In case you missed the last 6A meeting here is a sort of press release on a drive to get H Street its own heritage trail:
Efforts are underway by a group of citizens to fill one of Cultural Tourism DC's last remaining slots for a Heritage Trail along H Street. This is a two-year process, and the group is asking for any parties interested in the project to please contact Thomas Gallo at gallo4343@hotmail.com who is compiling a centralized list of contacts. The first step is building strong support from the community, as Cultural Tourism DC is not interested in putting a Heritage Trail into a community that does not show support for it. Also appreciated, of course, are any accounts of the history of H Street that you may have: pictures, stories, newspaper clippings, etc.The group will be looking to have it's first meeting by summer's end, in which Cultural Tourism will make a presentation to the community about the Heritage Trails and the (approximately) two-year process that goes into establishing one on H Street. Again, if at all interested, please email Thomas at gallo4343@hotmail.com. If you have any questions about the process, feel free to call (202) 286-4343.
12 comments:
rockcreek's photostream has a few VERY old photos of H street and swampoodle.
you have to dig through them, but they even have two google maps that currently indicate cemetaries that haven't been there for over 100 years. there's a cool pic of 618 H street. it was the first house in dc to have a bay window.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/57668330@N00/
If these means there will be more restrictions on the character of the new buildings on H street I'm totally against this.. Turning H street into some sort of Old Town Alexandria would be a huge mistake.
Now, having said that, if it means making an effort to post historical information about the history of the area as is sporadically located on U street, then it could be a good thing.
check out their website.
it doesn't mean new restrictions on buildings.
having said that... it might be a good idea to impose restrictions on new buildings.
which might happen anyway, if swathes of H street get incorporated into the cap hill historic district....
It would be a bad idea to put any restrictions on building on H street.
People want millions for their bombed out vacant storefronts.
If someones buys tham and wants to tear them down and build up that should be an option.
Otherwise it will be even longer before things are built.
Creating some historic district is a bad idea on H street.
Let it go where it will.
They already let them build a strip mall with a parking lot on it. How much worse could it get than that?
Anon 4:15: It's the very fact that people that have the bombed out vacant storefronts want millions for them that's why they stay vacant and bombed out.
There's no incentive to sell if the owners of vacant properties on H believe that if they wait enough years, the big payoff (a la the 600 block of H) for many millions of dollars will eventually come when the entire block gets bought out for a monolithic structure. It even makes it worth it to them to eat the vacant property tax.
Apparently this attitude has been thwarted in other places by the reclassification of an area as a historic district -- blocks don't get bought out en masse for millions anymore, so the owners of bombed-out properties won't have an incentive to sit on them for forever and ever and ever.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that that's sufficient justification to create a new historic district around H, or incorporate H into an existing one. I'm not persuaded that's the way to go -- there are a number of arguments for doing it and a number of arguments for not doing it. I just think that your particular point is exactly backwards.
Curtis - What's on U Street is a Heritage Trail. That's exactly what's being discussed here. Historic District designation is a totally separate process, not related to this.
Yes, this is similar to what they have on U Street. The historic district thing is a totally separate campaign.
On a different topic- I just got an email announcing that the DC Pedestrian Master Plan Survey results are in and NY Ave and Florida Ave made some of the most frequently cited need for improvement responses.
See results at
http://www.tooledesign.com/projects/dc/reports.html#pri
Looks like the Master Plan itself will be released in the fall.
A H Street Heritage Trail would be an excellent! With all the new development and occasional fears of completely erasing the street's past with new expansion, what better way than to celebrate and build it into the new appearance?
Linden Place Dweller
Thanks for everyone that got back to me. To answer a few questions, there is nothing related to a historic district in this process. There will be no restrictions set in place. We're just aiming to place a few well thought-out signs at various points along H Street ala Columbia Heights, Barracks Row, and U Street.
What is to celebrate about a Sears, and a riot?
A fluffy history in a sound bite poster is just more graffiti on DC streets.arqkyp
anonymous 8:09-
wow. you've obviously done a ton of research on the neighborhood. soo glad you chimed in.
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