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People think of Ellington as a New York man, and he was, for fifty years.
But he was a Washingtonian first, and he never stopped being one. He grew up
in a proud, educated Black community, in a city where the schools and
churches and theaters of his own people taught him how to carry himself, and
I believe you can hear that in every bar he wrote.
I was born here thirty-five years after he was, and I grew up in the same
streets, a generation late. A lot of what he knew was gone by my time, and
more is gone now. Here is what I know of his Washington, place by place: what
it was, and what you'll find if you go looking today.
| Ward Place, in the West End |
Then: His grandparents' house, where he was born on April 29, 1899.
The street was called Ida Place in those days.
Now: The house is long gone, and a modern building stands on the spot,
with a bronze plaque for him by the door. I go and stand in front of it on
his birthday, most years, and nobody walking by knows why.
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| The Poodle Dog Café, Georgia Avenue |
Then: Where young Edward jerked sodas as a teenager, and where, the story
goes, he got his chance at the piano when the regular man couldn't play,
and wrote Soda Fountain Rag.
Now: Gone. Georgia Avenue keeps going north the way it always did, and I
have never found anyone who could tell me exactly where it stood.
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| Frank Holliday's poolroom, T Street |
Then: Next door to the Howard Theatre, and in his own telling, a better
school than any he enrolled in. The ragtime piano players hung around there,
and a boy who listened could learn more in a month than in a year of lessons.
Now: Gone. But every band director in this city has told some young
player about Frank Holliday's at one time or another, so in a way it's still
open.
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| Armstrong Manual Training School |
Then: Where he studied, with an eye on a career in commercial art. He
painted signs for a living in those years, and a good living it was. He left
school shortly before graduating, because the music was paying, and turned
down an art scholarship to Pratt Institute in New York.
Now: The old school building still stands. Somebody ought to put his
name on it.
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| True Reformer Hall, 12th and U |
Then: The hall where he played his first paying job, as a boy, for
seventy-five cents.
Now: The building is still there on the corner. I've walked past it
a thousand times, and I still look up.
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| The Howard Theatre, 7th and T |
Then: Opened in 1910, years before Harlem's Apollo, and for half a
century one of the great Black theaters in America. Ellington played it as
a young man and came back with his orchestra again and again. It's where I
heard him first, at seventeen, from the balcony.
Now: Dark. It closed in 1970, after the riots and everything that came
before and after, opened again for a little while, and has stood empty most
of the years since. I hope I live to see it lit up again. I'm not certain I
will.
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| The Lincoln Theatre, U Street |
Then: Built in 1922, a movie palace and showplace on what people called
Black Broadway, with the dance hall out back.
Now: The good news on this page. It was restored and reopened in 1994,
and I have heard concerts there this centennial year that he would have
enjoyed.
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| U Street |
Then: When I was young, there was no street like it anywhere: theaters,
clubs, restaurants, churches, the best-dressed people in Washington out on
a Saturday night. The riots of 1968 hit it terribly hard, and for a long time
afterward it was a sad place to walk.
Now: The Metro came in 1991, and the street is coming back, slowly, with
new restaurants and clubs and young people again. Not the same street. But
alive.
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| The Duke Ellington Bridge |
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The Calvert Street Bridge over Rock Creek, renamed for him in 1974, the year
he died. I drive across it to church on Sundays.
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| The Duke Ellington School of the Arts |
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The city's public high school for the arts, in Georgetown, founded in 1974
and named for him. I've sent it several of my best young players over the
years, and every one of them came out better than I could have made them. That
is the monument I think he would like best.
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If you come to Washington for the monuments, by all means see the
monuments. Then take the Green Line to U Street, walk east toward the Howard,
and think about a boy in a good suit walking the other way, toward New York
and the rest of his life, with this whole city in his ears.
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