The DC Streetcar will start carrying passengers on Saturday, but that won’t be the first time we’ve seen a streetcar’s opening day. DC’s first streetcar system opened in the middle of the Civil War after taking only six months to build. It ran horse-drawn streetcars along Pennsylvania Avenue, and was an instant hit.

An early streetcar passes the Treasury. All images from antique stereoviews in the author’s collection.

I recently wrote about the 100-year history of streetcars in the District in my book, Capital Streetcars: Early Mass Transit in Washington, DC. Like my recent post about how streetcars shaped DC’s Eckington neighborhood, the following has been adapted from the book.

In the early 1850s, omnibuses—rickety stagecoach-like wagons that could hold maybe a dozen riders—were the only “mass transit” available in Washington. As early as 1852, Gilbert Vanderwerken, an ambitious businessman who owned the city’s omnibus company, petitioned Congress for the right to establish the city’s first streetcar system, running from Georgetown to Capitol Hill, but it didn’t have the political backing to make it through Congress.

Meanwhile, other cities rapidly built streetcar systems: Brooklyn in 1853, Boston in 1856, Philadelphia in 1858, and Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Cincinnati in 1859. Finally, in May 1862—one year into the Civil War and ten years after streetcars had first been proposed—Congress agreed to one in DC, passing a law incorporating the Washington & Georgetown Railroad.

The project had a very tight timeline

The charter specified three lines: an east-west route along Pennsylvania Avenue from Georgetown to the Navy Yard; a north-south route along Seventh Street from Boundary Street (Florida Avenue NW) to the Seventh Street wharves in Southwest; and another north-south route along Fourteenth Street from Boundary Street to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Although Congress had dawdled on authorizing the railway, it required the new company to put the first segment of its line into operation within 60 working days of incorporation—an astonishingly short timespan considering that a war was on and no cars, ties, rails, or other materiel were on hand. Nevertheless, luck was on the side of the fledgling railway. Construction began within a few weeks; rails were ordered and arrived in time for a crew of 40 to begin laying them in June 1862.

Original streetcar tracks on Pennsylvania Avenue, circa 1869.

By early July, the first stretch of track, from the Capitol to the State Department building on Fifteenth Street, was nearly done. “This great and inappreciable comfort and convenience, so long desired and so often defeated, has been…completed with great promptitude,” the National Intelligencer exulted.

The first two cars for the new railway arrived from the manufacturer on July 11th. They were elegant pieces of craftsmanship intended to entice well-to-do riders who had no previous experience of public transportation. The Evening Star described them in detail: “The seats on the sides are covered with fine silk velvet, and the windows, which are stained and plain glass combined, are furnished with cherry sash and poplar blinds, beside handsome damask curtains. The top of the car is rounded, permitting persons to stand upright without inconvenience, and rods to which loops are attached, are run from end to end.”

The Star also described a festive nighttime test run: “The cars were put on the track last night, and at 11 o’clock run up [Pennsylvania Avenue] as far as Willard’s [Hotel], having on board a number of gentlemen, cheering loudly as they passed up and being greeted with cheers from the few persons on the street at that hour.”

An operating streetcar system shaped up over the course of a summer

July 29th marked the first day of public operation. The company had ten cars by then, all typical streetcars of the day, pulled by two horses with a driver standing on a platform in front and an enclosed passenger compartment that could comfortably seat twenty. A conductor, usually stationed on the rear platform, collected fares. On opening day the cars were packed, at times with as many as forty eager passengers.

The first car was “crowded almost to suffocation” and screeched to a halt at the curve from Pennsylvania Avenue on to Fifteenth Street. An extra horse was added, and the car kept rolling. The Star wrote admiringly that “The cars in use are handsome and commodious, and the smoothness with which they glide along affords an agreeable change from the rough jolting over the pavements experienced in other modes of vehicular conveyance” (referring to the old omnibuses that the streetcars were replacing). The Star’s enthusiastic reporter concluded with a wistful “Farewell, old bus, you’re nigh played out.”

In August the new line was extended to Georgetown, where the old Vanderwerken omnibus stables were located. By early October the complete line from Georgetown to the Navy Yard was in operation. The two north-south lines on Seventh and Fourteenth Streets entered service shortly thereafter, completing the entire system in less than six months.

In October, with all three lines nearly finished, the company’s directors donated twenty old omnibuses to the army for use as ambulances. They were much needed for the war effort and apparently served that purpose well.

A horse-drawn streetcar poses in front of the Capitol.

People loved riding the streetcar

Praise for the new streetcars ran high as Washingtonians began shaping their daily routines around them. People from all walks of life took to the new form of transport. “I rode all the way from Georgetown. What a blessing & a comfort,” wrote Martha Custis Williams, the great great granddaughter of Martha Washington, who lived at Georgetown’s stately Tudor Place mansion.

In July 1863, The National Intelligencer commented on the Seventh Street line, which had opened nine months earlier: “We cannot help admiring the regularity with which the cars on this road now run. There is no detention to passengers whatsoever. The energy manifested by the gentlemanly conductors meets the approbation of everyone who rides them. We cannot help speaking of the politeness of Conductor Steptoe T. Tune. His obliging manners and amiability give him the praise of all who chance in his car.”

Once fully operational, the Washington & Georgetown Railroad scheduled cars to arrive on a five-minute headway and charged a five-cent fare with a free transfer between routes. The company had a total of 70 cars and 490 horses, the horses wearing bells tied to their harnesses to alert pedestrians that a car was coming. The railway’s original routes would remain the core of the city’s streetcar network throughout its one-hundred-year history and are still echoed in the Route 30 Metrobuses that operate today.

John DeFerrari is a native Washingtonian with a lifelong passion for local history and writes about it for his blog, Streets Of Washington. His latest book about DC history is Capital Streetcars: Early Mass Transit in Washington, DC. John is also a trustee of the DC Preservation League. The views expressed here are his own.