The 1200 block of Cushing Place SE is deceptively calm on Sunday morning. During the week it would be impossible to get a clear view of its garages for the queue of taxicabs awaiting repair.

A hundred years ago, the block south of M Street between One-Half and First Streets SE was honeycombed with alleys. The block's central alley, which connected only to M Street, paralleled the numbered streets but had crossbars behind the buildings on M and N Streets. A secondary network of half-width alleys just 10 to 15 feet across connected the main alley to Half and First Streets, and also divided the building lots on the numbered streets into front and rear sections. This grid pattern would have facilitated the Washington custom of "backbuilding" lots, with row houses for working-class whites facing the street and jerry-built dwellings for African-Americans facing the central alley. The narrow alleys behind the Half and First Street rows would have been a necessity for removing waste from the privy behind each house.

Looking east from Half Street toward Cushing Place and the Southeast Federal Center on First Street SE. Today this alley is approximately twice its original ten foot width.

But, although the block interior was subdivided and the grid laid out, the alley dwellings were never built. In the 1930s, the long-empty interior lots began to be consolidated for industrial buildings built back-to-back with the streetfront houses. The anonymous alley then officially became the 1200 block of Cushing Place, a deadend extension of the street that connects L Street to the north side of M Street SE.

By 1959, the 1200 block of Cushing Place was lined with wholesale businesses including a glazing workshop, a wastepaper dealer, janitorial and plumbing supplies distributors, and the High's Dairy Stores warehouse. Even though residential element of the neighborhood has since withered away, these commercial buildings have remained vital as auto repair shops.

Today Cushing Place SE is one of the few Washington streets devoted to a single trade. However, it will likely soon be relegated to a service road for the commercial development that will surround the new ballpark.

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