Suburban Gardens Booked a Young Duke Ellington

Suburban Gardens in Deanwood drew 7,000 people on one night, gave Clarence Darrow a stage, and may have hidden a mountain lion.

Show Notes

In June 1922, a 23-year-old Duke Ellington played a beauty contest at an amusement park in far Northeast DC. It was the only major amusement park ever built inside the city, and Black Washingtonians built it because Glen Echo wouldn't let them in.

Full story, photos and sources: https://ghostsofdc.org/2026/05/24/suburban-gardens-deanwood-black-amusement-park/

Narrated by an AI version of Tom's voice. AI also helps research and write the scripts; facts are checked against the original sources, and Tom reviews the episodes.

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The lost and untold stories of Washington, DC. The buildings, blocks and people the city and region forgot.

The Beatles played their first American concert here. Sharks turned up in the Potomac in 1911. Ford’s Theatre collapsed in 1893 while government clerks worked inside.

Since 2012, Ghosts of DC has been digging through old newspapers, maps and archives for stories like these, from Georgetown to Anacostia and across the whole DMV. Now they’re a podcast.

Short episodes, most around ten minutes. Each one is built on the historical record and tied to a full post with photos and sources at ghostsofdc.org.

Something for the Metro ride or the walk to work.

Narrated with an AI version of Tom’s voice. AI also helps with the archival research, and facts are checked against the original sources.

On a Tuesday night in June of nineteen twenty-two, a twenty-three-year-old Washington bandleader played a beauty contest at an amusement park in far Northeast DC. His name was Duke Ellington. We know because the ad survives. It ran in the Washington Tribune, the city's Black weekly, and it reads, Music by Duke Ellington and his stars. Admission, fifty cents. The park was called Suburban Gardens. It was the only major amusement park ever built inside the city. And Black Washingtonians built it, for themselves, because the big trolley park out in Maryland wouldn't let them through the gate. So who built Washington's only amusement park? And where did it go? Welcome to Ghosts of DC.

I'm Tom. Or really, an AI version of my voice. I've been chasing this city's lost places since twenty twelve, and this one had a roller coaster. This story stands on thirty-nine sources, from a nineteen twenty-one newspaper ad to a twenty fifteen history book. You'll find them on the post at Ghosts of D C dot org.

In nineteen twenty-one, if you were a Black family in Washington and you wanted to ride a roller coaster, you had a problem. Glen Echo Park, at the end of the trolley line in Maryland, was for whites only. So was the bathing beach at the Tidal Basin. So a Black-owned real estate company called Universal Development and Loan decided to build a park of its own. Out in Deanwood, at Fiftieth and Hayes Streets Northeast, near the Maryland line. Its architect was Howard Woodson, an engineer from Pittsburgh. He'd come to Washington to work in the Treasury's architect's office, one of the first Black professionals to do that job. In nineteen seventy-two, the city named a high school east of the river for him. The park opened on Saturday, June twenty-fifth, nineteen twenty-one. The Tribune called it Washington's Coney Island. The next spring, the owners bought an ad in the Evening Star, the city's big white daily, and said it right out loud. Built for Colored People. By Colored People. That first season was modest. A dance pavilion, a cafe and a merry-go-round. But about five weeks in, the park found out just how badly people wanted it.

On the night of August first, nineteen twenty-one, word got out that a vaudeville act called the Whitman Sisters would be appearing at Suburban Gardens. Here's how the Tribune put it on its front page. It was unofficially estimated that over seven thousand people attended. So picture it. A nine-acre park on the edge of town, and the crowd keeps coming. The fence at the entrance gives way. Then a young man waves to the crowd in a way that looks like distress, and people start to run. The Tribune says a stampede was averted by the presence of mind of a few. The band didn't come out of it so well. The trombone and the drum were broken. The violin was lost. About fifteen police officers were sent out. And according to the Tribune, they made no arrest whatever. Now, the Washington Post told it differently. Its headline was Fifty Police End Fights. The park's owners fired back with an open letter. They counted six thousand people, and a squad of five officers. And they had one more correction for the Post. There were no wrecked banjos, however, as the Suburban Gardens' Orchestra does not include that instrument. Fifty police, fifteen, or five? It depends on which paper you read. Nobody argued about the crowd. And the owners took the hint. They wanted something bigger.

