NOTE: The beginning of the interview is with Bette Glickert, who is referred to as GLICKERT in the transcript. At the end, where both Bette and Peter are present, their first initials are included.]

BARNES: This is June 2, 2003. Ev Barnes, and I’m interviewing Bette Glickert for the Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project. We’re meeting at 530 N Street SW in Washington, DC. Bette, could we just start by your giving me some of your history, your background, a little biography on when you were born, where you were born, and when you got married, and all of that?

GLICKERT: Alright, Ev. I was born in Washington, DC, at Sibley Hospital on North Capitol Street, and my mother’s family were from the Washington area—my maternal great-grandfather and great grandmother were married at the Lutheran Church in Georgetown. Part of my mother’s growing up was on the ten-hundred block of B Street, now Independence Avenue SE.

BARNES: OK, Bette.

GLICKERT: Well, so a lot of my growing up as a child was in Petworth Northwest in my grandfather’s home. They moved after World War I out to the new suburbs which was Northwest Washington: Petworth, Chillum, but there were still people, many, in the Capitol Hill area that my family knew. My aunt was friendly till all of her life with the Meany girls who were at 11th and B Streets SE; one of them, I think was—[unclear; probably: married one of the Bergman Laundry people]—all four of them moved out to the Marlow Heights area, or District Heights, and she’d go there and visit them. So I had a lot of information about people, and the way of life in those times.

But, as we all know, when Peter and I became engaged, it was in 1958. Our first home was on Independence, the end home on Independence Avenue and 11th, Philadelphia Row [154 11th Street SE]. In fact, before he asked me to marry him, he took me over one evening to see the house, by flashlight, because as I said it was condemned, and nothing was working, and a friend of his had the contract to buy it and wanted to sell the contract. We both thought it had lots of possibilities and I was thrilled. Thereafter, we got engaged, knowing what was coming—a Civil War era home that had to be put together. I want to say how different things were at this time. It was much later before restoration became what it is now. It was very difficult to duplicate things that were lost. For instance, the balustrades: if you had them missing, you could climb around Ace wreckage junk yards for days trying to find one similar. Barker Lumber could not turn one back then, to copy the ones that were there. When Peter was going to bar review before we were married—that would have been the fall of 1958—he had put in one room of the house all the bachelor furniture he had; and he was staying with a friend, so we went over there and I asked him questions for the bar, and he had gone down to the basement and found, on the dirt floor of the basement, parts of the double porches that were there. They were the ornamental corners and so forth, which could not be found and duplicated at that time, so he carefully took them, some he used glue and screws to put together, and he worked at the cornices and parts of the double porches, and I asked questions for the bar. One time there was a false alarm, and the fire department came in on a Sunday evening, and in those days, it was strange to see a young lady and gentleman alone in a house, and I told them [laughs] “Oh well, we’re looking for a quiet place to do bar review.” He looked at me rather unbelievingly. We laughed about it; fortunately we didn’t have the fire.

So we were married on April 4, 1959. By that time, we had restored or remodeled the back part of the house, so that we could have a small living quarters there. It was quite different from what we think of it now on the Hill, and I laugh because when I was picking out china and silver patterns before the wedding, my mother said, “You need to pick out guns and ammunition, not silver.” She was very upset that we were going to go and live in the old neighborhood, because, unfortunately, that’s what happened to Washington and most cities, as people move on into another area, they tend to think they’ve left the crime belt, and we felt, both Peter and I had shared a love for this city. I went to Georgetown Visitation to high school and I then wanted to, had a dream of buying one of the Georgetown homes and restoring it.

I felt that the city ought to be kept up it its original beauty. We had a beautiful city! And the idea of just moving on and leaving decay in the wake did not appeal to me, nor to Peter. So we both moved onto Capitol Hill with a great deal of affection for the city and that area. Now [laughs] —and a lot of dumbness—at that time, one of the—I don’t know, I can’t think of anyone that we met that was doing over, as we said, or restoring their home with all professional help, starting with the architect and builder. You’d have a contractor for part, but mostly what we did was, I resigned my job and we did some contracting to people that were going to do things, and there was an awful lot of dumbness. We had a guardian angel that stood by at all times. I remember one of the first things we had was a contract to put a cement floor over the dirt floor in the basement. This was not unusual in those days, to have dirt floors, even though Philadelphia Row was a brick, substantial place.

BARNES: I do remember that, a lot of the old houses on the Hill still have dirt floors.

GLICKERT: Well, they did, and sometimes they used—part of them they could put a winter cellar. You could put potatoes, a lot of your root vegetables there to cool. We had signed a contract, and one Friday afternoon after the contractor was not sure what date he was going to do the floor, the doorbell rang, and it was a concrete truck, with the old barrel rolling around, and he said “I’ve got so many yards of concrete to deliver here. Where’s the contractor?” I said I don’t have anybody here. He called his office and he said, “Well, I can’t park on Independence Avenue after four o’clock. I’ve got to dump this stuff, it’s Friday.” So I said “Well, could you go around the side by the garage in the alley and just put it in the yard there”? He agreed, never having seen or had any work like this, and he’s ready to leave and the telephone rang again, and it was his office, and the office said check with him. “Oh,” he said, “I’ve got the wrong address, lady. I’m glad they called me back,” and off he went. [Laughs] When I watched the contractor delivering the cement floor and how it was done, his job was watching the cement come out of the mixer, down the chute, to be sure it had the right consistency and so forth. I could imagine what I would have had in the back yard! [Laughs] But anyway there were a lot of times we were saved, I was, from ignorance.

Doing the house over, I gather there were a lot of things that we gave each other advice, or, for instance, Curley Boswell. One day a workman stopped me, the contractor who was doing the front of the Philadelphia Row house. “You’ve got a bad bulge in that back wall,” and the inspectors came at certain stages, and the inspector had noted it. Well, you know, a wall’s coming down? That was the end as far as I was concerned. Everything we had was in this house. As we got money we put it in. What can you do? Well, I guess Peter is the one who said, “I’ll call Curley Boswell.” He did, he came right over. He looked at that, and he laughed. He said, “If it’s not big enough to put your fist in, never worry about it. However, they can fix that with an iron rod.” This was the back of the house on the third floor, which did not continue on to the back, and you could see where it was inserted, and he said “then you’ll have a strong wall forever.”

BARNES: How long did you live there?

