Capitol View Commissioner: Kimberly Martin | |
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 Capitol View within the District of Columbia | |
| Country | United States |
| District | Washington, D.C. |
| Ward | Ward 7 |
| Constructed | 1930s |
| Government | |
| • Councilmember | Vincent C. Gray |
| https://openanc.org/ancs/districts/7e07.html | |
Capitol View is a neighborhood located in southeast Washington, D.C., in the United States. It is bounded by East Capitol Street to the north, Central Avenue SE to the southwest and south, and Southern Avenue SE to the southeast.
The area that became Capitol View was largely unsettled forest and farmland into the 1930s. By 1938, however, a large number of one- and two-story single-family detached houses and small apartment buildings had been constructed in the area. The neighborhood was almost exclusively populated by African Americans. [1] It was originally called DePriest Village. [2] As the neighborhood coalesced, it took the name Capitol View because the United States Capitol building could be seen (albeit distantly) on its western skyline.
Parts of the neighborhood became one of the city's most violent and drug-ridden areas in the 1980s and 1990s. The Capitol View neighborhood saw several large, poorly maintained public housing projects demolished in the 2010s. The government of the District of Columbia partnered with private real estate developers to construct the Capitol Gateway mixed-use development between 2000 and 2010.
The character of the Capitol View neighborhood radically changed with the construction of large public housing complexes. The first of these, the East Capitol Dwellings, began construction in 1952 as a 394-unit public housing complex. [3] By the time the complex was completed in 1955, it had expanded to 577 units and straddled both sides of East Capitol Street between 58th and 60th Street. The new housing was racially desegregated, and was one of the first public housing complexes in the city to accept both whites and blacks from its inception. [4] The East Capitol Dwellings were the city's largest public housing development into the 2000s. [5] But the East Capitol Dwellings were shoddily constructed, [6] and problems with plumbing, HVAC, and poor maintenance plagued the 40-acre (0.16 km2) city-within-a-city until its demolition in 2003. [7]
The second major public housing complex was Capitol Plaza, which opened in 1971. This complex consisted of 92 three-story townhouses and a 228-unit, 12-story high-rise apartment building located at 5901 East Capitol Street SE. [8] A small strip mall, the eight-store Capitol View Mall, opened nearby in June 1976. [9] A second major high-rise development, Capitol Plaza II, opened shortly thereafter at 5929 East Capitol Street SE. This 300-unit, 12-story apartment building was open only to senior citizens, and suffered from extensive structural and design problems that caused the plumbing, HVAC, and electrical systems to fail. [10]
Realizing that it had over-concentrated the poor in a small area, the city moved to support the construction of affordable townhouses in the Capitol View neighborhood. In September 1990, the Capitol View Townhomes project opened next to the East Capitol Dwellings. [11] These townhouses were designed to accommodate mid-size and large families. Thirty-six of the units had three bedrooms, while 35 were four-bedroom and 19 were five-bedroom homes. Backed with city financing, the Capitol View Townhouses failed to sell. In 1997, the District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA), a nonprofit called Washington Innercity Self Help, and a company known as Innovative Design Solutions partnered to transform the townhouses into public housing. The city spent $5 million rehabilitating them, and in 2001 the three organizations supported residents of the properties in forming a cooperative, the Southern Homes and Gardens Cooperative, to own and manage the 90 townhomes. Under the city's agreement with Southern Homes and Gardens, the units must be managed as low-income public housing for 40 years. Units are either owned or rented by low-income people, and residents may enter into a rent-to-own agreement. At the end of the 40-year period, the townhomes may be sold by their owners (whether residents or the cooperative) at market rates. [12]
Determined to improve its public housing stock, in 2000 DCHA applied for and won a $30.8 million grant (known as HOPE VI) from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. It demolished the East Capitol Dwellings, Capitol View Plaza, Capitol View Plaza II, and the Capitol View Townhomes, [13] and constructed Capitol Gateway—a 151-unit low-income senior citizen apartment building and 380 townhouses and single-family detached homes. [14] The townhouses and homes each cost $300,000 to construct. [15] As with Southern Homes and Gardens, DCHA sold the townhomes to low-income residents who wished to buy, entered into rent-to-own agreements with others, and leased the remaining homes to low-income families. In 2014, DCHA entered into an agreement with The Henson Companies to build the second phase of the Capitol Gateway. This $80 million project, to be constructed by The Henson Companies and real estate developer A&R Development, includes 312 low-income units in a mixed-use development. The ground floor of the property will include 20,000 square feet (1,900 m2) of retail space, and as part of the development package.
