By Denise Vogt & Frank Leone, Co-Chairs
The FBA History Project begins its fifth year of researching and sharing Foggy Bottom neighborhood history. Here’s a look back at our busy 2024. We continued our regular posts on the Funkstown history blog and other contributions to the FBA newsletter, engaged in numerous presentations and walking tours, researched and updated our Historic District House map, provided digital access to 50 years of the Foggy Bottom News newsletter, and contributed revised chapters to a new DC guidebook.
We continue to maintain our website, with its Funkstown Blog (now with over 100 posts), On-Line Walking Tours, Oral History, History Resources, and Historic District House Map.
Thanks to a grant from the Foggy Bottom Trust, we are implementing the next phase of the Historic District Study Area House Map Project. The map allows viewers to click on a house and learn about its history and its residents. This phase provides census and city directory information from 1910 to 1950. It also populates the three blocks from the Historic District west to the Potomac River, which was once a thriving neighborhood and is now a highway-crossed wasteland. We also update the 270 individual House History pages as new information is available.
The George Washington University Gelman Library Special Collections Research Center maintains paper copies of the FBA’s newsletter, the Foggy Bottom News, from 1958 to 2006 (donated by resident Ellie Becker). We obtained a FB Trust grant to digitize those issues and make them readable on-line, but once the library began to process, they decided the project benefited the community and funded it themselves. We plan to submit new applications to the Trust in 2025 for other projects.
History Project Co-Chairs Frank Leone and Denise Vogt edited chapters on Foggy Bottom and the White House Neighborhood for the newly-released Smithsonian Books’ Washington on Foot, 6th ed.
In 2024, we made live and on-line presentations about the House Map, Researching House History, the Kennedy Center, F Street, and DC’s Alleys, including a poster session at the DC History Conference, and presentations at the West End Branch of the DC Public Library, the DACOR Bacon House, a law firm, and the DC Preservation League and its Landmarks Committee.
We conducted our usual DC Events Historic District Walking Tour in September, and also offered two area tours in connection with the GWU Museum, and its 10th anniversary Tale of Two Houses exhibit. The Historic District History and Arts on-line walking tours statistics indicate there have been 15,300 views combined of the two tours since their inception in December 2021. Neighbors report seeing people using the self-guided walking tours.
We continue to work with individual GWU students on research projects and gave interviews. We have increased our connections with groups including the DC History Center (Frank Leone was elected to its Board in March), DC Preservation League, Association of Oldest Inhabitants of DC, The GWU Museum, GWU’s F Street House, and the DACOR Bacon House. On behalf of the FBA, the Chairs also sponsored a banner recognizing Leonard Grimes induction into the Abolition Hall of Fame. We monitor preservation issues in the Historic District.
We are grateful for research by others done in earlier years. We recognize there is still an immense amount of research and outreach to be done. We look forward to continuing our efforts in 2025 and would be happy if you can join us.
You can learn more about the Foggy Bottom Association’s endeavors in its 2024 Annual Report.
Comments