GLICKERT: We were there from April of ’59, and I think it was like ‘60, the end of ‘61 or ‘60, ( I’ve stopped thinking of times.) Near the end of ’60, we realized after doing work on a Philadelphia Row house, and it was lovely, but it was a Victorian split-level going up the front to the second level, there were steps to the front and steps to the back bedrooms, and so forth, and it really wasn’t suitable for us, and we wanted a family, so we started looking for a house that had more on the first level floor. I knew there would be steps getting into it, so it was Peter that found the home we later bought on 12th Street, just around the corner, 140 12th Street SE.

BARNES: When did you move there?

GLICKERT: Well, it was summer of, I think it was ’60, we bought it, and we moved around, sort of, how do I say it, we moved around the corner mostly with a push cart and a car. We’d take things and take things ’cause we didn’t have a lot of furniture then, and then we kept the Philadelphia Row, it was not a good time to sell, and we would rent the part where we lived. I think ultimately it was probably close to two years we were in Philadelphia Row and then around the corner, and I’m not recollecting [?] exact dates, but I’m not good at that, unless something brings it up to mind.

When I saw the house on 12th Street, Peter had been going around one Saturday morning to church at Holy Comforter, and he cut down that street, and he noticed they’d just put a sign up! We called the realtor, who said, well, it was going to go on the market as a rooming house, that the woman had used it for that, and she had died. It was in an estate, a commercial property and so forth. Well, she said, “If you’re really interested, I will see that it’s not advertised this weekend. I will try and talk to the owner to come meet you.” Mrs. Brannan, and she really did—I must say, when I first saw the place I said “Oh, no. No charm. Awkward. It’s too big. I could find a million things wrong with it, and too much money.” She decided; she really—she wanted to see it in the hands of people who were going to live in it as a home, not commercial, and so, at that time, we had gotten, after we worked on the Philadelphia Row house, I say restore, but there were always things to be done still, but I was able to get Perpetual, because the person who came out of Perpetual, because of the Baptist church in the area where the president went, was somewhat still interested in the Hill. Although I think at some point they cut off getting “red-lined” mortgages, but on 12th Street, where would one get a mortgage?

She, [Mrs.] Brannan, talked to us back and forth with the owner, who was the son of the woman who died, and finally, we got down to the point where I said, “Well, if we had a house like this, I’ve no furniture to put in it, not this much, or anything suitable.” So she asked the man, she went back to the owner and said, “What are you going to do with all the furniture that’s there, like the maple bedroom set and so forth?” And the arte moderne set that was there? And he said, “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t want it.” So she said, we were $500 apart on the price and she had a very clever way of saying to the owner, “Well, will you give them that if they will go up to the $500?” so for $500, a pile of junk, they said we got it. Funny story is, some years later, in the bottom of the drawer, when it was taken out of the dresser, one of them that was left there, was $500, and it was in $2 bills and various things, it was apparently some one of the renters who used to go to the racetrack. We called the owner; he said he didn’t know anything about it, he didn’t know who had rented there, so anyway. [unclear, probably: We got the $500.] It was always a bone of contention. Peter would laugh and I’d say, “I can’t stand it.” We were very lucky.

The more I got into the house and realized it doesn’t have style, in fact it didn’t even have a fireplace! Well, my mother knew why. She knew the people that built the house. They were Campbell Hardware and Lumber people. When we bought, Tracy Campbell was still living, over there in Anacostia, but I never interviewed him. I promised Mrs. Leuckart [sp?] we’d go one day to meet Tracy but we never did, and I’m sorry. The family built it for themselves. It was a double-lot house. That’s why it had a larger first floor than the other homes. They built five houses north of it, which were single-lot row homes. My mother had said, by that time it was the first home in the neighborhood that had central heating. And that was a big thing: who wanted a dirty old fireplace when you had central heating!—in the walls, and the heights [unclear]. However, it had gas lights! When we went in for fixtures and things in re-plastering, there were gas, and one was in fact still alive, a gas jet that hadn’t been closed off sufficiently in one of the bedrooms. So it was truly a beautifully made home, well insulated. When we had to leave the Hill, put our house on the market, the realtors could not believe when I told them how much it cost in utilities for that house, which then included heating a lap pool in the back yard. They couldn’t believe it. But it was truly a well-built home and on the inspection of the house, which took seven hours, I think, the people that bought it, they found two things: one was it needed a new valve or spigot for the water coming in from the front sewer pipe, and some other equally small problem. And that was an amazing thing. Of course, everything we did to the house, we hoped we were doing in a solid way, in keeping with the way the house was built.

BARNES: And so you left the Hill, then. What was it, 1995?GLICKERT: Wish Peter were here.BARNES: That’s OK.

GLICKERT: My husband will have to give, because the year that we moved here would be... We’ve been here at least five years, so this was like 1998 or 7, ’97, I think. I was going to say a couple of other things about where we’ve moved around 12th Street and I hope they have interviews with people. There’s still a mixture of original owners. Miss Jones had been born in the house, three-story house on our block that she lived in. And that was then sold to the Garsky family, who lived there about 25 years. Mr. Talbert—I’m not sure of the number, but it was a two-story next to hers, I believe. He came there as a bridegroom and he was near 90 and the oldest usher at Holy Comforter Church, he was still there the first few years that we were on 12th Street. Then he had to go into the hospital, later “passed,” and his daughter one Sunday had a house sale, and we went down to see. And I had no place to put any of the dishes and china and crystal that I had. They were packed up in the pantry and I thought if I needed to use it I had to get it down. And there was this lovely china cabinet [at the sale] that just fit into the bay of the dining room. Anyway, we went down there [and bought it], and it was the era of very dark mahogany, that even when you clean the wood it bleeds red. I brought it up the street, we pushed it. My foster son and husband and I, we just pushed it up the street, and carried it in the house. And later I antiqued it, and it was just perfect for that dining room. I now have it in the apartment but only as a memory: it doesn’t look anything like it did then.

BARNES: Something about the neighborhood. At that time, where did you shop? Where did you do your grocery shopping and all of that?

GLICKERT: Virginia.BARNES: Oh, you did? There was no Safeway there?

GLICKERT: I mostly did it at the little Safeway across from the [Eastern] market. I shopped there. I said “Virginia” because my mother was there, and I often would take her with me to the grocery store for the big shopping, but I used the Eastern Market. In fact, a friend of mine used to come from Maryland, because the butcher went to school with her; she would call and order the meat and I would order, and we’d get together that way and have a cup of coffee and do our shopping. The Kresge’s was at Seventh and the Avenue, and that was a wonderful thing to have.

