Provisions for the City

Provisions for the City. Hub, Home, Heart. , This high ground near the B&O Railroad tracks has been Union Terminal Market since 1931. That year Center Market on Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, came down to make way for the National Archives. Vendors seeking new locations clustered here., Before the market arrived, this land was part of the Brentwood estate, and then the World War I-era Camp Meigs, an army training post. In the 1920s the Hechinger lumber yard replaced the camp. With the railroad so convenient, traveling circuses occasionally set up here., Jewish, Greek, Italian, and African American vendors dominated the original market, including Fred Kolker and his Kolker Poultry. In the late 1950s, more businesses arrived as urban renewal closed the Southwest wholesale market. Among them was Washington Beef Company, belonging to Fred Kolker's uncle Sam. Every week Washington Beef employees unloaded and butchered five rail cars of beef carcasses for distribution to such customers as the Hot Shoppes and DC Public Schools. And each night a crew cleaned equipment to prepare for the federal inspector's regular morning visit. Sam's six sons and grandsons continued the business into the late 1980s., A new wave of immigrant entrepreneurs, especially from China, El Salvador, Jamaica, and Korea, came in the 1980s., Civil rights activist Nadine Winter, concerned about homeless people at the market, created Hospitality House to assist them. In 1962 Hospitality House opened a family shelter at 507 Florida Avenue. Winter later helped establish a community credit union on H Street, worked for federally supported urban homesteading, and, in 1974, was elected to the first of four terms on the DC City Council, representing Ward 6.