B&O Railroad Station, New Jersey Avenue and C Street NW

In the spring and summer of 1861, the Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) Railroad Depot just north of the U.S. Capitol at the corner of New Jersey Avenue and C Street, was one of the busiest locations in Washington.  The brick, stucco, and brownstone depot, which had opened just a decade earlier,  was the disembarkation point for thousands of soldiers arriving from throughout the north.  This was the same depot that President-elect Lincoln, traveling incognito, arrived at on February 22, 1861 and from where his casket would sadly depart the capital from four years later on its journey back to Springfield.

An early illustration of the B&O Depot on New Jersey Avenue. (Washington Historical Society)

Professor Lowe Flies High in Falls Church, Virginia

Two weeks ago I wrote about Professor Thaddeus Lowe and the advent of aerial reconnaissance in the U.S.  On Saturday, the City of Falls Church sponsored a program commemorating Lowe's June 24-25, 1861 flights near Falls Church.   After his National Mall demonstration  had secured President Lincoln's support for employing balloons with the army, Lowe finally got a positive response from previously reluctant army officers. In late June 1861, he was ordered to bring his balloon across the Potomac, so that it could be used to determine Confederate force dispositions in Northern Virginia.

A sketch of Lowe's June 1861 balloon operations near Falls Church.

Mass Transit in Washington, 1862-Style

Streetcars appear to be making a comeback in Washington, D.C.with lines being planned for the H street corridor in Northeast and Anacostia.  With all the local debate about whether overhead wires should be used in the city's core, we might want to consider an alternative motive power:  horses. While many Washingtonians know that DC's once vibrant street car system last clanged its bells in 1962, few are aware of DC's first streetcar a century earlier.

New York City first used horse-drawn streetcars on rails sometime in the 1830s, but the idea was slow to take hold in Washington.  Washington residents not wishing to walk through the city's muddy roads had to rely on "omnibuses," an inconvenient, dangerous and dusty 19th century version of a microbus. This may have been fine when Pennsylvania Avenue was, as one newspaperman  put it, "more a cornfield than the great thoroughfare of and Principal Avenue of a Metropolis."  However, as a burgeoning wartime capital, improved transportation options were needed. Sound familiar?


On May 17, 1862 Congress granted a charter to the Washington & Georgetown Railroad Company to operate Washington's first horse-drawn streetcar.  Rails were laid down Pennsylvania Avenue and service  from the State Department to the Capitol commenced in July with nine streetcars.  By October 1862, the streetcar ran from M and Wisconsin in Georgetown to the Navy Yard.  The fare  was less than five cents.The route traveled along M Street in Georgetown, then east along Pennsylvania Avenue past the Capitol, and then headed south on 8th Street, SE to the Navy Yard.

A pair of streetcar tracks are clearly visible running down Pennsylvania Avenue in this photograph taken during the May 1865 Grand Army Review. (Library of Congress )

Horse-drawn streetcars visible running along Pennsylvania Avenue in this postwar photograph (ca 1880) taken from a similar Treasury Department vantage point as the previous Grand Review photograph.  Not a broken escalator in sight. (Library of Congress)