BARNES: Was it at Seventh and Pennsylvania? Oh!

GLICKERT: And right before K Mart knocked Kresge’s out. That is still a wonderful corner for Bread and Chocolate: I love to sit there and watch the world go by. However, there are things that we will always sorely miss that “five and dimes” carried.

Then the A & P was on 12th Street, down at Pennsylvania Avenue where the CVS is now. And I liked the A & P, bought liked a lot of their products and shopped there and tried very hard to have them stay or relocate. But they had to give up. Unless you could have x number of feet of parking, they were not interested. I did not think that Safeway would ever give up the store on Seventh Street. It was such a complement to the market. However it was a real money maker, even though it was so frustrating in things that were stocked all the way up to the ceiling. However, Safeway—it was during the days of leveraged buyouts, and things like that— and Safeway had gotten into trouble and they needed to get rid of their smaller stores. And this was not the hardship for me that it was for many people on the Hill who did not drive, and walked to the Safeway. I had a car, and I could go elsewhere. Anyway, then we went through the frustrating times and the new Safeway on Kentucky Avenue. And I guess it’s had several revisions and parking lot cleanups, et cetera, to get where it is today.

BARNES: Something that was brought to mind. What did you do for entertainment during that era? I know that most of your time was taken up renovating a house, but were there social occasions on 12thStreet, and Independence, and around the Eastern Market area?

GLICKERT: Oh, yes. We were all brought together by causes. There were—the Capitol Hill Restoration Society was about a year or two old when we first bought there, or they were contemplating it. I guess Ann Wallace—either she or her husband were president that year, and before we moved there, or even bought, we went to a meeting. The projects—that’s what they were [unclear]—but the Capitol Restoration Society came into being. There was the Southeast Citizens in being, which was the civic group for that area, and then later—it was not integrated, and later the Capitol Hill Community Council came along and formed an integrated group [for] civic problems. We thought that the Capitol Restoration Society would tackle the Architect and zoning and street problems, but the community problems, such as school[s] and so forth, would not be in their purview. Well, that’s not the way it all came out, because here it is today lasting through all of these, but these were fun things to go [to] and people got together and worked on projects.

Mrs. Draper, who owned property on the Hill and came from Georgetown. When we were working on our 12th Street house, she gave us a gift of a mantle from the Grant home off North Capitol Street When General Grant, after the Civil War—it was customary to give the winning general a home—and he was gifted that, and when they tore it down, she had saved the mantle. We had that up in our master bedroom.

BARNES: Were there theaters on the Hill? Movie theaters? The Folger?

GLICKERT: They were earlier. Back in the ‘50s and the ‘40s they were going. I went to the Folger, yes, but that was the original Folger on the Hill. And I can’t remember when I started going there. The Arena Stage was started on New York Avenue. It went to the Old Vat in Foggy Bottom. Pete and I had season tickets to that from the time we started dating, but it was over at the Old Vat, we called it, in Foggy Bottom.

On the Hill, let’s see, it was probably closer to 1970 when the Capitol Hill [Arts] Workshop started. It started with little things like Sally [Crowell] had, making puppets with the children. Our daughter was involved in the early groups that worked in the workshop. So many flashing memories that you think of.

But as I said, we really got together over causes. Friendship House had a Congressional Circle: wives of congressmen who belonged and were interested in helping Friendship House as they started the Circle on the Hill, which were women on the Hill. The first Market Day, I was very much involved in, and that was at the House itself: a fantastic collection of things and auction afterwards. We had assembled—some of the ladies made things that were beautiful. We had simple assembled gifts from, for instance, the ambassador’s wife from England. Addie Cresack [sp?] had managed to get lovely gifts from them, and it was really quite a beautiful thing, because it was so much talent. If you can picture a time when everybody sort of stayed home with their children until at least they were school-age, or just about everyone. And you had this resource, talented women, who had had careers and wanted to use their energies for the neighborhood. You realize that a lot of good work on the Hill was done by just these people [such as] trying to think through the school problems.

BARNES: So did you work with any of the schools in particular? The schools are probably the same today as they were then.

GLICKERT: Not really. No, there was a new one down on 12th Street here in fact, and Bryan around the corner on Independence Avenue, which we were working to make that a very viable school. Deretha Ledbetter was the president of the parents’ group for many years. She had seven children. She was my neighbor, and she was always willing to work hard. But that now is going to be used to build condominiums and townhouses.

The joggling around, Peabody School was one of the first to upgrade, and there was a little lot there at Fourth and Constitution. Marguerite Kelly thought, well, that would be near Peabody, a very nice place for a playground, and we had a one-day fair to raise funds for the playground. She borrowed from the Shoreham [Hotel] the “Cherry-Blossom Special,” so the children had little train rides, and we had quite a successful gathering.

So truly there were lots of activities around, and when we entertained in the home, it was very often not dinner or even pot-luck. I remember the word ‘sherry’ came into my vocabulary about 1959. because I don’t know that we used sherry very much in my home, but that became very popular. “Come over for sherry before dinner,” or after dinner, or whatever. I wanted to say that the families were working on the properties themselves, most of them. They were professionals, with mom staying at home, and we stayed long enough, that on the streets where I lived, I watched some houses change, where the children were raised and the family moved on to a retirement place, like the Garskys, and other families moved in. And at that point, it seemed [that with] the wonders of electronics, a lot of the moms were able to work part- time, and at home the other time, and be with their young children. We had the fax and the other things that came about. That was changing, and once again, there was a parade of young moms and children going up to Lincoln Park, as there had been with my daughter—our daughter was [unclear]...

BARNES: Your daughter was born when?GLICKERT: 1965.BARNES: 1965.

END OF TAPE 1/SIDE 1 TAPE 1/SIDE 2

BARNES: OK, Bette, you were going to tell me about the Carry Mansion and the things that you took from that.

GLICKERT: Yes. That was one of the most formidable places around the Hill. It had a ballroom with eighteen-inch thick masonry walls. The carriage house itself, if it had been saved, would have been a beautiful—at the corner of the alley and Independence Avenue—would have been a beautiful home. We had friends who had come on the Philadelphia Row, the Karrases, from Philadelphia, and they had saved parts of houses up there that had been Philadelphia Row houses and being torn down. So we knew this and we called Ace Wrecking. They came one day and broke down one room deep in the back, and we called to see about there was going to be a sale of any of their artifacts. “Oh” he said, “there’s nothing to save. You go in and get whatever you want.” So we had just one week, and because by Monday they had closed it off, and they had a ‘ball’ that was taking down the rest of the house. My husband and—we had a couple of foster children from Cuba—and they went over and took down the lovely paneling from the hall and the stairway, and although our stairway of our house was much smaller, it was remarkably within the same angle. We could use it with very little change. Then we took down, although there were layers and layers of paint, the hinges were bronze and brass, very ornate, the screws were even brass, and the back plates to the doors, the window pulls, and even the back plates for—I’m trying to think of the word now, I can’t think of the—sliding doors, but there’s another word now.