In May of nineteen twenty-two, the Capital Coaster Company took out an ad in the Tribune. It was selling stock in the park's new rides, ten dollars a share. The pitch fit on two lines. Sure to pay. Cannot fail. The big ride was a scenic railway, a roller coaster nearly a mile long, fifteen cents a ride. The marker out there today calls the coaster the Deep Dipper. By that December, the company was telling investors the ride had taken in nearly a thousand dollars in a single day. Their witness? The company's vice president. Still, the crowds were real. On Labor Day of nineteen twenty-two, the Tribune counted more than sixteen thousand people at a barbecue and picnic there. And that kind of success got noticed. That October, the Tribune ran a front-page warning. A group of white men was rumored to be planning a rival park, with a Black man out front to make it look otherwise. The paper's answer was short. It will positively be boycotted by us. Which brings us back to that June night. The Tribune's story on the beauty contest promised that Duke Ellington and his band would provide the music. First prize was a silver tea set. Within a year or so, Ellington had left for New York. You know how that story goes. Six years later, the pavilion had a very different guest. Someone the churches of Washington wouldn't let in.

Clarence Darrow was the Chicago lawyer who'd defended John Scopes three years earlier. On a Sunday in April of nineteen twenty-eight, he came to Washington to speak for the NAACP. And he spoke at Suburban Gardens. Why there? The Tribune explained it in one line. The doors of Washington churches had been barred to Mr. Darrow because of his atheism. The Washington Times led with what he told the crowd. The salvation of the negro race lies with the negroes on earth today, and not with a power in the heavens. The Times counted six hundred people. The Tribune said a misty rain kept the crowd down to five hundred. Then, in January of nineteen thirty, a mountain lion was reported loose in Far Northeast. The Washington Daily News said police were concentrating their hunt in the Suburban Gardens section. Check this out. Special watch was being kept on the old amusement park near Fiftieth Street and Castle Road. It is here that the lion is believed to have made his lair. The park is an ideal hide out for the beast. The paper never names the park, but it's hard to picture which other one it could be. And the park wasn't abandoned. It was just closed for the winter. That spring, its owners took out a permit to build a concrete swimming pool. But by then, who was actually running the place was getting harder to say.

By nineteen thirty-two, the park's ads in the Tribune carried a new line. A Lichtman Theatre Enterprise. Abe Lichtman was a white businessman whose movie theaters catered to Black audiences. He'd bought the Howard Theatre on T Street in nineteen twenty-six. Some modern accounts say he bought the park too. We couldn't find a record of a sale. As late as nineteen thirty-five, the Tribune still called the Black-owned company the owner. What's clear is that by nineteen thirty-two, Lichtman's company was running it. And the park's architect? That same summer, Howard Woodson was advertising a gas station. Its address, in his own ad, was at the gate of Suburban Gardens. By August of nineteen thirty-five, the Tribune reported, the man in charge of the park was white. That November, the company's president, John Hyder, took his own life. He was seventy. The park kept going. And one small newspaper item from that era says more about the Washington around it than almost anything else.

Each summer, the Evening Star threw a party for the boys who delivered its papers. On July twenty-ninth, nineteen thirty-six, the paper announced that night's plans. The white carrier boys are going to Glen Echo. Colored carrier boys will have a similar outing at Suburban Gardens at the same time. And then this. Instead of being furnished ice cream and orangeade, they will be given money with which to buy what they please. The paper doesn't say why. The outings went on for years, and in July of nineteen forty, the Star promised the Black carriers free swimming and free rides on roller coasters at Suburban Gardens. It was one of the park's last summers. The marker out there says it closed its gates for good in nineteen forty, after nearly twenty years.

So where did it go? Well, in nineteen forty-one, a company called Suburban Gardens, Incorporated got permits for garden apartments a few blocks away, on the Jay Street ridge. They've been called the first project insured by the Federal Housing Administration for Black residents. Among the families who moved in were the parents of Sharon Pratt, who later became mayor of DC. The park grounds went to the Army for barracks in nineteen forty-three, then to a school. When we made this, in October of twenty twenty-six, that building at Fiftieth and Hayes was the Sixth District police station. Two small markers on Forty-Ninth Street tell the story. And Glen Echo, the park that wouldn't let them in? It stayed whites-only for more than twenty years after Suburban Gardens closed. In June of nineteen sixty, students, many from Howard, climbed onto its carousel. Five were arrested. The next spring, Glen Echo agreed to open to everyone. For nearly twenty years, the only amusement park inside Washington belonged to the people Glen Echo turned away. Duke Ellington played there. Clarence Darrow spoke there. And a mountain lion may have hidden there.

So that's Suburban Gardens. Appreciate you riding along on this one. That Duke Ellington ad is on the post, along with the rest, at Ghosts of D C dot org. We do this to bring back the lost and untold stories of Washington. This has been Ghosts of DC.