H Street Northeast Revisited

Now that H Street is coming back into its own, I wanted to pick my father George’s brain about what it was like back in his day, in the 1920s. I decided we ought to take a tour, and see what was left, so my parents and I climbed into my pollen laden car and went back in time.

Our first hurdle was getting to H Street from Northwest to Northeast. Everywhere we went the streets are being ripped up with new construction. Plus George couldn’t see through all the green funk on the windshield so that was a handicap, but we finally found the block where my grandfather, Peter Cokinos, had his candy shop at 1103 H Street.

Pete opened this shop after working with his cousin James on 8th Street SE. He made candy and ice cream in the basement here, and my father was one of his biggest shoplifters.

H Street has been slow to recover from the the riots of 1968. Whole blocks were burned, and this was one of them. The exact address is gone, but there is a convenience store at 1101 H Street right about where the shop should be.

I asked Dad about other Greeks in the neighborhood back then, and you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a half dozen families - including branches of our own clan. James Cokinos bought the candy shop from my grandfather and also had a deli at 10th and K.  Another cousin Nick Kendros had the Woodward Sandwich Shop at 1422 H Street. The Kavakos family ran a grill at 8th and H which became a very popular nightclub during World War II, but was torn down in the 1990s.

The Kalevas family ran the Rendezvous- another hot spot. The Chaconas Bar and Grill was at 10th and H, and the Bacchus Grill was at H and 15th (owned by the Bacchus family not the god) He also remembers the Paramount Grill run by two Greek brothers. It was "a blue collar sort of breakfast place." (Imagine that.) The Gatsos family had a barber shop where you could get your shoes shined, too.

The Gatsos Family

Besides all the Greeks in the neighborhood, there was also Whal's Department Store which was two stories high and carried everything. There were three movie theaters- the Apollo, the Empire and the Princess - all of them gone now. (The Atlas which is now a performing arts center didn’t open until the late 1930s.)

Our next stop was 919 11th Street, the house where my Dad was born. (yes, at home) Here's the family on the front porch around 1923.

The block is a little worn down now, the fluted columns on the houses have been replaced, but the place is still standing in 2002. It was 20 feet wide and 35 feet deep, and they used every inch. My father says the kitchen was in the basement which was common at the time.

A few blocks away, at the corner of Montello and Neal, we found Samuel E Wheatley Elementary. Dad didn't recognize it at first with its two large additions. When he went there in 1920, it was a brand new school named for a very popular police commissioner and businessman. The building is empty now, but plans are underway to renovate. This is where Dad and Aunt Catherine walked to school, and where they learned to speak English. (Only Greek was spoken at home.)

Finally we went to the DC Farmer's Market on Florida Avenue.  A lot of the stalls are boarded up now, but Dad remembers when it was all going full force so it took us a while to find Litteri's Italian market- one of the few places left with a lot of history.

Little has changed since this Italian grocery and deli moved here in 1932. (Mom thought she even recognized one of the countermen.) After a long wait for sandwiches worth waiting for, we picnicked with the carpenter bees at my son Kit’s school, Hardy, which is being temporarily housed in the Hamilton School. I can't help but note that the building is located on Brentwood Parkway just off Florida Avenue, within walking distance of his grandfather's childhood.

Pre TV in Washington D.C.

Every time I go to the movies these days, I find myself paralyzed in front of the concessions. My feeble and admittedly geeze-ing brain refuses to take in the current rate of exchange of currency for sustenance. Five dollars for a soda ? And that yellow stuff that goes on the popcorn? Seriously. What is that?

Yes, things have technically improved since I was a kid, but back in the days of the movie palaces, going to see a film was an extraordinary experience. My parents, Bebe and George, remember paying 15 cents for a whole day of entertainment.

Here's a visual glimpse of Washington DC's movie scene from local film maker Jeff Krulik.

 In 1925 when Bebe was eight and her little brother Roger was four, they would free range to the Tivoli at 14th and Park Road every Sunday and spend the whole afternoon in the theater.

Her favorites were the Westerns because she “loved watching all those horses run around.” She says Tom Mix was popular, but personally she didn’t think he was all that cute.

She also has a hazy memory of walking with her dad from Mozart Place to the Ambassador Theater on 18th and Columbia Road to see Al Jolson in the first "talkie"in 1928.

George remembers the three theaters near him on H Street NE: The Princess, The Apollo and The Empire. They were smaller, plainer theaters, but he could walk to all of them. He caught all the great silent films with Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton and remembers the piano player creating the mood. He also was into Tom Mix and all those horses.

The Apollo from Library of Congress

When Bebe moved to the Broadmoor Apartments in Cleveland Parkin 1929, she hit the jack pot getting free passes to the Avalon Theater on Connecticut Avenue. Bebe and Roger would take a lunch, get on the streetcar (or strap on their roller skates) and spend the whole day on the theater, especially in the summer, when more houses were one of the few places in town with air conditioning.

Meanwhile George had moved uptown to Macomb Street in Cleveland Park in 1928. He offset the cost of  his "new" car, a used Model T,  by charging his sister Catherine and her friends Rose Papadeis and Julia Kekenes a quarter each to drive them downtown to the Earle on 13th Street which later became  the Warner Theater.

George and Rose on Macomb

Bigger venues like the Warner's might have had a live vaudeville show before the movie and charged a whopping 35 cents.

Bebe remembers seeing Cab Calloway at the Capitol which was around the corner from the Earle near 14th and F Street in the National Press building. In 1963, when the Capitol closed,  George’s buddy, Blackie Auger bought some of the theater's furnishings for his restaurant Blackie's House of Beef including wrought iron balustrades and a large painting of Cupid. According to his wife Lulu's memoir, when Blackie was sixteen, burning a hole in Cupid's belly button with a cigarette seemed like a good idea at the time. He bought the painting and hoped to make amends with his conscience by having it restored.

Bebe and George say the film that made the biggest impression on them was "Gone With the Wind." At that point, they were a very young married couple with two small children. Getting out to see a show was problematic. Sometimes they would steal away after the children were asleep which may have worked occasionally, but legend has it that my brother and sister woke up hungry once and decided to fix themselves grilled cheese sandwiches. In the toaster.