BARNES: Pocket doors?

GLICKERT: Pocket doors. We had two sets of pocket doors. We took them all, but you could hardly see the design on some, there were so many layers of paint, because the mansion had been taken down to being a really, very bad rooming house, and then finally, to nothing. It really was condemned and no one was in there. The Kreinheders, they were interested in the ornate tile, and so they spent their weekend working on the tile rows, and the Karrases on getting more of the artifacts they had wanted for their Philadelphia Row house.

I want to say that, one of the poignant points about that, that this was after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And in this place where it was so bare, and the rooms that had been maybe three rooms— where one room had been done into three or four, with very high ceilings, and one light bulb burning in the middle of it. This would be one of the rooms they’d rent out; very, very sad. In the front hall, over the radiator, was a newspaper picture of President Kennedy. A little tattered, black material that was pinned over the picture as a memorial to his death. Knowing who had lived there, and the sadness of the place, I thought how it showed the depth it affected us of his death, and how it reached people.

You asked me to think—my problem is I think of so many things because—President Kennedy’s campaign, the photographer lived in part of our Philadelphia Row house. And he had called us, since we had moved to 12th Street and had a large two-story coach house, [to ask] if we would store things he had from the campaign. And he put large bulletin boards and memorabilia back there [in the coach house], that would we have the sense to save it, which we didn’t. We made a ping-pong table for the children out of one—part of one of the things, and a lot of the things that would have later been very valuable.

Anyway, I think the Carry Mansion certainly spanned a lot of changes on the Hill. It was originally the Carrys of Germany; a brewery that with Prohibition became an ice-cream factory, located just about where the Capitol Hill Safeway is. The man who worked for the Carrys I met by accident on Tenth Street. He was a black American, who—and his wife—had raised nine children in a small house on the 100 block of Tenth Street. It was right at the alley as you go through from 11th. He taught at DC Schools— upholstery, but only limited hours because they were raising their nine children. His wife was blind. He wanted to work in the coach house there so he could come in when it came time to use the stove for cooking and be around till the children got old enough so the girls could supervise. And incidentally, the first year we got the vote, I drove handicapped persons to the voting station, and she was one of the people that I picked up and took.

Then the Dexter Andersons [who lived on Philadelphia Row] had an upholsterer—had him, and they recommended him. When he came over to upholster a chair, which he did beautifully—he was a widower then—and we got talking about the Hill. It turned out that he knew my grandmother on B Street very well, and that he was the one that did over the dining room furniture and upholstered the living room when they moved out to Petworth. When I showed him the portieres from my grandmother’s home that I was hoping to make [into] a couch cover, he said, “I made those portieres!” I kept them all those years [laughs]. That was priceless to me, just priceless.

BARNES: Do you remember his name?

GLICKERT: No, and that’s terrible and I know I have records, I’d have to dig back to get them. But someone may remember, ‘cause he was there for all those years, and a lot of people used him for—you know, had him upholster furnishings, and he spanned so many years of the Hill.

BARNES: And he actually worked out of the Carry house?

GLICKERT: No, I’m sorry. He worked out of the house he had on Tenth Street. It was a small house. It was on the east side of Tenth Street so it was at the alley that cuts through from 11th to Tenth, and he would say about the Carrys, he remembered them well, because he used to, for instance, switch to the spring and summer motif. Now I lived in Washington, so I know what he meant. You change all the shades to green, put down fiber rugs on the floor, slipcovers on the furniture, and this is what people did in Washington.

He also [with the] Carrys—he said he got them ready and helped them move to their summer home in Suitland, and that’s always been kind of a joke with us ‘when they went to their summer home in Suitland’. In our time, Suitland of course was a lot different place than that. But if anyone can think back to before the Census Bureau [was] out in Suitland, there were a lot of cottage types, just as there were in Tenleytown, and other areas of Washington, where people could go for the summer, for cool air.

BARNES: So the seasons, did they affect life on the Hill a lot?

GLICKERT: Well, not when we moved to the Hill, because one of the first things people tried to do was put in an air conditioning unit in the bedroom, if nothing else. We were moving quite quickly to an air conditioned world and city. However, yes, it certainly did. At my home in the summer... Well, spring cleaning consisted of changing the rugs and the shades and the slip covering; everything, putting, taking down the velour portieres, and putting up the monkcloth portieres, all of these things. And it was fun to hear this gentleman from Tenth Street talk about doing this with the Carry family, which were, of course, the ‘in family’ on the Hill. They had the loveliest home, and next door, their daughter Mary Didden, and they had built the lovely home next to it, which is now St. Mark’s rectory. I believe it still is.

BARNES: Well, recently in the last three or four years that was sold by St. Mark’s. It is now owned by Doug Delano and Beth Hannold. They’ve bought that and have been really restoring it. It’s just a beautiful place.

GLICKERT: It’s a beautiful home. It was rented because they were not interested in selling, and there was a family from England—she had spent part of her growing up in India with her family. I remember she gave lovely suppers, she knew so much about Indian cooking and seasonings, and we’d go over there. They wanted to buy it if it were ever on the market. And what happened was, because it had never been officially divided according to the plats of the District of Columbia, it was a matter of the daughter Mary, and being next door, that had a lovely side garden, and then the Fitts, and then the Carrys. Well, when the Carry mansion was torn down, and Barrett Linde was putting up townhouses, it was refigured; it went all the way to the side porch of the Didden house. The side garden was not there.

BARNES: So the house belonged to the Diddens that was adjacent to the Carry house.

GLICKERT: Yeah. Their daughter married Didden [unclear] and so, the first one in the house was, and it was never trashed. Now [the] Carry mansion was trashed. There were many things that any of the Philadelphia Row houses were. Ours certainly was sort of left in disrepair. But the Didden house was beautifully cared for, just beautiful, with a reception hall. I’m so happy to hear, I’d wondered because it was a little far for the church to have a rectory, and expensive.

