Lost Capitol Hill: Henry Tripp, Wheelwright

While cleaning up after sending in the manuscript for my latest book to my editor, I discovered that I had overlooked one of the manufacturers on the Hill when I went through them recently. Though this factory is over in southwest, and thus a bit off my patch, the items produced were interesting enough to merit research.

In the 1884 book Historical and Commercial Sketches of Washington and Environs: Our Capital City, “The Paris of America”; Its Prominent Places and People etc etc. one of the entries is for Henry Tripp, who is a wheelwright, i.e. one who makes and repairs wooden wheels. According to the entry, Tripp did much more than that: he also enjoyed the best “reputation for the excellence of his wagons, carts and buggies.”

Henry Tripp was born in Germany on February 17, 1841. He trained as a blacksmith and married, then emigrated in 1862. He settled in DC, and opened his shop in 1866. It was not an elaborate establishment to begin with, but his hard and careful work soon built it up into a flourishing enterprise. It included all manner of blacksmithing, as well as the building of wheels and the aforementioned “wagons, carts and buggies.” Along the way, he and his wife Anna had seven children. The oldest son, Henry Jr., followed his father into the business.

Tripp lived at 3 Virginia Avenue SW, right on the corner of East South Capitol Street. His business was right next door at number 5. It was a perfectly good arrangement until 1875, when nieces and nephews of the deceased previous owner of the property came over from Scotland to demand what they felt was their rightful inheritance. Fortunately, the lawsuit they pressed against the heirs who had received the property went nowhere, and Tripp –who was named in the suit– could stay.

A few years later, he built further dwellings just north of his shop. They were described as “plain but well built” in the National Republican.

The only fly in Tripp’s ointment seems to have been the railroad, which ran right past his house on Virginia Avenue, and which the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad insisted on expanding from a simple track into yards with 11 tracks. This was contrary to the conditions placed on the use of Virginia Avenue by the original owners. Maps from later years show no change in the use of the tracks here, so apparently Tripp’s complaints went nowhere.

St Johannes church, in a 1903 sketch from the Washington Post (WashingtPost.com)

Tripp, for his part, eventually retired and became the secretary of the German American Building Association. A few years thereafter, at the young age of 59, Tripp died. His wife had predeceased him the previous year. Both were eulogized at the church to which they had belonged their whole tenure in D.C.: the German-speaking St. Johannes Church in southwest. Located just a few blocks from Tripp’s home, on the east side of 4-1/2 street between C and D Streets, it had been founded in 1855 to see to the spiritual needs of the District’s German-speaking population. Tripp had joined shortly after coming to D.C., and was well-known as one of its longest-standing members. They were both buried in Prospect Hill Cemetery.

While both Tripp and his wife died tragically young, his children were made of sterner stuff: When Margaret Tripp passed in 1971 at age 96, she was survived by four siblings, one of whom was well over 100 years of age.

No trace of Tripp’s homes (or his church, for that matter) remain today, having been replaced by buildings that give a bad name to faceless office blocks. The trains tracks that gave him such trouble remain, however.