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History

Lost Washington: Good Hope Road’s German orphanage

by John Muller   •   December 28, 2011 2:35 pm

Good Hope Road SE, one of East Washington's historic thoroughfares, has been home to many places now forgotten. While still a pastoral area the arterial road hosted, from the late 1800s into the 1960s, an orphanage for children of German ancestry, one such place with an obscured memory.

German Orphan Asylum on Good Hope Road SE. Photo from Historical Society of Washington.

Too rural for street addresses, the German Orphan Asylum at 2300 Good Hope Road wasn't given an address until 1945. It first opened its doors in August 1880. Today, the Marbury Plaza apartment complex looms over Good Hope Road where the orphanage previously stood.

"In the second half of the nineteenth century, Washington's native-born and immigrant German population was significant in numbers," writes Mona E. Dingle in 1996's Urban Odyssey, A Multicultural History of Washington, DC. At their peak presence, Germans represented 10% of the city's population, significantly less than Chicago and Baltimore where nearly one-quarter of city residents were of German ancestry.

With an increase in the city's German population, a concern emerged to care "for orphans and the aged." In 1879 parishioners of Concordia German Evangelical Lutheran Church at 20th & G Street NW began to raise money for an asylum for needy German orphans. With financial support from leaders within the city's established and emerging German American community, the "German Protestant Orphan Asylum Association of the District of Columbia" was incorporated with a twenty year charter from Congress. The Protestant designation was later stricken from the title to allow admission of children of other religions and eventually non-German children were accepted.

"Admission requirements, based on race and age, stipulated that a child must be of the white race … at least three (3) years old but not over eleven (11) years,'" according to Louise Daniel Hutchinson's seminal 1977 work, The Anacostia Story: 1608-1930. These restrictions were relaxed in later years.

Before the turn of the century, the German Orphan Asylum was one of the first institutions built for the care and welfare of children in Anacostia, but other charitable efforts soon followed. The Stoddard Baptist Home for "colored elderly and indigent women" was founded in the Garfield community near Hamilton Road, present-day Alabama Avenue. In 1904 the Episcopal Diocese expanded its work to provide "for winter service to homeless children at Anacostia, D.C." according to Hutchinson.

Local beer manufacturer Christian Heurich, known for his popular "Senate" beer, was one of the earliest benefactors of the German orphanage. Later contributors included local department store owner Julius Garfinckel.

Simon Wolf, a German Jewish immigrant and successful lawyer, assisted the orphanage, with funding from Congress, in purchasing the 32-acre Good Hope Hill Farm from Captain Samuel G. and Flora Cabell in what is today the Fairlawn neighborhood. With the help of Wolf and friends of the asylum, a new brick building was constructed and dedicated in October 1890. The asylum had formerly occupied space in downtown Washington.

Photo from Historical Society of Washington.

"The new two-story home, perched on top of Good Hope Hill measured 52 feet x 100 feet, and was designed to accommodate up to 80 children," according to, "To Help A Child: The History of the German Orphan Home," an article in the 2006 edition of Washington History by local historian Anna Watkins.

According to Census records from 1900, the orphanage had 52 "inmates" and was run by the Henry and Elizabeth Harrold along with their four daughters and one son.

The board of directors controlled the admission and release of the children, and selected their schools until they reached the age of about 14. The youngsters were then placed in carefully surveyed homes where they worked as household help or nannies, or were assigned as an apprentice to a trade or profession. The board retained responsibility for the children until they reached legal adulthood. The older adolescents attended public school in Anacostia, while the younger ones prepared for school at the asylum.

The orphanage taught, studied, and used both German and English. Due to the national mood during World War I, the board decreed in 1918 that use of the English language would take precedent "because we must show ourselves thoroughly patriotic and loyal; we are American in every sense of the word and proud of it." During this time the American flag was raised daily on the main building. However, in 1929, when an illustrated 50th anniversary history book was published, it was done so in both languages.

The Orphanage's relocation

With the growth and development of Washington following World War II the neighborhood dynamics around the orphanage began to change.

1959 Plate Map. Photo from DCPL Washingtoniana Division.

"Increasingly developed with housing and institutions, the area was no longer conducive to having children do farm chores as heavy traffic sped down the hill bordering the property," according to Watkins. Long-time Superintendent George Christman "noticed that more people were walking across the home's grounds. Some ran dogs on the property, teenagers had parties and played games there displaying loud and annoying behavior, and drunks used the front steps to take a rest."

With the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 and other factors, such as the construction of the Barry Farm housing development and urban renewal of the SW waterfront, the demographics of the surrounding neighborhoods began to shift. Herein the orphans began to face difficulties in the neighborhood schools.

