Move to Foggy Bottom and 2023 G Street

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The following was written in 1962:

Just fifty years ago, the University shifted its center from midtown Washington to the old West End. Reasons, financial and educational, led to the sale of University Hall at the southeast corner of 15th and H Streets. Temporary quarters on I Street were occupied while a new location was being sought. In 1912, the address of the University became 2023 G Street.

G Street was in a quiet neighborhood. Trolley cars toddled west along G Street through Foggy Bottom on the way to Georgetown two or three times an hour. Maples, as tall as Mr. Jefferson’s elms along the Avenue, lined the sidewalks, and their meandering roots played havoc with the brick pavements. After dark street lamps produced spots of light, rather than illumination. Down by the river, an occasional burst of flame from the gas house would cast a garish glow in the distance. Ancient residences, some of them as old as the city itself stood in solid ranks, shoulder to shoulder up and down the street. The foreign legations had long since moved away and but a few of the old families remained. The former grandeur lingered only in spots. Big old residences unfortunately make such good rooming-houses!

The only commercial establishment around was Quigley’s Pharmacy at the corner of Twenty-first Street, then presided over by its founder, Dr. R. Lucien Quigley. When the lights went out at Quigley’s at ten o’clock, darkness locked the street up for the night. The new tenants of 2023 G Street gradually changed the scene and transformed the whole area. What was 2023 G Street? There still lingers in the memory (for this is a matter of recollection and not research) a clear picture of the building and its people in 1914, something more than a year after the University moved in. With the exception of the financial offices and the professional departments, this structure housed practically all of the administrative and educational activities of the University at the time.

The building was a red-brick, brownstone-trimmed structure with three stories and a mansard, originally built for and occupied by St. Rose’s Industrial School. It was bought for the University largely through the urgings of General Maxwell Van Zandt Woodhull, a Trustee, whose home was located at the northwest corner of 21st and G Streets, just a few doors from St. Rose’s. The exterior of the Woodhull house remains essentially unchanged today.

The front yard of 2023 was a few steps higher than the level of the sidewalk. It was separated from the pavement by an iron fence, with double iron gates. Large maple trees both in the yard and along the sidewalk shaded the front of the building. A half dozen stone steps led from the yard up to the front entrance. A second entrance was later made by cutting through the small front room which was the office of Professor Charles C. Swisher of the History Department. At the curb was a gas lamp with a letter box affixed to the post and one of the usual brownstone carriage blocks. The large room in the southwest corner of the first floor of the building was the office of the President, Rear Admiral Charles H. Stockton, U.S.N. (ret.). This office was entered through a smaller room. In this reception room was the switchboard and the desks of the Recorder, Miss Eleanor Hance, and two secretaries, Miss Stevens and Miss Black. From this same room visitors entered the office of the Secretary of the University, Professor Richard Cobb of the English Department.

Along the east side of the first floor was a very long room divided by the large sliding doors then so commonly used in “double parlors.” This long room was said to have been the sewing room of the Industrial School. The walls were covered with shelves of books extending up to the ceiling. The front half of the sewing room was the reading room of the Library. A barricade of bookcases in the rear formed the office of the Librarian, Professor A.F.W. Schmidt, who also taught German. The rear of the northern half of the room was the lecture room of Professor Swisher and of Professor Robert R. Kern of the Economics Department. After a few years the use of the whole room was given over to the Library. A small classroom in the front of the building was used by Professor L. C. McNemar of the Department of Political Science as his office. Back of this was a long room without outside light, which served as the Library’s stack room. Two long wooden staircases led to the second floor.

Along the whole east side of the second floor, with a ceiling two stories high, was a long room used as the Chapel. Light on the south side came through the large stained glass windows, predominantly yellow and blue in color. In the rear there was a small gallery. A low platform in the front ran across the entire width of the room. The office of Dean William Allen Wilbur was just off this platform. Dean Wilbur’s classes in Freshman Rhetoric met in the Chapel. Along the east and west sides of the room were hung the portraits of the Presidents of the University and other worthies and the large painting of “The Boston Boys,” now in the first floor reading room of the Library. Chapel services were held regularly on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 12:15.

