Alley Life in Washington

Alley Life in Washington PDF Author: James Borchert
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252054903
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Forgotten today, established Black communities once existed in the alleyways of Washington, D.C., even in neighborhoods as familiar as Capitol Hill and Foggy Bottom. James Borchert's study delves into the lives and folkways of the largely alley dwellers and how their communities changed from before the Civil War, to the late 1890s era when almost 20,000 people lived in alley houses, to the effects of reform and gentrification in the mid-twentieth century.

Alley Life in Washington

Alley Life in Washington PDF Author: James Borchert
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252054903
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
Forgotten today, established Black communities once existed in the alleyways of Washington, D.C., even in neighborhoods as familiar as Capitol Hill and Foggy Bottom. James Borchert's study delves into the lives and folkways of the largely alley dwellers and how their communities changed from before the Civil War, to the late 1890s era when almost 20,000 people lived in alley houses, to the effects of reform and gentrification in the mid-twentieth century.

Goat Alley

Goat Alley PDF Author: Ernest Howard Culbertson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description


Living In, Living Out

Living In, Living Out PDF Author: Elizabeth Clark-Lewis
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 1588344428
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This oral history portrays the lives of African American women who migrated from the rural South to work as domestic servants in Washington, DC in the early decades of the twentieth century. In Living In, Living Out Elizabeth Clark-Lewis narrates the personal experiences of eighty-one women who worked for wealthy white families. These women describe how they encountered—but never accepted—the master-servant relationship, and recount their struggles to change their status from “live in” servants to daily paid workers who “lived out.” With candor and passion, the women interviewed tell of leaving their families and adjusting to city life “up North,” of being placed as live-in servants, and of the frustrations and indignities they endured as domestics. By networking on the job, at churches, and at penny savers clubs, they found ways to transform their unending servitude into an employer-employee relationship—gaining a new independence that could only be experienced by living outside of their employers' homes. Clark-Lewis points out that their perseverance and courage not only improved their own lot but also transformed work life for succeeding generations of African American women. A series of in-depth vignettes about the later years of these women bears poignant witness to their efforts to carve out lives of fulfillment and dignity.

Paradise Alley

Paradise Alley PDF Author: Kevin Baker
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061748986
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 708

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Book Description
They came by boat from a starving land—and by the Underground Railroad from Southern chains—seeking refuge in a crowded, filthy corner of hell at the bottom of a great metropolis. But in the terrible July of 1863, the poor and desperate of Paradise Alley would face a new catastrophe—as flames from the war that was tearing America in two reached out to set their city on fire.

Hidden Alleyways of Washington, DC

Hidden Alleyways of Washington, DC PDF Author: Kim Prothro Williams
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1647123925
Category : Alleys
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
"Kim Prothro Williams explains the remarkable architectural and social history of Washington, DC's multifaceted alleyways. This richly illustrated book also provides an appealing visual record of the roles and evolution of alleyways in the city. Washington's alleys were never intended to be seen. They were deliberately hidden from public view to conceal the services and people behind the grand design envisioned by the capital's early planners. But more so than in most American cities, alleyways in DC have always been a fundamental part of the life and economy of the city. Many alleyways have contained a parallel world of neighborhoods, manufacturing, and bohemian spaces. DC alleys were created in the original Plan of the City to provide access to the rear of the large lots for stables, carriage houses, and other utility buildings. As the city grew and property values rose, land owners changed the purpose of some alleys by building and renting out alley dwellings. Other alleys began to serve commercial and industrial purposes. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, inhabited alleys were mainly home to the city's poorest people, especially Black residents and recent immigrants. Unsanitary conditions spurred Progressive Era campaigns to demolish alley dwellings, but this began a new and complex era in the history of DC's alleys as reform efforts threatened to displace communities without offering them a place to go. Today, there are far fewer alleyways, as office and apartment blocks were built over many. This century has seen a transformation of many remaining alleyways into vibrant commercial and residential spaces that display stunning nineteenth century architecture. But this latest wave of gentrification has raised questions about how spaces that were once utilitarian or attainable for the poorest residents now cater to the wealthy. Hidden Alleyways of Washington, DC is a fascinating portrait of these important and varied architectural and social spaces in the life of the capital city"--

