Historical Photos

The building was originally owned by John C. Walker, who designed it in 1920 to showcase automobiles produced by LaFayette Motors. That same year, Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States, Prohibition was just beginning, and the Women’s Suffrage Movement succeeded in securing women's right to vote. The events depicted on this page occurred either at 1517 Connecticut Avenue, on the building’s ground floor, or at 1519 Connecticut Avenue, which occupies the upper two levels.

1920

The Beginning

John C. Walker & LaFayette Motors

1922

Jenkins & Packard

Warren G. Harding- 29th President Of The United States

Packard Showroom- 1517

1923

First Motion Picture Broadcast in History

The Evening Star, June 15, 1923

Casper Sunday Morning Tribune, June 17, 1923

Washington Times, January 28, 1924

1924

Herbert Hoover Wireless Photos

Herbert C. Hoover- Secretary Of Commerce & 31st President Of The United States

From left: Jenkins, Hiram Percy Maxim of the ARRL, and Major O Squire, c1925.

1925

First Public Demonstration of Television

1926

Radio Fights Back

Television and the Government

7th October 1926: "Prominent members of third radio conference called by Hoover posed standing left to right: C. Francis Jenkins, inventor of radio vision; David Sarnoff of RCA; Major General George O. Squier formerly of Signal Corps; and Secretary of Commerce [later President] Herbert Hoover."

Locomobile Showroom- 1517

1927

First Slow Motion Camera Invented

Chronoteine camera

Robert Tyre Jones Jr. famously used Jenkins camera to perfect his golf swing.

Scientists used the camera to study the motion of a pigeons wings. And to see whether or not pigeons actually crash into each other when they take flight. Yes, it turns out that they do.

1928

First Daily Television Program

Here, Jenkins is directing one of the very first television productions.

Jenkins Television Corporation

First Television For Home Use

Radiovisor (1928)
Invented by Charles Francis Jenkins, the Radiovisor was the first home television. It employed a spinning Nipkow disc to mechanically scan and reconstruct moving images. The resulting picture was extremely small—about the size of a postage stamp—and viewed through a magnifying lens, which enlarged the image to 6" × 6".
Sold to consumers for reception of nightly broadcasts from Jenkins’s station W3XK, it brought regular television programming into the home for the first time and stands as a landmark in the history of television technology. The Smithsonian Institution has described the Radiovisor as the “first television for home use.”

People Watching the Jenkins Television Show on Jenkins-Manufactured TV Sets

North Pole Aeronautical Exhibit- 1517

1928 4AT-B Ford Trimotor- Now at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan

1929

First Televised Presidential Inauguration

March 4th

1930

Marmon Showroom- 1517

1932

Ford Trucks Exhibit

1934

In early 1934, Charles Jenkins, suffering from poor health, was forced to close his historic television studio and laboratory at 1519 Connecticut Avenue. He passed away a few months later, on June 6, 1934, and was laid to rest at St. Paul's Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

JENKINS LABORATORY STAFF
Standing, left to right: Stuart Jenks, Elwood Russey, Vera Hunter, John Ogle, and Paul Thomsen.
Seated, left to right: Sybil Almand Windridge, Charles Francis Jenkins, and Florence Anthony Clark.

Jenkins obituary (washington post)

St. Paul's Website