Brookland once had a bowling alley with 28 lanes. The Brookland Recreation Center may not have survived, but at least the Art Deco building did.
Tag: Brookland
With a new reservoir in place, it was time to build a filtration plant to clean the water. It would be the largest ever constructed.
The story of the Washington Aqueduct that brought water into the city, and the ill-fated Lydecker tunnel.
Little Isabel Wall was kicked out of the Brookland School in 1909. Whether she was white or black was a question that roiled the neighborhood.
Slavery was legal in Washington DC until 1862, when Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act. Through it, we can learn a great deal about those people held in bondage in what would become Brookland.
After the Civil War, the fortifications ringing the city had no further purpose and most were soon built over. Fort Bunker Hill had a different future.
Orville Babcock, Civil War General and close friend of President Grant, once owned a small farm in the area. He was also the root of a major scandal in the Grant Administration.
An 1861 photograph from the Civil War supposedly showed a view of Fort Slocum. Research shows it actually depicts Fort Bunker Hill.
A personal account of the tension and anguish in Washington DC in the days after Martin Luther King’s assassination.
Bygone Brookland 