Midaq Alley

Midaq Alley PDF Author: Naguib Mahfouz
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1101974664
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Widely acclaimed as Naguib Mahfouz's best novel, Midaq Alley brings to life one of the hustling, teeming back alleys of Cairo in the 1940s. From Zaita the cripple-maker to Kirsha the hedonistic cafe owner, from Abbas the barber who mistakes greed for love to Hamida who sells her soul to escape the alley, from waiters and widows to politicians, pimps, and poets, the inhabitants of Midaq Alley vividly evoke Egypt's largest city as it teeters on the brink of change. Never has Nobel Prize-winner Mahfouz's talent for rich and luxurious storytelling been more evident than here, in his portrait of one small street as a microcosm of the world on the threshold of modernity.

Upscaling Downtown

Upscaling Downtown PDF Author: Brett Williams
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501711628
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
In Upscaling Downtown, anthropologist Brett Williams provides an ethnography of a changing urban neighborhood that she calls "Elm Valley." Located in Washington, D.C., Elm Valley was one of the first neighborhoods to draw middle-class property owners back to the inner city, but a faltering housing industry halted what might have been the rapid displacement of the poor. As a result, Elm Valley experienced several years of stalled gentrification. It was a period when very unlikely people lived side by side: black families who had migrated to the nation's capital from the Carolinas decades earlier, newly arrived refugees from Central America and Southeast Asia, and more prosperous whites. For Williams, a ten-year resident of Elm Valley, stalled gentrification offered a rare opportunity to observe how people 'with varied cultural traditions and economic resources saw and used the neighborhood in which they lived.

Washington Seen

Washington Seen PDF Author: Fredric M. Miller
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801849799
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This unique portrait of Washington, D.C., from the Guilded Age to the Great Society, brings together nearly 400 photographs which focus not on the monuments and streets of our nation's capital, but on the complex relationships among the people who worked and lived there. 338 photos. Short discount: 5%.

Lincoln and Whitman

Lincoln and Whitman PDF Author: Daniel Mark Epstein
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307431401
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
It was more than coincidence—indeed, it was all but fate—that the lives and thoughts of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman should converge during the terrible years of the Civil War. Kindred spirits despite their profound differences in position and circumstance, Lincoln and Whitman shared a vision of the democratic character that sprang from the deepest part of their being. They had read or listened to each other’s words at crucial turning points in their lives. Both were utterly transformed by the tragedy of the war. In this radiant book, poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein tracks the parallel lives of these two titans from the day that Lincoln first read Leaves of Grass to the elegy Whitman composed after Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Drawing on the rich trove of personal and newspaper accounts, diary records, and lore that has accumulated around both the president and the poet, Epstein structures his double portrait in a series of dramatic, atmospheric scenes. Whitman, though initially skeptical of the Illinois Republican, became enthralled when Lincoln stopped in New York on the way to his first inauguration. During the war years, after Whitman moved to Washington to minister to wounded soldiers, the poet’s devotion to the president developed into a passion bordering on obsession. “Lincoln is particularly my man, and by the same token, I am Lincoln’s man.” As Epstein shows, the influence and reverence flowed both ways. Lincoln had been deeply immersed in Whitman’s verse when he wrote his incendiary “House Divided” speech, and Whitman remained an influence during the darkest years of the war. But their mutual impact went beyond the intellectual. Epstein brings to life the many friends and contacts his heroes shared—Lincoln’s debonair private secretary John Hay, the fiery abolitionist senator Charles Sumner, the mysterious and possibly dangerous Polish Count Gurowski—as he unfolds the story of their legendary encounters in New York City and especially Washington during the war years. Blending history, biography, and a deeply informed appreciation of Whitman’s verse and Lincoln’s rhetoric, Epstein has written a masterful and original portrait of two great men and the era they shaped through the vision they held in common.

The Alley

The Alley PDF Author: Eleanor Estes
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0547536879
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
In the heart of Brooklyn, New York, there is an alley that is the most beautiful place to live in the whole wide world. Or so Connie Ives believes. The alley is the perfect location to sharpen Connie's swinging skills, hold practices for the Alley Conservatory of Music, and convict a burglar by trial. From the bestselling author of Ginger Pye comes the story of a little girl whose eyes are always open to the beauty of the world that surrounds her.