Grocery Store and Food Access
Wal-mart agreed to construct a 135,000-square-foot (12,500 m2) store adjacent to Capitol Gateway. Construction was set to begin on April 1, 2015. [14] However, amid closing 269 stores globally, Walmart announced it would not open its planned two stores- at Skyland Town Center and Capital Gateway. At the time many criticisms were leveled against Walmart by city leaders, as the planned stores were supposed to serve majority African-American populations underserved by grocery and retail stores and Walmart had already successfully built three stores in other parts of the city. [16] Many people believe that Walmart's decision not to build was due to the District's plans to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and establishment of a paid-leave program. At the time Walmart issued a statement:
In June, 2022 Mayor Muriel Bowser announced a forthcoming Giant supermarket development on site using eminent domain, saying Walmart refused to do what it stated it would do. [17]
The 1970s saw a significant rise in the sale and use of illegal narcotics in Capitol View, as well as gun-related violence. [13] As early as 1980, hundreds of dealers selling heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine, PCP lined the streets of Capitol View. The region's hilly nature allowed them to see police approaching, giving them a chance to escape across the border into Maryland, into local forested areas, or down alleys. Gunfire in the area was common, with at least three incidents each week. [18] By the late 1990s, violence was rampant in the neighborhood, and the Metropolitan Police Department called the East Capitol Dwellings one of the most violent public housing projects in the District of Columbia. [5]
In June 2009, the Capitol View neighborhood received nationwide attention after 55-year-old local woman Helen Foster-El was shot in the back and killed while attempting to rescue children at the East Capitol Dwellings caught in a crossfire between two groups of men arguing over a car. [5] Another five men were gunned down in broad daylight in the neighborhood a few weeks after her death. The District of Columbia later unsuccessfully sued gun manufacturers and distributors for millions of dollars in damages on behalf of Foster-el and others in the city killed with handguns. [15]
In the wake of the Foster-el murder, the Metropolitan Police Department changed its approach to violence in the neighborhood. Massive sweeps of drug dealers were made to break up the open-air, daylight drug markets, and drug dealing in the area declined significantly. [15] The Clay Terrace public housing project, long one of the city's most violent, [19] became a particular focus of police efforts. A no-questions-asked illegal gun depository program was implemented that recovered scores of weapons. Public housing residents with criminal records (especially drug or handgun crimes) were tracked and evicted. An anonymous text messaging site was created to allow residents to report drug dealing, gunfire, or other crimes. And an intensive city effort was made to fix street lights, clean and repair streets, and upgrade and maintain playgrounds and athletic facilities (particularly basketball courts). Crime at Clay Terrace dropped by 50 percent, and the police and city replicated its program each summer thereafter. [15]
Local residents, however, credit the rapid drop in crime throughout Capitol View to the demolition of the large public housing projects. (The drop in crime was part of a significant citywide improvement: Across the District of Columbia, homicides fell from 472 in 1990 to 88 in 2012.) Community organizations also sponsored literacy efforts to assist high school drop-outs in obtaining jobs, and the Marshall Heights Community Development Organization purchased the Capitol View Mall in an attempt to improve business and encourage job growth. [15]
In 2012 Capitol View was a relatively poor, African-American neighborhood. Ninety-six percent of the neighborhood's residents were African-American. Almost 25 percent of the neighborhood's residents are under the age of 18, and half of these children belong to families whose incomes fall below the poverty line. Median household income was just $38,500 a year, compared to $61,835 a year for the District of Columbia as a whole. The official unemployment rate was 11 percent in 2012, although the real figure is widely considered to be higher. Unemployment in the city as a whole was 6.7 percent in the same period. [15]
A number of landmarks lie on the border of the Capitol View neighborhood. The Capitol View neighborhood is dominated by East Capitol Street, a major vehicular and ceremonial thoroughfare. It is a vibrant commercial corridor, and acts as the focus of commercial life in the area.
Singer Marvin Gaye lived in the East Capitol Dwellings in the Capitol View neighborhood from about 1953 to 1962. [20] [21]
The Capitol View Neighborhood Library is located at 5001 Central Avenue SE, just outside the neighborhood's boundary on its west end.
Notable public landmarks include the Marion P. Shadd Elementary School, which was constructed in 1954. [22] It closed in 2007, and a public charter school, the Community College Preparatory Academy, opened in the structure. [23] Just behind the former Shadd Elementary School is the East Capitol Community Center, which contains an athletic field. It is maintained by the District of Columbia Department of Parks and Recreation.