The board began to consider relocating and selling their property on Good Hope Road. In early 1964, developer Charles Smith offered to rent the property for 99 years at a price that allowed the orphanage to relocate. The Smith Company would later demolish the facilities and build the present-day apartment complex Marbury Plaza.

Soon thereafter the directors of the orphanage purchased a large parcel of land in Prince George's County, opening a new home on Melwood Road in Upper Marlboro, Maryland in 1965. In December 1978, at the end of the semester, the orphanage closed to its last student.

Pedestrians

Sex and the City: why women and families matter

by Lynda Laughlin   •   February 20, 2009 12:58 pm

A recent study at Cambridge University says that urban development projects tend to cater to men. Poor transit systems and lack of schools and daycare near workplaces, it found, restrict women's ability to balance work and family. How do cities in the United States cater to men and women? In particular, does the physical, social, and economic structure of the DC metropolitan area disadvantage women?

Moms in NYC. Photo by skeddy in NYC on Flickr.

According the 2007 American Community Survey, there are approximately 1.9 million households in the DC metro area. Family households (defined as households with a children under the age of 18) account for 32 percent. Single mother households make up 7 percent. Sixty-eight percent of married couple households with children under 18 have two working parents, and face similar challenges to single mother households.

With the increase in the number of working women over the past four decades, important services women once performed in the privacy of the home have moved into the public arena. Many more families now purchase services such as preparation of meals, laundry, and housecleaning. Child care was once primarily a private responsibility, but is now a critical service for working mothers. The majority of working mothers in the 1960s depended on relatives or neighborhood care. By 2005, a little over a third of working mothers with children ages five and under used organized child care facilities, such child care centers, nursery homes, or Head Start programs.

Many mothers face severe day-to-day space-time constraints as they try to balance new and changing roles in a static urban form. Residents in the DC metro area have some of the longest commute times in the nation. The average one-way commute time between work and home for the DC metro area is 33 minutes, compared to a national average of 25 minutes. Recent data from the American Community Survey reveals that for men, the average one-way commute to work is 35 minutes. Women had a slightly shorter commute at 32 minutes. Two thirds of men and women reported commuting to work by car. Approximately equal percentages of men and women report commuting to work by public transportation (13 percent and 15 percent, respectively).

However, this information tells us little about men's and women's activities during the commute. Working mothers are more likely to drop off and pickup children from child care, increasing a mothers' total commute between work and home by 28 percent. The journey to child care can be more difficult for mothers who rely on public transportation, increasing their commute time and the need to navigate a maze of transportation routes and schedules.

As women continue to join the labor force, urban planners should consider the role of gender in urban planning practices and the outcomes for families. Questions and issues include:

1. Do women have tighter time budgets then men and would they be more willing to change residential or work locations to save time?

   Recent findings from the American Housing Survey indicate that the distance between home and work for women is increasing faster than their commute durations, compared to men. In the current economic downturn, men are losing their jobs at a faster rate than women, meaning that women may surpass men in the labor force. Men may in turn take more duties in the household, freeing up time for women and may again influence choices about where to live and work.

2. Should child care be provided cooperatively in small neighborhood complexes, regional shopping centers, or at work locations (i.e. the office)?

   Several federal agencies in the DC metro area offer on site child care, making the commute to work more convenient for mothers and fathers. Child care facilities are good for economic development as well. Availability of child care helps parents work, but they also provide employment opportunities and can make a community more desirable if there are additional services for children that parents need and want.

3. What services could be provided to aid families to bridge the gap between work and families needs?

   One suggestion would be to produce a map that shows the location of child care providers as well as public transportation routes.

4. Will Americans change the currently-dominant desire to live in a single-family house? How can alternative forms of housing (such as communal living) aid working families?

   The conventional home serves women and families badly when there access to transportation and services are limited. Also, the bigger the home, the more time it takes to clean it, which further isolates women. Feminist urban developers have long argued that women and families would benefit more from housing developed around community spaces and services that are within walking distance. That would free up more time for families to create social networks.

   Locally, Greenbelt, Maryland was developed as a public cooperative community during the 1930s, built with New Deal money. Greenbelt arranged homes in clusters, with a system of interior walkways to connect residents to courtyards, shops, schools, and community buildings. Will the new economic stimulus package encourage us to once again build more creative and beneficial living spaces?

Our urban planning policies need to account for the daily needs of working mothers and their families. Policies don't need to be gender specific, but they do need to recognize that the changing social and demographic characteristics of urban areas calls for creative living options and the need to devote more attention to the quality of living conditions.