Washington's First Convention Center

It wasn't that ugly concrete behemoth on H Street, completed in 1980, that was mercifully imploded in 2004. No, the first convention center was to the northwest of that, in what is now Mount Vernon Triangle, on the east side of 5th Street NW between K and L Streets. The City Vista apartment/condominium complex now rises there. It was built as a market house in 1875, a grand red-brick shed of a building with a huge arcing roof suspended over a cavernous open hall, a marvel of Victorian engineering.

The "Notorious" Sterling Hotel

The Sterling Hotel, originally the Hotel Johnson, once stood on the southeast corner of 13th and E Streets, NW, a corner that now fronts on Freedom Plaza and is just north of Pennsylvania Avenue. This was never one of Washington's great hostelry's, but it was listed as one of the 30 "principal hotels" of Washington in Rand McNally's Pictorial Guide to the City of Washington from 1913. It must have hosted many a colorful character in its day. After the hotel was torn down in late 1932, an anonymous columnist in The Washington Post who went by the pen name of "The Stroller" remarked that "All that's left of the notorious old Sterling Hotel, at Thirteenth and Pennsylvania, is the doorway..." Notorious? -No further explanation is provided.

There's no question that the larger neighborhood had been notorious indeed in the19th century. The stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue/E Street between 13th and 14th Streets in civil war days was known as Rum Row for its many saloons and gambling houses. Apparently the cops generally turned a blind eye to all the illicit activity that went on around here, at least until they decided to crack down during the Grant administration. This was where George Parker made $4,000 a week running faro games in the rooms above Kidwell's drug store, later to become Bassin's Restaurant. The drinking, of course, was as prolific as the gambling. Shoomaker's (known as "Shoo's"), a prominent saloon along this stretch, was famous as the place where the gin rickey was said to be have been invented to quench the thirst of Col. Joseph Rickey on a hot day in the 1880's.

The site of the Sterling Hotel as it appears today.

The Legacy of Charles Bond

Born in Saugus, Massachusetts, Charles Henry Bond (1846-1908) became fabulously wealthy and successful in the latter part of the 19th century. He made his fortune in the cigar business, as president of Boston-based Waitt & Bond, Inc., manufacturers of Blackstone and Totem brand cigars. A cameo biography of him in Samuel Eliot's 1909 Biographical History of Massachusetts notes his energy and enterprise and that "[b]oth he and his partner were firm believers in printer's ink. Honest goods and ample publicity finally made the name of Waitt and Bond famous throughout the country. This house was among the largest and best known cigar manufacturers in New England, and so successful were they that both partners amassed ample fortunes."

Postcard view circa 1923.

Though he never moved from the Boston area, Bond developed strong connections with Washington. His second wife, Belle Bacon, was a prominent Washington socialite, and the couple reportedly visited Washington several times a year. She seems to have been the same Belle Bacon Bond who later wrote a semi-autobiographical children's book entitled Drusilla And Her Dolls. Charles bought a house on 19th Street NW for her parents. By 1900, he was ready to invest in Washington real estate, and he hooked up with up-and-coming developers John and Bradley Davidson. Together they erected a splendid—indeed, rather ostentatious—Beaux-Arts office building on the southwest corner of 14th Street and New York Avenue NW, right in the heart of Washington's surging new financial district.