W. Bruce Evans Junior High School is located adjacent to Capitol View's northern boundary at 5600 East Capitol Street NE. The school is named for W. Bruce Evans, the long-time principal at the Armstrong Manual Training School (a noted vocational-technical school for African-American youth that existed from the late 1800s to the 1950s). [24] Constructed in 1962, [25] it closed in 1996. [26] In 2007, the city renamed it the Evans Education Center, and it hosted occasional adult education classes. A public charter school, Maya Angelou High School, opened on the third floor in 2007. The charter school primarily enrolls students who are doing poorly academically, including those who have been held back a grade, are emotionally troubled, or have been incarcerated by the D.C. juvenile justice system. [27] Adjacent to the west side of the school is the Evans Recreation Center, an athletic field. (Evans Junior High School has two outdoor basketball courts and two outdoor tennis courts adjacent to the athletic field, but these are not maintained and are not open to the public.)
Capitol View is one of several neighborhoods east of the river that would benefit from the extension of the D.C. streetcar. Approximately 37,000 people live within walking distance of the originally funded system but as of 2023 construction for this segment is delayed again. Friends of the D.C. Streetcar is a local group advocacy group.
The neighborhood has one Capital Bikeshare station at 53rd & D Street SE, just outside the southern border of the neighborhood, though more could be supported. [28]
To the west of the neighborhood boundary is the Benning Road metro station. Across the border in Maryland at the neighborhood's east end is the Capitol Heights Metro station, both stations serve the Blue and Silver lines of the Washington Metro subway system.
The 2021 East Capitol Street Safety and Mobility Project includes plans to upgrade walking, cycling and transit conditions.
Southwest is the southwestern quadrant of Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, and is located south of the National Mall and west of South Capitol Street. It is the smallest quadrant of the city, and contains a small number of named neighborhoods and districts, including Bellevue, Southwest Federal Center, the Southwest Waterfront, Buzzard Point, and the military installation known as Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling.
Congress Heights is a residential neighborhood in Southeast Washington, D.C., in the United States. The irregularly shaped neighborhood is bounded by the St. Elizabeths Hospital campus, Lebaum Street SE, 4th Street SE, and Newcomb Street SE on the northeast; Shepard Parkway and South Capitol Street on the west; Atlantic Street SE and 1st Street SE on the south; Oxon Run Parkway on the southeast; and Wheeler Street SE and Alabama Avenue SE on the east. Commercial development is heavy along Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue and Malcolm X Avenue.
Sursum Corda is a small neighborhood located in Washington, D.C., bounded by North Capitol Street on the east, K Street NW to the south, New Jersey Avenue NW to the west, and New York Avenue NW to the north.
Ivy City is a small neighborhood in Northeast Washington, D.C., in the United States. About half the neighborhood is industrial or formerly industrial, dominated by warehouses. The Ivy City Yard, a railroad coach yard and maintenance facility for the passenger railroad Amtrak, is situated northwest across New York Avenue NE. Ivy City was laid out as a suburban development for African Americans in 1873. Development was slow. From 1879 to 1901, the neighborhood hosted the Ivy City Racetrack, a major horse racing facility in the District of Columbia. Construction on the rail yard began in 1907 and was complete within a year, although much of the facilities there were demolished in 1953 and 1954 as railroads switched from coal-fired locomotives to diesel-fueled or electric engines. The Alexander Crummell School, a major focal point of the community, opened in 1911. After some years of enrollment decline, it closed in 1972 but has not been demolished. The area has undergone some gentrification in the 21st century, although people living in the residential core of Ivy City remain very poor and unemployment is high.
Park View is a neighborhood in Washington, D.C., located in Northwest D.C. The neighborhood is primarily residential with its main commercial corridor of shops and restauarants located along Georgia Avenue.
So Others Might Eat (SOME) is a nonprofit organization that provides services to assist those dealing with poverty and homelessness in Washington, D.C. The organization provides affordable housing, job training, counseling and other healthcare services, and daily needs such as food and clothing to the poor and homeless. It spends the largest portion of its annual budget on affordable housing, with a majority of its residents recovering from addiction. SOME describes its mission as helping "our vulnerable neighbors in Washington, DC, break the cycle of homelessness through our comprehensive and transformative services".
