In the early 1900s, Black businesses sprang up throughout the U Street area as increasing racial segregation in Washington led African Americans both to protest and to build institutions of their own. In the 25 years from 1895 to 1920, the number of Black-owned businesses there grew from about 15 to more than 300, clustering around U Street. John Whitelaw Lewis became a leading figure in this growth after arriving in Washington in 1896 with few resources and working as a brick carrier. He organized his co-workers into a building and loan association and in 1913 transformed it into the Industrial Savings Bank across 11th Street. Reorganized by Jesse Mitchell in the 1930s, it remains in his family as one of the nation’s oldest Black financial institutions. Lewis also financed both the bank building and the building on this corner, which Black architect Isaiah T. Hatton designed in 1919 and 1922. This site also continued a long tradition of Black entertainment venues, beginning with the Crystal Caverns in 1926, followed by the Club Caverns and then the Bohemian Caverns in the 1960s, where performers including John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis, and Ramsey Lewis played, and where the Ramsey Lewis Trio recorded In Crowd. Together, these businesses created a self-sustaining community remembered by those who said, “We had everything we needed right here.”