Who Was Kingsman?

I and a number of friends I keep in touch with from our Northeast days at Kingsman Elementary School and Isherwood Street NE are interested in finding out any information on the origin of the name of the school and anything about the naming of Isherwood Street.

I lived at 1520 and then 1518 Isherwood St. NE beginning in about 1939. I now live in Annapolis, Maryland, and friends from Isherwood Street NE live in Charles County, Prince George's and Fairfax County. Others with whom we keep in touch from that neighborhood live in Florida, New Mexico and Iowa.

I attended kindergarten in 1941 and walked to school up Duncan Street to reach Kingsman at 14th and Tennessee Avenue NE. A few years ago my husband and I drove to that neighborhood and took some pictures of the area, including Rosedale Playground on 17th Street NE.

My father and a number of my friends' fathers worked for Capital Transit out of the car barn at 15th & H Streets NE, and they used to walk to work since we had no cars then. It was wartime (World War II), and cars were not being built, and gasoline was rationed, and our families probably didn't have money to buy them anyway. Just last September about a dozen of us from that neighborhood got together and relived many happy times and exchanged photos.

When Kingsman Elementary School was threatened with closure some years ago and a photo appeared in the Washington Post, I contacted the principal of the school for information on the history of the school.

She was only able to tell me that she believed the school had been named for a Dr. Kingsman, but she had no other information. If you have any other information about the area, I would certainly love to have it.

We all used to go to the Beverley Theater, and my father would take me to the Beverley Grill next door, afterwards, for an ice cream sundae — my favorite was pineapple. We had such good times.

We also played in the alley behind the apartments on Isherwood Street where the ice house was. §