BARNES: Yes, it was. Speaking of churches; there are a lot of churches on the Hill. I don’t know if you attended any church, or what role the church played on Capitol Hill.

GLICKERT: Well, yes I did. We were just at the border for going to the Catholic Church at 14th and East Capitol, Holy Comforter, and later was united with St. Cyprian’s. And I particularly—although most of my neighbors went to St. Peter’s—I very early on stopped going there because it had steps, and I was starting to have a problem with stairs, using a lot of stairs. So we went there [Holy Comforter], and again were able to do a lot. We started, Peter started, the parish council for the church, the Federal Credit Union, which is still a very viable part of that church. And I ran the component for the school, because I had a foster son in the school, and I could go around there during the day, once or twice a week when they played ‘bank’, and they put their money in, and had a lot of things to do.

When it was—later, I imagine, unfortunately for the people that belonged to St. Cyprian’s, they were heart-broken. Their church was sold, and they came over, and their school was sold, which also became town houses, down at Eighth and C SE. After 1971, 2, I had surgery that didn’t turn out too well [unclear]. when I got home in the winter, and St. Cyprian was not something accessible to me—Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian—and so I started attending St. Dominic’s which had a sunny one-step-in church, and by that time my daughter was going there for Sunday School at St. Dominic’s, so that was the reason for going to St. Dominic’s thereafter. And when we had to leave our home, I decided on coming here to Harbor Square where a number of parishioners from St. Dominic’s live. We’re very close to the church here.

Now, the other part of the church thing: as people left the area, were not as busy as they had been, and the Presbyterian Church on Fourth and Independence very graciously gave us space for the Capitol Hill Cooperative Nursery, which was, I think, a wonderful organization, and lots of fun. Capitol Hill Day School, which I was involved a little bit when they started, it sent the statement of its purpose, and in that statement was “a quality education for under $1,000 dollars.” That was $1,000 a year, not a month! [laughs]

Well, the economy has changed twice since then, at least twice. There was the late ’60s, the big inflation, [unclear, probably] and another further on, but it made a big difference. The Church of the Reformation on East Capitol Street provided the first home [for Capitol Hill Day School], and as they added grades, the Christ Church on G Street added the upper grades, and they were the second home. And these churches were very generous in allowing the school to start, to get strength and wings without paying the real cost of their being there. I think that—I can’t think now, I haven’t thought about the churches. Some have provided a real service for the Hill, at least in the early days of restoring the area.

BARNES: I have a question about disasters. Do you recall any particular disasters that may have had great impact on the Hill, whether that would have been fire, storms, floods, riots, demonstrations?

GLICKERT: Riots. The riots when Martin Luther King was killed. I recall looking out over my front stoop, looking up [toward] Lincoln Park, north, and seeing the smoke from H Street—black, billowing smoke. And we’re quite a ways at that point from H Street. It was really something. The main thing was how to handle it. Our daughter must have been about two then.

We decided—Peter came home and decided—that he should stay there but that I ought to go over to Virginia with Ellen, and they were telling people to fill the bathtubs with water, and there was some mob, firebombing, going in windows. Our neighbor next door, George Holton, was a wonderful neighbor. They had bought there right before we came. A black family, and I never did ask how he got the mortgage as it truly was ‘red-lined’ around there, but he had lived and raised his family; they had seven children. George and Peter sat outside, and they watched the children coming through the 11th Street alley with loot from the Kye [sp?]. George said, “Let’s go over” and he confronted—George and Peter confronted the children—and told them “Get back there, and put that milk and things back into the store,” but it was rather a waste of time once it was broken open.

However, there was on the Hill—at the time, I was on the board of Friendship House. There were people who went out to bring the young people in and make them, so that they wouldn’t be involved in stealing and fighting or any of these things. One of them was a gentleman who was on probation, and he risked his own life—P. D. Green—but he went out there and got the youngsters into Friendship House and places were they would be safe, and said, “Don’t be foolish” because there was a mob hysteria! One of them said “Come on, we’re all going here, we’re going there.” It wasn’t that it was meanness or determination—in fact, the poorer communities like H Street and upper 14th Street were the ones that suffered. However it did stir up the pyromaniacs. There were so many fires and the firemen were pelted, and it was then that thereafter the fire-trucks were built with the cab over the driver’s seat, because they were really in grave danger in those days.

I think that for me was—because it went on, it wasn’t over when the fires were put out and the looters taken care of. That has been a mark on the city all these years. In fact, H Street is even now still marked, and 14th. They’re beginning to pull that together, but what it did to the mentality of people, and also put a double sense of fear for the growth of the city. People were moving back to the city at that point, but gave it up as an option. “We will get as far away as we can.” Then when they got as far away as they could, and found out there was a rapist on the jogging trail [laughs]—you can’t get away from problems. I always felt that in the city, our problems were here, and we could see them and work with them.

BARNES: What about politics of the city? I know that over the years that has been—during the years you’ve been here you’ve seen a lot of change... Just whatever you might want to comment on about that.

GLICKERT: I’m a conservative, I guess. I used to be considered.—my views haven’t changed, but what was called a liberal is now a conservative in many things. I grew up—my grandfather died at 83. He was born in the District of Columbia; he never voted. So that was unfair, but he had the sense that he didn’t vote because he lived here. He could have moved to the suburbs, which are Maryland and Virginia, but he didn’t want to. I think the city ought to have a semi self-government and they ought to able to vote for, certainly the presidential campaign and things. I don’t know how far to go; in a voting delegate to the Congress, probably, but it is not a state, and I’m not for statehood. I broke ranks with a lot of my friends on the Hill, because it is just a city. Not ‘just,’ it is a wonderful city, and being a Federal city it is so complex. How much of the police department goes to things that are Federal? For a party at one of the embassies, extra police out. It’s so much here that’s mixed with it.

Another thing I want to say about the city. Through the years, somehow, people come here to work, especially if they are working for Congress, and they never give up their home ballot! They vote back home! I was one time trying to get a D.C. income-tax form that I needed, and I started calling my neighbors, and I was so amazed, “Oh, no, we vote back home,” and they’d been there thirty years or more in the city! It’s just—oh, I guess that’s the way it is. You still have some connection with your home and their home state politics. But that’s more so here that you would not have any other place, and I think that would affect definitely the voting picture in Washington.

