Park View, D.C.

Trade tokens aren’t typically seen all that much these days.  The heyday of trade tokens in the United States was the era of 1870 through 1920. Generally, these tokens were issued by merchants such as general stores, grocers, department stores, dairies, meat markets, drug stores, saloons, bars, taverns, barbers, coal mines, lumber mills and other businesses. Given the type of entities that issued tokens, and the era when they were most popular, its hard to imagine a type of token that could be strongly associated with the lower Georgia Avenue area. Yet, there are some — the tokens issued by Washington’s Schuetzen Park. The park was established shortly after the Civil War and a popular destination until it closed in 1891.

(Detail of 1903 Baist’s Real Estate map showing location of Schuetzen Park. Today, Hancock Street is Kenyon Street and Morris Street is Hobart Street)

I’ve briefly touched upon the history of Schuetzen Park and the German community in the Georgia Avenue area before in digging into the history of the Steuben Monument that was once located there. That artifact is currently at the residence of the German ambassador. Schuetzen Park tokens are a little more accessible, but still not all that common. It is not entirely clear as to whether the numbers on the tokens denote monetary values or not, but three values are known. Washington Schuetzen Park tokens  are known in denominations of 5, 10, and 25. Below are two I’ve found in the 5 and 10 values.

This entry was posted on July 24, 2014 at 7:01 am and is filed under History. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Georgia Avenue corridor, history and culture, Park View