The
H Street Corridor is a commercial and residential
district in the heart of the Near
Northeast neighborhood (also known as Old City, Capitol Hill
North, and Cap Valley) in northeast Washington,
D.C.
History
The H Street neighborhood was one of Washington's earliest and
busiest
commercial districts,
and was the location of the first
Sears
Roebuck store in Washington, but it went into decline after
World War II. Businesses in the
corridor were severely damaged during the
1968 riots and did not start to
recover until the 21st century.
In 2002, the District of Columbia Office of Planning initiated a
community-based planning effort to help revitalize the corridor.
Because it is nearly long, the resulting H Street NE Strategic
Strategic Development Plan divided H Street into 3 districts: the
Urban Living district (between 2nd and 7th Streets NE), the Central
Retail District (between 7th and 12th Streets NE), and the Arts and
Entertainment District (between 12th and 15th Streets NE).
Geography
The area is in the Northeast Quadrant of Washington, east of Union
Station. Its approximate boundaries are 2nd Street to the west,
15th Street to the east, G Street to the south, and K Street to the
north.
H Street NW
In
Northwest Washington, H
Street is the main street in Chinatown
and one of the major east-west streets
downtown. When Pennsylvania Avenue
in front of the White House
was closed to vehicular traffic in the 1990s,
crosstown traffic that had formerly used Pennsylvania Avenue was
rerouted to H and I streets. The street also passes Lafayette Park and through the George
Washington University
campus and the Foggy
Bottom neighborhood before terminating at Rock Creek.
H Streets SW and SE
The
city
plan on which D.C. was laid out provides for a parallel H
Street in the southwest and southeast quadrants of the city.
Subsequent government actions, most notably the construction of
I-395/
I-295,
disconnected the southern H Street in several places.
In its current form,
it does not run consecutively for more than two blocks at any point
except for its easternmost extremity, near Fort Dupont
Park
.
Economy
Real estate
The median sales price of houses July–September 2009 was
$417,000.
Education
Schools include:
- J. O. Wilson Elementary
- Stuart-Hobson Middle School
- Eastern Senior High School
Culture
In the mid-2000s, the Arts and Entertainment District began to
revitalize as a nightlife district. The Atlas Theater – a
Moderne-style 1930s movie theater that had
languished since the 1968 riots – was refurbished as a dance studio
and performance space, and is now the anchor of what is now being
called the
Atlas District.
H Street
NE became home to the H Street Playhouse
, a black-box
theater where Theater Alliance and Forum Theatre are in residence; live
music venues, such as the Red and the Black and the Rock & Roll
Hotel; and restaurants and bars such as the Argonaut, Showbar
Presents the Palace of Wonders, the Pug, and H Street Martini
Lounge.
Media
In December 2007, the area was profiled in
The New York Times.
Infrastructure
H Street has been selected as one of the initial locations for the
new
DC Streetcars; tracks are currently
being installed and service is expected by 2011.
Notable residents
Notable residents include:
References
-
http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/travel/16DayOut.html?ex=1355461200&en=d7d4396870d6a3a7&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
External links
- Meet Me On H Street: A Guide to Nightlife in the
Atlas District", Washingtonian, September 26 2007.
-
http://www.bakerprojects.com/hstreetne/pdf/1_H_St_2ContextHistory_lr.pdf
- H Street NE Strategic Development Plan
- H Street at the Great Streets website
- Frozen Tropics: A look at what's going on in Trinidad, on
H Street and in the larger area north of Capitol Hill
- "DDOT: Reconstruction of H Street NE"
- "Winds of Change Blow Uneasily on H Street",
April 4, 2006, The Washington
Post
- "Whose H Street Is It, Anyway?", April 4, 2006,
The Washington Post
- "Turning Northeast's H Street into Main
Street", February 9, 2006, The Washington Post
- "H Street NE, the Next Hot Spot" June 11, 2004,
The Washington Post
- "Road to a Retail Makeover" June 25, 2007,
The Washington Post
- "H Street
Festival" September 15, 2007, Festivalonh.org - Raphael
Marshall and Kwasi Frye
- [191242] - January 2009