Now, I want to mention that one of the fun things about 140 12th Street is that Senator Taylor lived there when he was a senator from Idaho! One day when I was looking out the front door, and I saw a thirty- year-old couple walking, looking up at our house, and I went out to ask, and it was Senator Taylor’s son. He said, “I did some of the happiest years of my life there.” So he came in with his wife, and I took them to the dining room, and I said, “That’s the room we love the most.” We have people, and you can sit at that dining room table till 11 o’clock and I think about it, just a wonderful big room for gatherings, and he talked a little bit about what it had been like there, and the people that came to the house. His father left to run for vice-president. Now, I’m fluffy on my details, but it’s something to look into for that one. Of course, he wasn’t elected. He was then Taylor’s toppers. He had patented a male wig called “Taylor’s toppers.” His son was marketing it and he had gone to New York and he brought his wife with him, and they came to Washington just to go back over old times; where he used to live and so forth.

BARNES: That’s a delightful story. Anything about sports that you remember? Baseball?

GLICKERT: The biggest sport was “back alley.” There were lots of children when we moved to Independence Avenue. A lot of children moved from Southwest when they were clearing that out. That was during this time, and they would be out in the alley playing. And 12th Street was a wonderful alley, ’cause it had a dogleg in it, and you really couldn’t ‘fly’ through. In fact, at one end the egress was not nearly hardly big enough for a car. So we put up a basketball hoop right away, before we had children, because I thought it was so much fun for them to be out there, this means they’d jump over your garage roof to come get the ball! Very disorganized.

The schools like Eastern that had been known for sports, was falling apart. The school was—the drug situation, I can say, at Hine. Hine later rose to be a very—we can be very proud of Hine Junior High and what happened to it. But at that point, I’m thinking it was—“horrible Hine” was the name given to it.

It was the soccer. Bryan—his former wife just died the past couple of years, and he called me about it. Cassidy! The Cassidys moved overlooking the park at Ninth and Eighth and Pennsylvania, and it was Bryan that first started Soccer on the Hill. It reached out; we had nothing like that, and what they had for the Day School was not.... First off, when there wasn’t any space at the Reformation Church, and the children played on the Capitol grounds! It was their playground. I always said my daughter knows where every washroom on the first floor of the Capitol was. And the guards knew them! But of course, that couldn’t be today. Closed off so much. Because I was not that involved in the sport, I don’t mean to leave others out, but I really think Bryan was the first one to just push it, and they would go and play with the children’s soccer in Alexandria and various places.

At Holy Comforter, because of our foster son, they had kind of a makeshift football team for seventh and eighth graders for the “light league.” They had to be under a hundred pounds. And what a sadness it was. We got some uniforms and helmets and they were stolen, and a fund that I raised to get more helmets. We did not want them playing without helmets, and then padding. The school was broken into, and they took them the second time, but the kids kept coming, and we kept trying to drive them out to wherever there were these little games, down on Haines Point and various places.

But it’s not what it is today. I’m sure that schools have organized teams, and I know that Soccer on the Hill became very popular. And of course we all know what happened to Sally and her Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, which just blossomed, and Peter was in theater over there. My neighbor did tap-dancing. This is something for everybody. When you mentioned the social life of the Hill, there has always been a lot because people knew each other, were friendly, on that kind of a basis. Through all of the decades, you know, the ‘60s, the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, each decade brought change, but it was always interesting. The kind of people—my neighbors were interesting because they loved city life and the same things we did. I guess the growth of the Capitol Hill Restoration Society, the history of it, will show what it’s like.

Mrs. Elsie Yost, whose home is, or maybe was, the Restoration Society office. My mom knew the Yosts very well. Two of her sisters were exceptionally close friends of my mother’s. When I moved on the Hill, Elsie and her husband took pictures of the verandas in our first home up on the Hill, up on Independence Avenue and talked about the stories. There was such continuity, because Washington, until after World War II, probably about till when we got married in the ‘60s, had not taken off to become this metropolitan area that it is today. It was pre-subway, let’s say. Folk always knew folk that were from Washington. You had some connections. If you just talked for five minutes you’d find some way to connect. Living on the Hill brought a lot of this to the fore.

Yet of course there were many more that came here from elsewhere to do it. It is always a joy. The Capitol Hill Community Council had their Labor Day Caper, where it never rained on Labor Day in the history of the District of Columbia. Putting one of these on in a school play yard was wonderful, because it’s just all these people doing things and enjoying each other. And I was kind of sad. We had Halloween in our alley; we also used to have a Labor Day gathering [unclear] in our back alley. I was saddened by the fact for some reason, these things were dying down, when both in a household were career people. It’s with children and stay-homes that you begin to make the bonds, I feel.

Of course, there are many bonds in the Restoration Society, through working on different projects. It’s fantastic to me what’s been done. We got back from our honeymoon to our place on Philadelphia Row, and Mrs. [Ruth] Lyons, who lived in a three story house up the block, called Peter, and she said “My husband Barrow had had a heart attack and had died while we were gone,” and she said, “Peter, as soon as you are able, come up here and get all the records of the 11th Street Freeway. I can’t even think about facing that now.” That’s how I first met her.

BARNES: What happened with that freeway? I know her husband was the one that was so involved in it.GLICKERT: Because it was going to take...

END OF TAPE 1/SIDE 2

TAPE 2/SIDE 1

B. GLICKERT: Getting it moved from 11th Street, the 11th Street Freeway. We went to many hearings in the District and up in Congress and fought. The “Three As” was for it. My first job had been at the American Automobile Association—the president of the local one, and I came and met him at one of the Congressional hearings and he said, “What are you doing here?” And I said, “Well, I’m on the other side of the fence. I don’t want my house to go!” Nor my neighbors from there. It would have been a real [unclear] divider on the Hill. Peter [unclear] involved than I was. I did the typing. He’d come home with these reams of notes or minutes, and say, “Here.” And one year he won the Evening Star trophy for the “Citizen of the Year,” which we were very proud of to have it in our home for that year.

[Peter Glickert arrived home at this point and is heard in the background.]

B. GLICKERT: [continuing] Mr. Au was an inventor, and my family can talk about the wonderful Christmas tree with the big garden that he made, with waterfalls and everything. And I remember Mrs. Au, when I was a little girl coming, because she wore—her husband had her dress an for an era of cotton stockings and long skirts, because he was very strict. Now the Aus—I think there was someone that was interviewed not long ago from that family. And other people along there. It gave me a sense of continuity in my life and their life, since I mentioned my mom, although I’ve not made any progress in making [sorting through notes]. She would put her own notes—having been born right after the turn of the century, and marching for the vote, and going to law school when they referred to them as “lady lawyers.” Her experiences in this city were so different than they are in the latter half of the century. I have just wonderful memories, as much as they can get [in the way of interviews?] for each house would be great. There are so many houses with stories to tell.

