More on Murder Bay

I received a fantastic email from Dave, who is doing research on this era and found some juicy details about the picture of C Street in Murder Bay: “In the middle of this picture are three buildings with a white facade, 1207-1211 C Street, known as the ‘Dutch Corral’ operated by a Swiss woman named Maria Egli from 1870 to 1888. (At that time the adjective ‘Dutch’ was used indifferently for Dutch, Germans, Swiss, Austrians and sometimes Scandinavians as well.) As you can imagine, all sorts of naughty business went on there.”

CRIMINAL COURT – Judge Olin.  National Republican, Sept. 8, 1871

Mary Eckler, on appeal from the Police Court, for keeping a bawdy-house.

In this case the prosecution first called Officer Vernon, who testified that he knows Mary Eckler. She keeps houses 1207, 1209 and 1211 C street, between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets northwest. It is called the “Dutch Corral. She lives there still, and has lived there for several years. A number of women live there. The reputation of these women for chastity is very bad; it is that of prostitutes. Had seen men going in there at all hours of the day and night till 4 o’clock in the morning. Defendant had told witness that the house was her house and the women her women; that she had told them she had told her women to keep within doors.

 

Taken Insane to St. Elizabeth’s.  Washington Post, Dec. 23, 1888

Mary Egli, “Dutch Mary,” the keeper of a house of unsavory character at Twelfth and C streets, has become insane and was yesterday removed to St. Elizabeth’s a raving maniac. Her house, known from one end of the country to the other, was a famously infamous place during the war. The place was a mine of wealth to its proprietress, and she is now, perhaps, the richest woman of her class in the city.

She is very old and has for some time exhibited symptoms of insanity. For the last few days she has been growing more violent, and yesterday she was committed to St. Elizabeth’s.

 

Radio Time: Meet Me Down in Pipetown

Listen up!

the location is featured every month on Metro Connection, a local news magazine show on Washington, D.C.’s NPR station, WAMU 88.5.  In each segment (also called the location), I talk about a different D.C. location that has some kind of interesting or offbeat history. I also have a theme song!

Tune in this Friday, March 23 at 1pm or Saturday, March 24 at 7am.

You’ve heard of Farragut North, Mount Pleasant, and Foggy Bottom.  But what about Pipetown, Hell’s Bottom, or Bloodfield?  These were the names of real D.C. neighborhoods that existed in the decades following the Civil War. Find out what these areas were like and more on in this week’s segment.

If you live outside the area or don’t have access to a radio, you can listen to the show HERE.

To read the original blog post that inspired this week’s show, click HERE.

Hooker’s Division

A great hand-drawn map of Hooker’s Division from the Library of Congress:

The territory indicated from the accompanying diagram is in Washington, D.C. and is known as “Hooker’s Division.” During the Civil War it was occupied by the camp of General Joe Hooker’s troops in their defense of Washington.  Since then it has become the plague spot of Washington, a center of vice, liquor-selling, and prostitution, such as is characteristic of all High-License cities.  It is in the very heart of the city, extending along Pennsylvania avenue to the United States treasury. The four daily papers of the city, Post, Star, Times, and News, are published in this territory. Within its borders are the lending banks, opera-houses, and hotels.

This district alone contains 100 regular houses of prostitution, exclusive of assignation houses, 31 of which are in the single block surrounded by C, D, 13^th and 13 ½ streets northwest. Besides this there are an even 50 saloons, most of them run directly in connection with bawdy-houses.

Each one of these 100 houses of prostitution sells liquors openly and freely every day, and not a single one pays the $400 local license. There are 61 bawdy-houses in this district which hold Federal permits, while the other 48 pay no license whatever.

Grover Cleveland can sit in his bedroom window at the White House and survey this entire territory. He is within sight and gunshot  of each of these 169 dens which defy the laws which he is supposed to execute through his commissioners. The following is a list of 61 persons in this district and their addresses who are selling liquor under Federal permits and who do not pay the $400 High-License:…

Meet Me Down in Pipetown

By now, most Washingtonians have heard of Swampoodle, the historic Irish neighborhood that was destroyed by the construction of Union Station.  But what about The Island?  Pipetown?  Bloody Hill and Bloodfield (“the ancient feudal ground of the southwest”)?  These were all names of Washington, D.C. neighborhoods during the decades of the 1800′s following the end of the Civil War.

Post-war D.C. was a rough place.  According to one government official interviewed in the Post in 1902, “Washington passed through its period of lawlessness and disorder fully as bad, if not worse, than that which prevailed in Cripple Creek, Colo. or Tombstone, Ariz.”

…Small fields of corn and cabbage gardens were scattered  about everywhere, many of them within a stone’s throw of the Capitol, while cows had the run of the town from Georgetown to Anacostia Creek, grazing on the pavements, breaking into front yards, disturbing the slumbers of the citizens by their incessant lowing, and making themselves generally obnoxious.  I recollect there use to be a brick yard at Ninth and O streets northwest and not far distant was a cornfield inclosed [sic] by a stake and rider fence…

The war had ended, leaving stranded in this city a vast horde of enfranchised slaves, discharged soldiers, and a cloud of riffraff, bummers, and camp followers…and their arrival soon made this city one of the most disorderly places in America.  Fights, murders, stabbing, and shooting scrapes were of daily occurrence…

The neighborhoods with the most infamous conditions had nicknames that were never shown on any official plat.  But the Washington Post put together this amazing map on its 50 anniversary to show the neighborhoods that existed when the paper was founded in 1877.

