The Western High School building in Burleith, which now houses Duke Ellington High School of the Arts, was home to the school's cadets from 1897 to the 1970s. More than a high school military unit, the main object of the cadets was character building and training in future citizenship. From the early 1930s, hundreds of sharply dressed students passed this call box as they marched down R Street from the school to practice at Western Stadium (also known as Ellington Field). These young men were members of the Washington High School Cadet Corps and participated in many public events including marching in the funeral procession for President Franklin Roosevelt. Annual competitive drills among the DC high schools in which companies of fifty young men executed seventeen marching and rifle movements, requiring at least fifty commands, were frequently won by The Western High School. The winning company captain received the coveted diamond-studded Allison Nailor medal, and his company marched off the field to "the Washington High School Cadets' March," which was specially composed by John Philip Sousa when he was stationed in Washington as director of the United States Marine Band.
In sharp contrast to the patriotism demonstrated by the cadets was the treachery of Aldrich Ames. Ames, a former CIA counterintelligence officer, spied
for the Soviet Union and Russia for about a decade, before being caught and convicted of espionage. He used a mailbox located at the northeast corner of this intersection to signal the Russians about a needed meeting by leaving a horizontal chalk mark above the United States Postal Service logo. The FBI followed this activity for months by mounting a video camera in a bird feeder in the yard of a nearby home. In 1994, Ames was sentenced to life without parole. It is believed that Ames compromised the second-largest number of CIA agents ever, second only to those betrayed by former FBI agent Robert Hansson.
This fire call box was restored in 2015 with generous donations from the residents and friends of Burleith. Sculptor and Burleith resident Jeannette Murphy created the bas-relief on the other side of this call box.
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