BARNES: Yes. I guess the last question is...

B. GLICKERT: And you know what we did with the 12th Street house? The first thing we did was find a contractor who put a chimney up through the middle of the house, and we had fireplaces on all three floors.

BARNES: Oh, you didn’t! [laughs]B. GLICKERT: A house without a fireplace? And my mom laughed, and she said we couldn’t get rid of

those dirty things fast enough.

BARNES: Was there anything you didn’t like about the Hill? Or living on Capitol Hill?

B. GLICKERT: Well, there was everywhere contention, sometimes. People all had their own ideas— there was a lot of contention and fights about things, but they seemed to all end up pretty well. The fact that people still refer to friends of forty-some years—the first people I met on the Hill are, that has something to say for it. I just say that I’m so sorry—what I didn’t like was things we lost. I thought there was room for a good hospital on this side of the world. Not having to go out...

P. GLICKERT: [from background] There were two hospitals [unclear]: Providence Hospital and [unclear] down there.

B. GLICKERT: Oh, yeah, well that was already moved. My niece was born in the old Providence, and then they moved out to Northeast. But the Capitol Hill—the Casualty Hospital became Capitol Hill—very sorry for that. I know people who had emergencies—one was Mimi [Wolf], she may not have made it if they had to go further with her asthma. Gradually my dreams are becoming true. I see that Eck—I can’t think of her first name [ed: Barbara Eck], but I met her back in the days of the Co-op when we were buying cheese down in Southwest, and things like that for the Co-op—she and [Restoration Society], they’re working on the Naval Hospital. I had thought it would make a beautiful home to the Mayor. But the mayor is as subject as anybody else to going out to Foxhall Road. Let him have it. Got a lot of traffic, and the neighbors on Foxhall Road just hardly know each other.

BARNES: That isn’t true on the Hill.

B. GLICKERT: That’s right. I’d rather live on the Hill than Foxhall Road.

BARNES: Well, Bette. I thank you so much, and I am going to ask Peter particularly about Mrs. Lyons.

Peter, when we start here I just wanted you to reflect on Mrs. Lyons and her husband, and the work they did on that freeway project.

P. GLICKERT: [now with a microphone.] Mrs. Lyons and her husband—I don’t know how long they’d been living in Philadelphia Row before we came along. It seemed to me that I never really talked to him very much, ’cause we never really had anything in common to talk about except this freeway, which was threatening to both of us. Mrs. Lyons, of course, after he died, I saw her a lot and asked her about it, and he had started protesting the freeway. It was called the East Leg of the Inner Loop. I was a little impatient that he wasn’t being more active about it. I think he didn’t do things in that way; he did things in a more dignified way, that’s what it is, than I would... Then when he died—nobody else was working on it at all but him and me, as far as I know. And then Dexter Anderson—has his name been brought up? OK—who was living down in Philadelphia Row, got involved. I needed to do everything that I could that the freeway shouldn’t go through there. And at this point I can’t really give that logical or rational reasons why. I guess it was just “my home and you stay out of it” and this and that, but maybe some of it was because my mother-in-law—Bette’s mother—her house was threatened by Route 66 in Arlington. She did lose her house, where I saved ours. [Laughs] So maybe that was to show her...

But anyway, nobody else seemed to be very worked up about this until I got them worked up. It was mainly—and, I don’t know, I imagine it’s defunct at this point—an association called the Capitol Hill Southeast Citizens’ Association that gave me the greatest support and paid for what expenses I had for mimeographing statements and that sort of thing. I never did actually bring it up to the Restoration Society. Because I was sure that the Restoration Society at that time was dominated by real estate people. And I know that the real estate people felt that a freeway through 11th Street was just what the Hill needed, real estate-wise, ’cause then it would define a much smaller area, comparable to Foggy Bottom. Therefore, it was more likely to make for a better real estate climate on what there was left of the Hill.

Anyway, ordinary people, I think, agreed with me, but there’s plenty of snobbery. There still is over there—plenty of snobbishness. And the snobs all felt that anything worthwhile was nearer to the Capitol than 11th Street is, and the only stuff really worth saving was that. And as a matter of fact, a lot of them considered that Eighth Street was as far as the Hill goes, or should go. So anyway, it got well-known, and we did all kinds of stunts to publicize it. The most spectacular thing we did was, we had a protest demonstration in front of Eastern Market on a day that Independence Avenue was full of traffic going to the stadium. We had a stuffed—we found a suit and stuffed it, and called it the engineering commissioner, ’cause at that time, that was the form of government, was this three-head, you know, the three engineers, before there was this sort of mayor that we have now. We did this, and there was a lot of fun. Dexter and I had a lot of fun doing that, but the police made us take it down, and we did, but at least, you know, we got a little publicity. I think maybe they mentioned it in the paper the next day.

B. GLICKERT: With a picture.

P. GLICKERT: Was there a picture, too?

BARNES: And there was a picture in the paper?

P. GLICKERT: I guess in the Post, yeah.

BARNES: Oh, that’s terrific!

B. GLICKERT: [in the background] We all drove the wrong way. After the football game they turned the traffic around...

P. GLICKERT: Oh, yeah.

BARNES: Oh, after the football game?

P. GLICKERT: They’d have Independence Avenue going in the other direction. Having it go west.

BARNES: Oh, they don’t do that. They don’t do that any more.

P. GLICKERT: No, they did that on a lot of streets in the District for rush hour, like 13th Street NW was one-way southbound during the morning rush, one-way northbound during the evening rush.

B. GLICKERT: A lot of us drove east-bound after the game, causing traffic jams.

P. GLICKERT: So, anyway, it was kind of kicky and kind of fun, but what it did was... And the real way that the freeway got eliminated, I made statements, wrote them, and mimeographed them up and stuff, and presented them to... Well, there are six budget hearings every year, with the Congressional committees that had something to say about it—the District budget hearings and that sort of thing. And so I prepared a statement. One of the things we did was present an alternative to the 11th Street proposal, and that was a route along the river that they’ve just been making a stink about. That comes up every once in a while. A route along the river, and with changing times, a parkland, even though it’s just a swamp nobody uses, is a more precious topic to deal with. Anyway, it never did come through, as you know.

