AS YOU EXIT the Columbia Heights Metro and emerge at 14th and Irving, you see most of the things you've become accustomed to on 14th St. In other words, scads of cars, grimy streets, bicycles that have been jacked of half their accoutrements leaving sad wheel-less skeletons. The newspaper boxes are covered in graffiti, and the signpoles tend to totter at odd angles.
It's still not necessarily a place you'd want to be after dark, and certainly a place where you'll raise eyebrows if you take out a shiny silver digital camera, wave it around and start taking pictures of...
Continue Reading "Stores in Store: What's Next for Columbia Heights?" »
WE'RE IN THE MIDST of a big transition period for several District neighborhoods. As we reported earlier this week, the opening of part of the DC USA shopping complex has put in place a big piece of the development puzzle there. In Near Southeast, crews are toiling away to prepare the new Nationals stadium for gameplay later this month. And the decision by National Public Radio to remain in the District is stirring up buzz around its selected new home at 1111 North Capitol Street NE.
Our colleague Marc Fisher took a stroll through each affected neighborhood, and his observations make for interesting reading. Click the links below to get to his full blog posts on washingtonpost.com.
» Part One — North Capitol Street: "For now, the stretch of Capitol Street where NPR intends to move is hardly what anyone would call welcoming or pleasant, and given the street's heavy car traffic, it's hard to imagine it becoming a pedestrian-friendly avenue. But if the retail envisioned for both the NPR building and the New Community across the way come to pass, a far less forbidding streetscape may emerge."
Continue Reading "A Changing City: North Capitol St., Near Southeast, Columbia Heights" »
AT THE CORNER of 9th and Q streets NW in Shaw, one of the District's many triangle parks sits waiting for upgrades.
In 2006, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, working in collaboration with the Washington Convention Center Authority and the D.C. government, announced the selection of an artist to craft a sculpture honoring Carter G. Woodson, the African-American historian and writer whose work led to the creation of Black History Month. Woodson lived in a house around the corner on 9th Street, which will be renovated by the National Park Service for use as a Woodson museum.
Continue Reading "Plans for Park Improvements in Shaw Are Stalled" »
LOTS OF ATTENTION has been focused in recent years on the emerging H Street corridor in Northeast D.C., but a project to upgrade the revitalizing boulevard will also bring benefits to a main thoroughfare through that quadrant of the city: Benning Road NE.
Construction was scheduled to start today on an effort that'll include adding new traffic signals and street lights, installing fresh curbs, gutters and sidewalks, and improving things like fire hydrants and landscaping, the Department of Transportation said in a press release. The federally funded project is expected to cost $35 million and take two years to complete.
The work is part of the city's Great Streets Initiative, a 4-year, multimillion-dollar plan to bring improvements to public corridors.
THE THIRD CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST at 16th and I streets NW has been called lots of things, many of them derisive. Add to the list a designation it received Thursday from the Historic Preservation Review Board: landmark.
Reports The Post's Paul Schwartzman:
While several preservation board members expressed reservations about the church's modernist appearance, they said the building is among the city's most significant examples of Brutalism, an architectural movement of the 1950s and 1960s that espoused the use of roughly cast concrete.The move to protect the building, designed in 1971 by architect Araldo Cossutta, came over the objections of members of the church's congregation, who say its stark exterior turns away worshipers. As it stands, only about 40-60 attend services at the church on Sundays. A friendlier structure, they say, could draw in a stronger crowd.
Others share that sentiment. The Post's Marc Fisher wrote in an Oct. 31 column:
What the preservationists don't get is that the Christian Science complex — there's also a small office building across the courtyard — is a failure, a design flaw that begs to be blown to bits.Schwartzman reports that church congregants have not yet decided whether to appeal the review board's ruling.
» "Church Gets Landmark Status Over Congregation's Objections" [WaPo]
EARLIER:
» "Which D.C. Building Deserves to Be Demolished?" [Free Ride/Express]
» "A Place Unfit for a Congregation, Much Less a Historic Designation" [Marc Fisher/WaPo]
Washington Post file photo
WHEN YOU WALK into the old Patent Office Building's F Street NW entrance just after sundown, you're immediately drawn to two very different things: Robert Mills' ancient double curving staircase and a passageway leading to a hazy bluish light.
The staircase will bring you up to the second- and third-level treasures of the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery; the azure glow beyond is the Smithsonian Institution's new signature space, the Kogod Courtyard. The Norman Foster-designed enclosure in the center of the building is the one of the last major redevelopment pieces to fit into the complex downtown jigsaw puzzle near the Verizon Center. And it jibes with the building, too — the $63 million renovation was carefully coordinated not to alter the facade of the old Greek Revival building, which dates back to the 1830s.
Continue Reading "Courtyard Project Creates Downtown Centerpiece" »
IN PETWORTH AND COLUMBIA HEIGHTS, the food and dining options have expanded considerably over the past year or so as redevelopment and neighborhood investment have spread north from the U Street corridor and east from Adams Morgan.
The newest option for Petworth? Nigerian cuisine.
As blogger Prince of Petworth notes, an empty storefront on Shepherd Street NW near Georgia Avenue now boasts sign saying that Lagos Cafe is "Opening Soon." The prospect is exciting news to some commenters on the blog, but others aren't exactly keen on Nigerian cuisine, which includes dishes like amala (a form of ground-up yam), eba (a doughy yam-based dumpling) along with items you might find at other West African and Caribbean restaurants, like fried plantains and fufu (a porridge made from root vegetables, including, you guessed it, yams).
For the yam-phobic, Columbia Heights is just a short walk away. And its restaurant scene is sprouting more mainstream dining options, including the mainstreamiest of them all: Ruby Tuesday.
Continue Reading "An Emerging Columbia Hts.-Petworth Food Split?" »
WHILE THE BLACK GRANITE WALL in West Potomac Park is a stirring physical testament to the more than 58,000 soldiers who were killed during the war in Vietnam, the memorializing of the conflict is not confined to the now-sacred Maya Lin-designed memorial.
As the Vietnam Veterans Memorial turns 25 years old, The Post's Michael E. Ruane notes that "despite the passing of time and the veterans' ascent to mainstream wealth and status, the war remains strongly with them, marking them and separating them, as war does with most who experience it."
» "Engraved in Their Minds" [WaPo]
Photos by Andrea Bruce/The Washington Post
IF WAS NEVER A QUESTION of whether the 43-year-old Orleans House restaurant in Rosslyn would close, but when.
The squatty white brick structure at the corner of Wilson Boulevard and N. Lynn Street is surrounded by towering office buildings, and the restaurant, known for offering up plenty of prime rib and its signature steamboat-shaped salad bar, has to make way for a new high-rise tower — the tallest in the area — approved earlier in the year.
As the Sun Gazette reports, the Orleans House's last day will be Dec. 31. So you have until the end of the year to steam into that salad bar.
Continue Reading "Days Are Numbered for Rosslyn's Prime Rib Hub" »
FOR DAYS NOW, the general public has been blasted with reminders about how to protect children from danger on Halloween, especially when it involves crossing the street. Next year, those efforts should be redoubled to include our animal friends, like this dog/tiger mix trying to cross M Street NW in Georgetown on Wednesday night.
Photo by Chris Combs/Express
Addison Road