Map of Washington as the city appeared in 1877 when the Post was founded...The old nicknames for various portions of the city also are shown. Photo by historic Washington Post.

Hell’s Bottom, a former “contraband camp” extending irregularly from 7th to 14th Streets NW, and from O Street to the Boundary (i.e. Florida Avenue), was one of the most notorious sections of the city.  Living conditions were poor and crime was high. According to a Post article from 1897, some Hell’s Bottom residents lived in shanties the size of a “hall-room”, with roofs so low that an average person could only stand upright on one side. These homes, which could house up to 3 families, were of “the rudest possible construction, few having any sashes in the window aperture, a board shutter closing out the cold winds, light and ventilation together, when shut.  The only salvation from suffocation lies in the gaping cracks existing round the doors and windows, without which many a family would doubtless be found dead in the morning of cold nights.”

Keith Sutherland, an old Hell’s Bottom inhabitant, said this about the neighborhood in a 1900 Post article: “‘Money was scarce and whisky [sic] was cheap –- a certain sort of whisky –- and the combination resulted in giving the place the name which it held for so many years. The police force was small. There was no police court, and the magistrates before whom offenders were brought rarely fixed the penalty at more than $2. Crime and lawlessness grew terribly, and a man had to fight, whenever he went into the ‘Bottom.’”  The police were unable to control the crime and violence in Hell’s Bottom, and so in 1891, the city refused to renew any of the neighborhood’s liquor licenses.  It was this act that finally led to the neighborhood’s improvement.

Murder Bay: The area east of the White House across Pennsylvania Avenue was known for its brothels, gambling, and crime.  It was sometimes called “Hooker’s Division” (see the great comments on THIS post for more details).

The "red light district" known as Murder Bay at the corner of C Street NW and 13th Street NW, April 1912. Griffin Veatch, a "night messenger" or child laborer who directed customers to brothels, is leaning against the tree at left. Photograph by Lewis W. Hine for the U.S. National Child Labor Committee.

White Chapel: A dirty alley between 24th and 25th Streets, and M and N Streets, NW.  During the 1880′s, there was almost constant warfare between the residents of this area and the police.

Pipetown: East of 11th Street SE to the Anacostia River, this neighborhood was made famous by Pipetown Sandy (1905), John Philip Sousa’s semi-autobiographical young adult novel about the neighborhood where he grew up.  Pipetown was described in one Post article as “a community of extensive commons, of ash dumps, of tumble-down houses and shacks of nondescript architecture, a place where goats browsed among the tomato cans and the travelling fair pitched its weather-beaten tent.”

Bloodfield: This neighborhood was “a vague name for the entire region around the James Creek Canal” (which started near 2nd Street SW at Buzzard’s Point), and one of the most dangerous and notorious slums in the city.  Arrest attempts by police (who would only walk their beat in pairs) resulted in injury or worse to the officer or the resident:

Policeman Muller was attracted to the Shears house by the shooting, and when he arrived there he found Shears lying dead on the floor of the kitchen having been shot in the left temple.  Curry was covered with blood from head to foot and gave evidence of having had a terrible struggle.  His badge was smeared with blood and his coat was saturated with it.

Brothels, illegal speakeasies, and tough characters filled the neighborhood:

A steel corset stay, pointed and sharpened into a dangerous weapon, was used in an affray early yesterday evening…

Sergt. Daley, of the Fourth Precinct, was abroad in Bloodfield with his raiding clothes on last night, and, as a result, a number of alleged disorderly houses were closed up…

As the city and police force grew, the neighborhood calmed, but it retained its name up to the 20′s.

Cowtown: A neighborhood located north of Hell’s Bottom and west of 7th Street, NW.

The Island: This swath of land south of the Mall was so-called because it was cut off from the rest of mainland D.C. by the canal.

I’d much rather live in Hell’s Bottom than Logan Circle, wouldn’t you?

___

This article is cross-posted on Greater Greater Washington.

An Ode to George

Beware: This clip is inappropriate and completely historically inaccurate.

But I love it.

Update: A River of Slime

After I published the winding tale of the Tiber Creek turned Washington City Canal turned “River of Slime”/Constitution Avenue, I got some very interesting comments and letters.  Some corrected details of the story (i.e. I was reminded to clarify that Adolph Cluss was more than “a young German immigrant engineer”).  I was also given some very fascinating additional information.  Specifically, I learned that the original outlet to Boss Shepard/Cluss’s sewer was uncovered in an archaeological dig JUST LAST MONTH…

When I taped my most recent WAMU radio segment with Rebecca Sheir a few weeks ago, we noticed a construction site just south of the Lockkeeper’s House. This, the 17^th Street Levee Project, is an effort of national and local agencies to modernize the mall’s levee system that dates to the late 1930’s, and to hold off flooding from the Potomac.

Last month, as part of the project, workers uncovered the original outlet to Shepard & Cluss’s “tunnel of slime” – this is the sewer they had created to bury the Washington City Canal and form today’s Constitution Avenue.

The historic sewer uncovered at the original Potomac River waterline. Notice the Lockkeeper's House in the rear of the photo.

To comply with the National Preservation Act, the agencies performed archaeology on the historic outlet, took the structure apart, and set aside the stones. The excavation did not reach the bottom of the structure, which had an interior diameter of 24 feet.  The sewer was bone dry and in perfect condition.  This is likely the same arch shown in the engraved illustration of the flushing gates that you can see in my original blog post:

Shepard’s sewer outlet was probably closed during the 1930’s when the city’s sewer system was modernized or when the modern mall was completed and the river line changed.