For decades, duckpins was the name of the game in the District
I have a vague, phantom memory of a bowling alley in Washington located in the Greenway neighborhood at the intersection of Minnesota Avenue and East Capitol Street NE. I am 70 years old and cannot find anyone to affirm or deny that that was real.
— James Aukard, Washington
I love all things D.C. I recently bought a nostalgic T-shirt with a bowling alley design that mentions the New Recreation Alleys at 918 G St. NW. What can Answer Man tell me about that?
— Dan Kirby, Arlington
The 1944 phone book for the District of Columbia listed more than 30 bowling alleys in Washington and its close-in suburbs. The lanes included such magical-sounding places as the Hi-Skor Bowling Alleys at 719 13th St. NW, King Pin Bowling Alleys at 1309 Rhode Island Ave. NE, and the Queen Pin Bowling Alleys at 509 Eighth St. SE.
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And, yes, there were also the New Recreation Alleys at Ninth and G, and Greenway Bowl at 3540 East Capitol St.
Those two alleys had something in common, or rather, someone: Morris Cafritz. Before Cafritz became one of the city’s biggest real estate developers, he was known as the Bowling King of Washington. He opened his first lanes in 1915 with a loan from his grocer father.
Cafritz’s New Recreation Bowling Alleys opened in 1919. The establishment featured 20 alleys: 10 each on the building’s second and third floors. Another 10 lanes were added in 1937.
These were duckpin lanes, the most common type of bowling in Washington at the time. The city was a hotbed of the duckpin scene. Multiple bowling leagues kept alleys full most nights, as teams from various industries battled each other. There were leagues for government workers, laundrymen, sportswriters, jewelers, real estate agents. (Cafritz sponsored a team in that one.)
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In 1933, New Recreation was home to a mixed-gender league of department store employees. Eight teams competed, each with three men and two women. Team captains had to be female.
As alley manager “Pop” Halley explained to a newspaper: “The ladies do things right. They’re willing to get out and work and can they make the men turn out? Well, now, you know how it is. When they tell the men to show up, the men show up because those girls are willing to get out and work.”
Greenway Bowl opened on April 1, 1942. Greenway was a new neighborhood of low-priced apartments aimed at the war workers who were swelling the city’s population. Its developer? Morris Cafritz.
In its ads, Greenway promised 28 Brunswick alleys (“the finest money can buy”), year-round air-conditioning, adjacent parking, fluorescent lighting and modern amplification (“easy on the nerves!”).
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As with other recreations in the nation’s capital — theaters, soda fountains, the amusement park at Glen Echo — bowling alleys were segregated. Answer Man suspects only White bowlers rolled balls at Greenway and New Recreation, though the young men who manually set up the pins and returned the balls — known as pinsetters or pinboys — were likely to be Black.
African Americans participated in duckpin bowling at lanes such as the Casino at Ninth and U street NW and the Masonic Temple lanes at 10th and U. One of the District’s preeminent Black team was called the Victors.
The New Recreation Alleys closed in 1945 when the space was leased to the Red Cross. Its closure prompted an outpouring of nostalgia among those who trod the “mapleways,” as wags dubbed shiny, wooden bowling lanes.
“Many a tall bowling yarn was spun at the Rec among old-timers,” wrote the Evening Star, “but probably the oddest happening ever witnessed in a bowling alley occurred when a pin thrown from the back of the row of seats jammed with spectators watching the Atlantic Coast doubles tournament in 1936 hit Astor Clarke in the head as the country’s No. 1 bowler rose from the bench to bowl.”
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The pin had been thrown by a pinsetter to replace one that had split. Clarke laughed it off.
New Recreation may have closed, but Greenway soldiered on. It lasted through the onslaught of television, the Hula Hoop, video arcades and other rivals for patrons’ attention. In the 1980s it changed its name to Fun Bowl, but most people still called it Greenway.
By then, the American Bowling Congress encouraged the term “bowling center” rather than “bowling alley.” It was felt that “alley” had a negative connotation. The industry also suggested that “gutter” be replaced by “channel.”
Whatever you called it, when Greenway/Fun Bowl closed in 1987, it was the last public bowling alley in the District. The sport has made a comeback in the District since then, but the game is 10-pin, the bruising older brother of duckpins.
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