Last week, we looked at John Philip Sousa’s novel Pipetown Sandy and how it may well have been based on Sousa’s actual experiences. Today, we’ll look a little more at the geography of the book, and the central importance of the Anacostia River in its pages. Sandy Coggles’s Pipetown is pretty clearly not the actual Pipetown. […]
We have spent the last few weeks looking at the Pipetown neighborhood, its birth and demise. Pipetown had one final moment in the sun in 1905, when the name of the neighborhood was used in a book written by none other than local hero John Philip Sousa (pic). While Sousa is best-known for writing marches, […]
Yesterday morning, a whole slew of Hill residents, both young and old, gathered at Congressional Cemetery to pay tribute to one of the Hill’s favorite sons: John Philip Sousa. Born 159 years ago yesterday, he continues to exert a great influence on the Marine Band that he led for so many years: the band that […]