What happened about the 11th Street route: well, they changed it when they found out that Philadelphia Row was “hysterical,” [sic] and lots of the other stuff around was hysterical. They moved the proposed route to between Tenth and 11th instead of half the block of 11th to 12th. They proposed taking the whole block, Tenth to 11th. But we still [unclear; probably: ranted and hollered] about hysterical this and that. The thing that finally capped it was that... Now, what’s the woman reporter’s name?

B. GLICKERT: May Craig. She lived on North Carolina.P. GLICKERT: OK.B. GLICKERT: About half a block from Eastern Market.P. GLICKERT: May Craig. Was a White House...?

B. GLICKERT: Had a distinctive voice.

P. GLICKERT: ...White House correspondent for somebody or other, some national news service, or some big out-of-town paper, and at least I made enough noise that she knew about this freeway. Maybe she went to the Southeast Citizens once in a while. The proposal was well known. And she brought it up at John F. Kennedy’s first press conference, which was televised nationally. She brought it up. She said, “What about this freeway they’re going put through Philadelphia Row and Lincoln Park? It’s historical; all these historical homes will be destroyed.” And he said, “Oh, I was unaware of that, Miss Craig. I’ll look into it.” And, the next thing you know—at that time, Jacqueline Kennedy was going on about this. “Oh, hysterical this, hysterical that. We’re going to be hysterical in the White House. You know, get all the same furniture we had 200 years ago.” Well that was the last. Kennedy told them to stop the freeway.

BARNES: By Presidential edict!

P. GLICKERT: Yeah, sort of. It was a miracle, but I’d been praying for a miracle. And so many people told me you can’t fight City Hall.

page 21

BARNES: But you did.

P. GLICKERT: But I did, and it worked!

BARNES: I think that’s fabulous.

B. GLICKERT: [unclear] Bill Finley.

P. GLICKERT: California Bill Finley. Well, he moved away. He was director of the National Capitol Planning Commission.

BARNES: Bill Finley?P. GLICKERT: William Finley, yeah. After that freeway thing was abandoned, he went to Columbia—

Rouse’s place, the new city of Columbia [Maryland] that they were building.

B. GLICKERT: And he made a statement when Peter got up challenging him, and he said “Mr. Glickert, the 11th Street freeway is”—remember?

P. GLICKERT: He said it’s a fait accompli?B. GLICKERT: It’s inevitable. In other words, why keep bringing this question up? I remember he said

that very loudly in speaking from the podium: “The 11th Street freeway is inevitable.”

P. GLICKERT: But that was the way they looked on freeways in those days. And as far as I know, this was the first Interstate freeway to be, you know, really abandoned. And that was to be ‘95’, who was the Central Leg to be ’95.’

BARNES: Oh, the Central Leg was to be ‘95’.

P. GLICKERT: Central Leg was to be ‘95’.

BARNES: And that actually took place... Do you remember the year? It was Kennedy, so that would be...

P. GLICKERT: So it was the first... ’63. He was elected in ’62, so that was a long time ago now, 40 years ago. [ed: Kennedy was elected in 1960 and took office in 1961.]

BARNES: So it never raised its ugly head again?P. GLICKERT: Except in the form of—hey called it at one point the Barney Circle Project, various

other aspects. It’s been raised. But the citizens have beaten it down every time.

BARNES: Well, I thank you for that, and I know that Mr. Wolf will be really happy to...

P. GLICKERT: Oh, Dick knows about it.

B. GLICKERT: Early on, the Wolfs [unclear]

P. GLICKERT: Oh, Dick gives me the credit for the whole thing now, at this point.

BARNES: Yes he does, he really does.

B. GLICKERT: Peter kept files, but see... But it’s true, it was an area without any clout, and the Restoration Society [static, while the microphone is being moved to Bette Glickert uses a microphone] is sort of a—not a civic group, but a group for the halt—for the houses...

P. GLICKERT: The snob appeal. [Laughs]

B. GLICKERT: No. The housing and the streets, things like that. There wasn’t a great deal of interest with questions came about schools and things like that. But they eventually became the ones that stayed in there and [unclear] and the other groups fell by the wayside.

BARNES: Well, this has been a great interview and some wonderful information, and I’m sure they’re going to want me to come back [laughs] but I don’t know that Bette can go through this, much more of it, but anyway, it’s been...

P. GLICKERT: One of the other things that are interesting about those days is that we all cursed Urban Renewal, and how it tore down all of the good housing, and nice people, drove them away, down here, and here we are, living in the fruits of it [in Southwest Washington]. But this is a nice [laughs], an awfully nice apartment! We didn’t have anything like this in Washington before that Urban Renewal [unclear].

B. GLICKERT: It was terrible. After they were replacing most of people; they started doing a block by block hunt on the Hill for the overcrowding situation. The poor people didn’t have a place to go from Southwest. We had a little boy down on 11th Street moved in with family. He was wonderful; he picked up trash every day for a nickel that was on the street, and he’d help Peter do the gardening. But when the inspector came to the Philadelphia Row house, and I met him there, and he said, “Now who lives here?” And I said, “My husband and I.” He couldn’t believe that that whole three-story house was just occupied by my husband and myself. He got laughing and started telling me stories about the overcrowding, which had first started on Philadelphia Row rooming houses during World War II. There was a great shortage of rental property, rooms and stuff, and when the Navy Yard was in full tilt during World War II, a lot of crowding happened in our neighborhood in Southeast Washington.

P. GLICKERT: Oh, they allowed it. They needed housing for the workers from the Navy Yard. The reason why I know that—isn’t that one block on Pennsylvania Avenue still has three liquor stores on it?

BARNES: And that was a result of...

P. GLICKERT: Southwest!

BARNES: Of people moving out of Southwest.

P. GLICKERT: Of liquor stores moving out of Southwest.

BARNES: Liquor stores moving out, and to the Hill.

P. GLICKERT: [affirmative]

B. GLICKERT: You do know, and I don’t know where they are now, but, it was the first [unclear] of the White House, Lorraine Pearce. The Pearces lived—are you getting information?

P. GLICKERT: I think it was at 112.

B. GLICKERT: The Pearces lived not at Philadelphia Row, but the end of Philadelphia Row. Did you say it was 112?

P. GLICKERT: Maybe it was 112, I don’t know. That’s spelled P-e-a-r-c-e.

B. GLICKERT: Jacqueline Kennedy invited Lorraine Pearce to be the first curator...

P. GLICKERT: Curator of the White House.

BARNES: OK, and we’re going to stop here.

END OF INTERVIEW [approximately 60% through Tape 2/Side1]