What do Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, and Roberta Flack have in common? Their careers began at the Howard Theater.

The WBJ reports that next weekend Channel 50 (WDCW) will air Howard Theatre: A Century in Song looking back at the theater’s place in Washington history and music over the past 100 years.

The show’s producers have posted a photo gallery documenting what the theater looks like inside today— if you thought the outside looked trashy, the inside is worse.

The show will air twice on February 27 and once on February 28.  In the meantime, check out this cool time-lapse video tracking the removal of the 1940s plaster façade.

Howard Theatre: A Century in Song

• Saturday, February 27 at 8 pm
• Saturday, February 27 at 10:30 pm
• Sunday, February 28 at 1:30 pm

One of LeDroit Park’s notable residents was featured on a stamp in June.  Our very own Anna J. Cooper (1858 – 1964) lived at the veranda-lined house at Second and T Streets. The circle at Third and T Streets was named in her honor.

Ms. Cooper is most famous for her book A Voice from the South, considered a foundational text in black feminism and published while she was the principal of the M Street High School (now called Dunbar High School).  She then moved on to teach night classes for black Washingtonians at Frelinghuysen University, which was located in her house for a time.  She received a PhD at the Sorbonne in 1924, making her among the first black American women to receive a doctorate.

If you have a newer U.S. passport, you may notice that she is quoted on pages 26-7: “The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class— it is the cause of humankind, the very birthright of humanity.”

Get a sheet of her stamps and send a little piece of your neighborhood’s history whenever you send a letter.

Unlike Metro, Howard University Hospital must stay open no matter the weather.  As such the groundskeepers are quick to remove snow the moment the first flake hits the ground.  The employee parking garage on the block bounded by Fourth Street, V Street, Fifth Street, and Oakdale Place also needs its top level cleared of snow.  But where does the snow from the top level go?  Well, over the edge it seems.

What’s up at 1970 Second Street?  The façade recently received a new coat of paint and the first floor has been renovated.

The location currently holds a Retail B liquor license (ABRA-003439) allowing the establishment to sell beer and wine (not liquor) in sealed containers to be consumed elsewhere.  This suggests the house could host a convenience store, but the proprietor may have plans to apply for a completely different license altogether.

Due to the overwhelming amount of snow that has worn down the city’s plows, the District has contracted with a Massachusetts company to help dig us out.  This morning we spotted part of the Bay State crew and its heavy construction equipment clearing Fifth and U Streets here in LeDroit Park.  The ferocious looking machines are scraping the streets down to the pavement and amassing snow mountains that will take weeks to melt.

The District government uses GPS to track its plows and publishes the location data for the public to see.  Enter in your address or an intersection and watch an animated history of plowing over the past few days near you.

Please recall that under District law, property owners should have cleared their sidewalks by now. It’s certainly no fun, but it helps life return to normalcy.

The record snow that accumulated this weekend brought us out to snowball fights and sledding in Meridian Hill Park.  With few stores open and few roads passable, Saturday was a true holiday in the old-fashioned sense.

Howard University Hospital’s groundskeeper was out in heartbeat clearing the hospital’s sidewalks while contractors cleared the hospital’s parking lot. Pretty impressive!

Neighbors dug their cars out of snow and the usually busy Florida Avenue carried more pedestrians then automobiles. The District government sent numerous plows along U Street and Florida Avenue, largely neglecting (understandably) the quiet streets of LeDroit Park.

You didn’t need a 4×4 to get around this weather. These two girls found that a daddy-powered sled was the most convenient form of transportation.

In Dupont Circle, hundreds of people gathered for a snowball fight. We caught the end of it:

Is a white Hummer camouflaged when it’s in the snow? These snowballers were able to spot and pelt it.

This Suburban sped away as soon as the light turned green.

For cars in LeDroit Park, Fourth and Fifth Streets are passable, but the east-west streets are better left to the four-wheel-drives.

More snow is expected Tuesday night and during the day on Wednesday. Were Pres. William McKinley still alive today, he would not only argue the merits of a gold standard with Rep. Ron Paul, but would also scoff at this relative “dusting”.  Though we’ve recorded 45 inches so far this winter, the winter of 1898-99, during McKinley’s administration, set the city’s record, dumping a total of 54.4 inches on the capital!

If you’re tired of the snow, be glad you don’t live in Québec City, which suffers 124 inches of snow each winter… on average!

Exactly nine months from now the maternity wards will be full, but if you’re looking for other fun today without consequences later, you might consider sledding and lobbing snowballs at your fellow citizens.

The steps at Meridian Hill Park make for excellent sledding (pictured above). The park will also host a snowball fight at 2 pm. Alternatively, there is a snowball fight scheduled for 2 pm at Dupont Circle.  Please leave your city-issued guns at home.

The National Weather Service is predicting a snow storm to cover Washington from Friday morning through Saturday evening.  The storm is expected to leave 12 – 20 inches of snow.

So far we’ve been impressed with the dedication of Howard University Hospital’s groundskeepers, who are out there within an hour of the first flake to clear the sidewalks.

Here’s a novel idea we found online for a pedal-powered snow plow.  If someone is willing to build it, we’re willing to drive it down every sidewalk in LeDroit Park.

Tomorrow is the first Thursday of the month, meaning that ANC1B’s monthly meeting will take place on the second floor of the Reeves Building at 14th and U Streets at 7 pm.

Here are the highlights from the official agenda:

• 1916 Ninth Street NW — variance from lot occupancy requirement; variance for expansion of non-conforming building; special exception for change from one non-conforming use to another.
• Dogs by Day and GreenPets — special exception to zoning.
• 321 T Street NW — review of conceptual design.
• Broadcast Center One PUD (to be built above the Shaw Metro) — motion for two-year extension and amendment.

The last item is the most worrying as it concerns the proposed development above the Shaw Metro station.  This development, which is intended to restore the Howard Theater and the Block of Blight was supposed to break ground last year with a gleaming new office building to house Lanham-based Radio One.  The developer is likely to secure an additional tenant, the United Negro College Fund, if the City Council grants the group’s request for $3.8 million in tax breaks over ten years to move here from Fairfax County.

Also on the agenda are the following liquor license applications:

• MASA 14, 1825 Fourteenth Street NW — Substantial change to license: addition of roof deck, proposed summer garden, expansion of hours (Sunday – Thursday 8 am – 2 am; Friday – Saturday 8 am – 3 am)
• Bella, 900 Florida Avenue NW — New retail Class C restaurant license with entertainment including dancing and live bands; hours of liquor sales and consumption (Sunday – Thursday, 11 am – 2 am; Friday – Saturday 11 am – 3 am);  hours of entertainment (Sunday – Thursday 8 pm – 2 am; Friday – Saturday, 10 pm – 3 am)
• Ulah Bistro, 1214 U Street NW — Substantial change to license to provide new entertainment endorsement including DJ and jazz band (Sunday-Thursday, 9 pm – 1:30 am; Friday – Saturday, 9 pm – 2:30 am)