DC Archaeology Tour Contents

































J - The Oldest Profession Location: Federal Triangle (see MAP)

Metro: Federal Triangle Station (Orange-Blue lines) (see additional informational links below) "My name is Nellie Starr. My native place is Baltimore, State of Maryland. I have been in Washington City, D.C. since a week before Christmas. I am about nineteen or twenty years of age. I am not married. I have known John Wilkes Booth about three years; he was in the habit of visiting the house where I live kept by Miss Eliza Thomas, No. 62 Ohio Avenue in the City of Washington. The house is one of prostitution." (part of Nellie Starr’s statement to the police, April 15, 1865) From the 1860s through the 1880s, black and white, native and foreign-born families tried to make a living in this neighborhood. Family households and brothels, commercial businesses and industries co-existed here in "Hooker’s District" alongside the canal (under Constitution Ave), which had turned into little more than an open sewer. In 1862 the city supported 450 registered "bawdy houses," which were legal until prostitution was outlawed in 1914. Prostitution changed from madam-owned houses to capitalist businesses with corporate ownership in the 1890s, when the area turned into a red light district with rows of brothels. Before 1890, archaeology reveals very little difference between the daily lives of working class households and brothels, although the families owned more toys and more tools. But later the prostitutes ate better and dressed better than their working class contemporaries. Some of their purchasing power, however, was spent on proprietary medicines such as Valentine’s Meat Juice, promoted as a cure for sexually transmitted diseases. Washington Underground: Archaeology in Downtown Washington, DC, a walking and metro guide to the past... was produced cooperatively by the National Park Service, National Center for Cultural Resources, Archeology and Ethnography Program; the District of Columbia Office of Planning, Historic Preservation Office; the Center for Heritage Resource Studies, University of Maryland, College Park; and the Society for American Archaeology.