Anacostia, DC
(scroll down to skip the narrative and just get the pictures)
Anacostia is one of the dwindling number of DC neighborhoods that some might still call a ghetto, although it's a much healthier place today than it was in the really bad years of the 20th Century. This thread will be a short tour of the place. But first let me show you where Anacostia is. Outside DC, many people refer to the entire section of the city east of the Anacostia River as "Anacostia." And although it's hard to deny that's an easier nickname than "East of the River," it's incorrect. Technically only a single neighborhood bears the name.
Actual Anacostia, occasionally called Old Anacostia or Downtown Anacostia, started off as an independent suburb of Washington. In 1854 it was incorporated as the city of Uniontown, DC. During the 19th Century the District of Columbia had multiple different jurisdictions within its borders, more like a small state than a single city. There were the cities of Washington, Georgetown, Alexandria, and Uniontown. In 1847 the parts of DC south of the Potomac River were given over to Virginia, but Washington, Georgetown, and Uniontown remained separate jurisdictions within DC until 1878, when they consolidated into a single municipality and became the DC we know and love today.
Anacostia remained a middle class suburb through the streetcar era until the late 1950s. But white flight was especially bad for the place, and it spent the latter half of the 20th Century as one of DC's worst and most notorious ghettos.
Today, all the East of the River neighborhoods still remain poorer and less happening than the rest of DC. But it's not really the ghetto anymore, especially Anacostia, where there are a handful of artist spaces, restaurants, and even new buildings.
Let's start on the main street, MLK Avenue.
You've heard know the joke, right? It's no Connecticut Avenue, but neither is it a warzone.
Yes, that's a really big chair.
Turn the corner onto the other commercial street, Good Hope Road. It's less developed than MLK, with more empty storefronts. Although these pictures are from Sunday so some of these places are just closed.
The rest of the neighborhood is predominantly residential. It's an eclectic mix of garden apartments, rowhouses, and detached houses.
Probably the most famous thing in Anacostia is the Frederick Douglass house. It's a
national park, and sits on a prominent hill.
The Douglass house enjoys broad vistas of central DC. Pardon the cell phone quality of this. The cluster of buildings on the left is Rosslyn, VA. Then to the right of them you can see the Washington Monument, pointing above all else. Moving to the right you then see the smokestacks of a power plant in the mid-ground, and the towers of the National Cathedral in the background. At the right edge just before the tree is the US Capitol dome.
And that's Anacostia. Or at least one afternoon worth of pictures of it, anyway.