Dana Ellyn                                        www.danaellyn.com

The multi-story building across the street at 1301 U St. NW named The Ellington (in honor of Duke Ellington), is the Jean Toomer House Site. Jean Toomer was such an important inspiration to Hurston that she actually traveled to his ancestral family home in Georgia with Langston Hughes in 1927. Hughes, inspired by Toomer's example, wrote a series of poems about life on 7th Street that because his second book of poems. Hurston met Toomer while living in D.C., and they were both members of a literary salon, The Saturday Nighters."
http://www.wdchumanities.org/docs/Zora%20Neale%20Hurston%20Tour.pdf