Along the front of the second floor, next to Dean Wilbur’s office, was the office of his secretary, Miss Mary H. Watkins, better known as “Miss Daisy.” Just beyond was the office of Dean W. C. Ruediger of Teachers College. Along the west side was the classroom of Professor Hermann Schoenfeld of the German Department and a smaller room used for various classes, particularly those in education. In the center of the building back of Miss Watkin’s office was the women’s lounge. A large room in the northeast corner, set somewhat apart, was the classroom and the office of Professor George N. Henning of the French Department.

On the third floor in the southwest corner was the classroom-office of Professor Charles Sidney Smith of the Classics Department and, next to it, the small office of the Hatchet. The mineralogical laboratory of Professor George Perkins Merrill of the Geology Department and a classroom took up the remainder of the third floor. Under the mansard were the drafting rooms and classrooms used largely by students in Architecture and Engineering. In the basement was a starkly bare men’s lounge, and in the southwest corner the laboratories of the Department of Biological Science of which Professor Paul Bartsch was the head. Electrical Engineering and some smaller laboratories were also located in the basement.

To the back of the main building there was a wing with the physics laboratory and offices on the first floor. On the second floor were the offices of Dean Howard L. Hodgkins, Professor of Mathematics, and a lecture room used for Physics and Mathematics. In the back of the yard, almost in the center of the block, was a large brick barn-like structure, used as the mechanical engineering laboratory and the office of the Superintendent of Buildings, Mr. Elmer Schatz. The custodial staff was not large, but efficient: three fine individuals - Everman, Jackson and Dawson.

This was 2023 G. The only other property in the area which the University occupied was the large former residence at 2024, just across the street. Its appearance has not changed materially. On the first floor were a classroom and the offices of Mr. Charles W. Holmes, the Treasurer, who, with a cashier and a secretary, made up the entire financial staff. On the second floor were classrooms, one used by Professor E. E. Richardson of the Department of Philosophy. On the third and fourth floors were the chapter rooms of the four sororities: Pi Beta Phi, Chi Omega, Sigma Kappa and Phi Mu. Lecture halls and laboratories for Chemistry and the office of Dean Charles E. Munroe of the School of Graduate Studies were in the Medical School.

Almost immediately the University began to remodel and acquire property to the east and west of 2023. The University was growing again. Its finances had improved. A debt of only $24,500 on the G Street holdings remained. As modest as it was, it was large enough to be burdensome and caused much thought. Mr. Abram Lisner, the owner of the “Palais Royal” and a public-spirited citizen who had served as a Trustee, was asked if he would receive some representatives of the University to discuss its financial problems with him.

It must have been in 1919. The President, Dr. William Miller Collier, and the Secretary of the University called on Mr. Lisner at his department store at 11th and G Streets. Up the long wooden staircase to the second floor office they went. There was the kindly Mr. Lisner at an old-fashioned desk in a room dominated by a greatly enlarged photograph of a small boy, offering articles of merchandise for sale. The once small boy, now a great merchant, did not say “no” to the University officers. They came back to the University with a check to cover every cent of indebtedness. In place of “2023” a black sanded sign with gold letters went up naming the building “Lisner Hall.” That earlier gift was followed by others princely in amount from the same donor. Thanks to one of them the University Library, a memorial to Mrs. Lisner, now stands on the site of old Lisner Hall. Its post-office address is still 2023 G Street.

Document Information

Images: 1
Photographic Credit: GW Magazine, Special Issue, 1971
Author or Source: GWU Alumni Review, Summer 1962, written by Elmer Louis Kayser
Document Location: University Archives
Date Added to Encyclopedia: December 21, 2006
Prepared by: Lyle Slovick, Assistant University Archivist

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