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The Washington Navy Yard A Long History Briefly Told
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by William Zeisel
he Washington Navy Yard is not what it seems. Arguably it is not a navy yard at all. Back in 1800, when the base opened, navy yards constructed, equipped and repaired naval vessels. Today’s Yard builds and maintains no ships, casts no anchors or cannons and functions mainly as a command and ceremonial center. The Yard has a public face, like the majestic Latrobe Gate on Eighth and M streets SE, or the impressive naval museum and historical center, or the gun park sprinkled with cannons and other trophies. But it has also had a less visible and even secret side, with labs that helped perfect naval communications and radar and factories that built giant guns and manufactured munitions.
Early Days
Several years before Washington became operational as the nation’s capital, the US government decided to place a naval yard on the Anacostia River, a stream located far from the ocean but with good depth of water and access to the timber needed
View of Navy Yard in 1866, showing the “experimental battery” in foreground and 11th Street Bridge in background. Photo: U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command
Latrobe Gate looking from the Yard’s interior, 1923. US Marines guard the entry while a streetcar makes the turn at the intersection of M and Eighth streets SE. Photo: Library of Congress
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to build ships. The Yard completed its first warship, the sloop Wasp, in 1806, and more would follow during the next five decades, like the 74-gun ship of the line Columbus in 1819. Military bases attract people, not only soldiers or sailors and civilian employees but those who provide essential services like groceries, liquor and entertainment. The Navy Yard, as Washington’s largest industrial establishment, had an especially large draw. The scale of operations varied. Originally the workers numbered in the hundreds, but in its fat-cat days, through World War II, the Yard employed thousands of women and men – some 26,000 at its peak in the mid-1940s.
The paychecks of these workers fed the surrounding neighborhoods on both sides of the Anacostia River. During the 1850s, real estate developers created Uniontown, on the south side of the river, to provide housing for city workers, who could walk to work on a crossing at 11th Street SE known as the Navy Yard Bridge. Uniontown prospered and became a core of what is now known as the community of Anacostia. On the north shore of the Anacostia River, a settlement called Navy Yard Hill had its own public market, village green and churches. The neighborhood was largely working class and racially mixed, in keeping with the profile of the Yard’s employees. The Navy hired workers
