Community Anchors

Community Anchors. Midcity at the Crossroads. , Across the intersection stands the tower of the O Street Market. When the market opened in 1881 and refrigerators had not been invented, people shopped here daily for everything from live chickens to fresh tomatoes. At first the vendors were German immigrants, but by the 1960s, most were African American. Damaged in the uprisings of 1968, the market was restored in 1980 but lost its roof in a 2003 snowstorm. In 2014 it was restored as part of City Market at O Street, combining shopping and housing., On this side of the street, landscaper John Saul began planting fruit trees in 1852. His son B. Francis Saul later opened a real estate business that became the B.F. Saul Company and Chevy Chase Bank. During the Civil War, the Union Army camped here at Wisewell Barracks and Hospital., Rowhouses facing Sixth Street eventually replaced the camp, along with the Henry and Polk Elementary Schools and Central High School, all for white students. Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, class of 1913, is Central's best-known graduate. Central High School moved in 1916 to a grand new facility astride the 13th Street hill (now Cardozo High School). In the 1950s, the entire block was leveled for a playground., Completed in 1964, the playground was dedicated to the memory of President John F. Kennedy. Kids eager for play space clambered on its real 1888 steam locomotive, a tugboat, and two surplus Air Force jets. But in the following decades, the playground's rusting equipment was removed, and the facility became crime-ridden. Friends of Kennedy Playground led clean-up efforts in the 1990s, and a new city community center opened here in August 2003.