DC By the Book

Excerpt: The smells wafting out of 3304 Volta Place were of chicken and cornbread fried in the early morning.

Excerpt: The streets of Georgetown were the prettiest street of any in Washington city, maybe the prettiest streets anywhere! Johnnie Mae was convinced of this though she had nothing to compare them to. All she remembered of her hometown in North Carolina was all that there was to it: a collection of ramshackle buildings connected by a dirt track. But Georgetown - pretty street, pretty houses! These must be the loveliest, most graceful thoroughfares of any place in the world.

Excerpt: The beefy, dark-haired sons and grandsons of Angelo Fontarelli tuned on the streetlights at dusk and turned them off at dawn throughout Georgetown. The Fontaefllis hired a few colored boys to work for them in Bell's Court and Poplar Alley, but they jealously guarded the rest of their concession. Street by street, lamp by lamp, the big-thighed Fontarrellis hooked the pull chains on the gas lamps with long poles. When a pilot was out, they shimmied up like monkeys onto the narrow platforms on the lamps and relit the pilots with a match. Lamplighting time was the signal for the small children to go inside from play, and groups of children on every block would dance along ahead of the Fontarellis to steal a few more minutes outside. The occupants of the big fancy houses with elegant gas porch lamps on their porticoes would call to one of the roving colored boys at dusk and toss him a penny to light their lamps. ---------- African Americans have lived and worked in Georgetown since its establishment in 1751. After the Civil War, a 15-block area bordered by Rock Creek, P , 29th, and M streets became a magnet for families migrating to Washington. The area was called “Herring Hill” after the fish taken from Rock Creek which was a major source of food. Mount Zion United Methodist Church is the oldest black congregation in the city, founded in 1816 by congregants from the Montgomery Street Church (now Dumbarton United Methodist Church) who decided to no longer accept racist treatment by their fellow white church-goers. The current structure dates to 1884. Other neighborhood black churches are First Baptist Church of Georgetown (1862) at 27th and Dumbarton, and Jerusalem Baptist Church (1870) at 26th and P Street. Referenced Bell’s Court was located in the block bordered by 33/34/P/Volta and Poplar Alley 27/28/O/P.

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