Government Girl

“See You at the Center”

The city’s Jewish Community Center opened here in 1926. With American Jews routinely barred from social clubs, the JCC offered a gym, swimming pool, symphony orchestra and basketball league.

During World War II, young women known as “government girls” flocked to Washington DC to work in the war agencies. The JCC ran a room registry that helped them find housing in Jewish homes that served kosher meals. For the servicemen and women stationed in the city, the JCC’s rule was “Your uniform is your admission.”

This painting is based on a January 1943 photograph by Esther Bubley of a U.S. Office of Price Administration stenographer in her Washington DC boardinghouse room (FSA/OWI Collection, Library of Congress, LC-USW3-038307-E).