A Few Words (Alright a Lengthy Little Bit) on U Street's Past

The first time I came out of the metro at the U Street/Cardozo stop I was completely disoriented. I had gotten on the metro at Foggy Bottom, in the middle of the downtown area of concrete and character-less buildings swamped with commuters and had emerged to see green grass, colorful little row houses and not a soul in sight. Lacking an iPhone or any means of a GPS device I went to the nearest street corner and saw quite the sight. Approaching from the next block was a gaggle of women in traditional African clothing complete with headdresses and bright colors walking behind a young white guy dressed in skinny black jeans, a neon shirt, and oversized glasses walking a miniature little dog on a jeweled leash. I must have looked like a deer in the headlights, for without any prompt he looked up at me and said, “If you walk two blocks that way, you’ll see the 9:30 club, it’s the one with radio towers.” and then he continued walking on his way. What neighborhood is this? And how did these African-American women and hipsters come to be coexisting on the same block? Just like most neighborhoods, the hipsters were definitely not there first. A little time spent checking out Wikipedia, and various New York Times and Washington Post articles thrown in with a few walking tour maps of the area revealed U Street’s storied past.

The U street corridor, located within the Shaw neighborhood has seen a great many radical changes over the last few centuries. The neighborhood was mainly white and middle class prior to 1900, but as DC became more segregated U Street turned into a fashionable area for African Americans. Black business owners transformed the area into an entertainment hotspot, full of theaters, coffee shops and jazz clubs creating hangout spots for Duke Ellington and attracting performers such as Louis Armstrong, Billy Holiday and Miles Davis. In fact, prior to 1920, U Street was home to the largest African American community, before Harlem took its place in the rankings.

This prosperity lasted well into the 1960’s until MLK Jr. was assassinated, the catalyst for the 1968 DC Riots. For four days rioters essentially burned down the U Street corridor along with sections of Columbia Heights and H street NE devastating this part of the city’s economy. Following the riots affluent residents moved out, property values dropped and businesses failed. The area became a hub for drug dealers filling the streets with addicts thus creating an unsafe and crime-ridden area for all.

It wasn’t until the mid-1990’s that gentrification began with the construction of the metro stop that created a connection between U Street, downtown and the suburbs. When the metro stop opened, thousands of luxury condos were constructed which led to a proliferation of boutiques, art galleries, restaurants and nightclubs. Since most of affluent families had already fled to the suburbs and established communities outside the District, a younger set, attracted by low rents moved into the U street area.

The U Street corridor today is not so much bohemian as it is an intersection between young creative professionals and the historic African-American community. Richard Lloyd discusses, in the early chapters of his book Neo-Bohemia, how Greenwich Village became a hotbed for bohemian culture within a larger immigrant community, “nestled among recently arrived huddled masses whose yearning to be free were frustrated by a reality of gross inequality, the Village was a hotbed of both artistic experimentation and radical politics, strains of which co-existed temperamentally with each other” (55). New York was a collection of immigrants from different nations as well as young politically active students and artists. However, DC is a radically different city from New York. The inhabitants of U Street in the early half of the 20^th century were African Americans who had lived within the District since the mid 19^th century. Immigrants in the area came from Ethiopia, and assimilated into the African-American populations already established there. The politically active citizens were not a subset that found their way into the community, rather U Street was already a vibrant community that became the center of the Civil Rights Movement in DC established by those who were already a part of the community. There was no need for external young bohemians for the social and political minds existed within the U Street Community.

However, as the neighborhood slid into disrepair in the late 1960’s these minds became lost in the fabric of U Street. As the cultural centers of New York and California began to flourish as a place for bohemian minds; U Street was lost to drugs during a time of great social and political upheaval. In a sense, U Street missed out on becoming a center of radical change from and for the African-American community during this time.

By the early 1990’s, the area had bottomed out, the crack epidemic was brought under control contributing to a decrease in drug trafficking and the area became a breeding ground for developers with real estate prices lower than low. As more condos were built more businesses were started. Real estate prices crept up but were still low enough for first-time business owners and college students. The neighborhood became a center for new ideas, but not those typically associated with bohemians. Instead U Street became a hot spot for young entrepreneurs eager to draw young people into their shops and restaurants, creating an entirely new neighborhood catering to a young hip upwardly mobile population.

As usual gentrification has a down side. With residential rents on the rise and restaurants and night clubs opening to cater to this new wealthier cliental there is a risk that U-street could begin to look like every other metrosexual stomping ground. However, prices have yet to go through the roof and smaller fast food restaurants, such as The Greek Spot and Chix have sprung up, each with the goal of feeding people quickly and cheaply, albeit one a bit healthier than the other. The future of U Street is quite unclear; will the area continue to increase in value? Thus attracting only established college grads in the 25-35 year old category plus able to afford it. Or will the recession manage to slow it’s metamorphosis down . No one I spoke to while visiting the area had a handle on the areas absolute direction, I certainly can’t say definitively, but these are questions I explored while visiting some restaurants on the U Street Corridor. I hope that throughout this post I was able to shed some light upon how the hipster and the African women came to be walking down the same block on a warm evening in September ’09.