In 1919, a five-story luxury hotel called the Whitelaw opened in the District. Built by black people for black people, the hotel was an elegant response to the entrenchment of racial segregation under President Woodrow Wilson.
With the advent of integration during the 1940s and ’50s, black people began patronizing white-owned hotels, and the Whitelaw, once home and performance venue for some of the most famous black entertainers — including Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Ella Fitzgerald — lost its sheen. The place became a flophouse, a dope den and the scene of multiple homicides.
The hotel’s historic significance was buried under a mountain of code violations followed by a fire in the 1980s that burned through the roof.
If not for the extraordinarily sturdy structure — the work of a legion of skilled black craftsmen — the Shaw-area hotel would have been unsalvageable. Instead, it was restored to its original splendor in the 1990s and reconfigured into affordable apartments.
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A recent centennial celebration of the Whitelaw served as a cautionary tale. When it comes to racial integration, we can succeed at getting what we want — say, the right to stay at any hotel of our choosing. But we also risk losing what we had, often without appreciating its value until it’s too late.
The effort to finance restoration of the Whitelaw was spearheaded by Manna, a nonprofit that builds affordable housing in the city. Jim Dickerson, founder of Manna, explained why he thought the building was worth saving.
“Despite the oppression during that time, African Americans had a community that was rich and strong,” he said. “There was racial segregation, but there was also an emphasis on education, cooperation and shared responsibility. And we need to build new communities based on those same principles.”
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The hotel was the brainchild of John Whitelaw Lewis, the son of a slave who mostly taught himself to read and write. He started out as a construction laborer in the District, hauling bricks around job sites. He later became president of the local laborers union. Then, to help his members save money to buy homes, he started a laborers building and loan association.
In 1913, he founded the Industrial Savings Bank, the first black-owned bank in the District. Six years later, he built the Whitelaw.
The architect he chose for both his bank and hotel was Isaiah T. Hatton, one of the nation’s first registered African American architects.
Racial tension was high in 1919. Wilson was implementing the wholesale removal of black employees from the federal government. Race riots erupted in the nation’s capital.
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Lewis and Hatton continued their work, creating a ray of hope in a year that marked the nadir of 20th-century race relations in America.
Hatton chose Italianate, a classical style of architecture that complemented the hotel’s large stained-glass skylight and elegant dining and ballrooms.
The skilled workers, nearly all of them black, poured the concrete, laid the brick, plastered the walls, made the stained-glass panels, installed the elevators, wired the building for electricity, brought in gas lines, laid the tile, installed the filigree and the eaves.
When the Whitelaw Hotel opened for business, an estimated 20,000 people showed up just to get a peek
“There was a feeling of uplift,” said Ronnie McGhee, whose architectural firm oversaw the Whitelaw makeover. “People in the community had purchased shares in the hotel, and that was a great source of pride.”
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For some black visitors, just being able to use the hotel’s front entrance — instead of having to slink around to a back door — was exhilarating.
In his fundraising speeches, Lewis would urge his black audiences to do whatever they could to “uplift the race.”
The Washington Bee, a prominent black newspaper in the city, wrote in 1918 of Lewis’s emphasis on black economic development: “He says that after [World War I], Washington will be a city of over five hundred thousand inhabitants and that we must be in a position to take care of the people of our race.”
A hundred years later, the Whitelaw endures. And it’s still filling a need. Maybe we’re finally appreciating what we have.
To read previous columns, go to washingtonpost.com/milloy.
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