Lafayette Park is a neighborhood located east of Downtown Detroit. It contains a residential area of some 4,900 people and covers 0.07 sq mi.
Barry Farm is a neighborhood in Southeast Washington, D.C., located east of the Anacostia River and bounded by the Southeast Freeway to the northwest, Suitland Parkway to the northeast and east, and St. Elizabeths Hospital to the south. The neighborhood was renowned as a significant post-Civil-War settlement of free Blacks and freed slaves established by the Freedmen's Bureau. The streets were named to commemorate the Union generals, Radical Republicans, and Freedmen's Bureau officials who advanced the rights of Black Americans during the Civil War and Reconstruction: Howard Road SE for General Oliver O. Howard; Sumner Road SE for Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner; Wade Road SE for Ohio Senator Benjamin Wade; Pomeroy Road SE for Kansas Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy; Stevens Road SE for Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, and Nichols Avenue for Henry Nichols who was the first superintendent of Saint Elizabeth's Hospital. The neighborhood name is not a reference to the late former mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry, but coincidentally has the same spelling.
The Southwest Waterfront is a neighborhood in Southwest Washington, D.C. The Southwest quadrant is the smallest of Washington's four quadrants, and the Southwest Waterfront is one of only two residential neighborhoods in the quadrant; the other is Bellevue, which, being east of the Anacostia River, is frequently, if mistakenly, regarded as being in Southeast.
Bellevue is a residential neighborhood in far Southeast and Southwest in Washington, D.C., United States. It is bounded by South Capitol Street, one block of Atlantic Street SE, and 1st Streets SE and SW to the north and east; Joliet Street SW and Oxon Run Parkway to the south; Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, Shepherd Parkway, 2nd Street SW, and Xenia Street SW to the west. Bellevue was created from some of the earliest land patents in Maryland, and draws its name from a 1795 mansion built in the area. Subdivisions began in the 1870s, but extensive residential building did not occur until the early 1940s. Bellevue is adjacent to a number of federal and city agency buildings.
Washington Highlands is a residential neighborhood in Southeast Washington, D.C., in the United States. It lies within Ward 8.
Northeast Boundary is small neighborhood located in the northeast quadrant of Washington, D.C., in the United States. Along with the Capitol View neighborhood, it is the easternmost neighborhood of the District of Columbia.
Greenway is a residential neighborhood in Southeast Washington, D.C., in the United States. The neighborhood is bounded by East Capitol Street to the north, Pennsylvania Avenue SE to the south, Interstate 295 to the west, and Minnesota Avenue to the east.
Marshall Heights is a residential neighborhood in Southeast Washington, D.C. It is bounded by East Capitol Street, Central Avenue SE, Southern Avenue, Fitch Street SE, and Benning Road SE. It was an undeveloped rural area occupied by extensive African American shanty towns, but the neighborhood received nationwide attention after a visit by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1934, which led to extensive infrastructure improvements and development for the first time. In the 1950s, Marshall Heights residents defeated national legislation designed to raze and redevelop the neighborhood. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom visited the area in 1991, at a time when Marshall Heights was in the throes of a violent crack cocaine epidemic. Limited redevelopment has occurred in the neighborhood, which was the site of two notorious child murders in 1973.
River Terrace is an urban cul-de-sac neighborhood in Northeast Washington, D.C., on the eastern bank of the Anacostia River. River Terrace is Washington, DC's only planned unit development that has an unimpeded connection to and relationship with the Anacostia River.
Woodland is a small residential and industrial neighborhood in Southeast Washington, D.C. Woodland lies in Washington's Ward 8, among the poorest and least developed of the city's wards. Like the neighborhoods around it, Woodland is almost exclusively African American. Woodland is bounded by Ainger Place SE to the north; Alabama Avenue SE and Knox Place SE to the east; Hartford Street SE to the south; and Langston Place SE, Raynolds Place SE, and Erie Street SE to the southwest. Fort Stanton Park forms the northwest and northern border of the neighborhood.
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Arthur Capper/Carrollsburg was a housing project on Capitol Hill in Southeast Washington, D.C., bounded by Virginia Avenue, M Street, 2nd Street, and 5th Street, SE. Arthur Capper was known to the residents as "Capers." First built in 1958, the project consisted of the Arthur Capper Senior, Arthur Capper Family, and Carrollsburg Family developments, and housed 707 households. The project's architect was Hilyard Robinson. It was named for Kansas Senator Arthur Capper who, as chair of the District of Columbia Committee, helped create the first housing authority in D.C.
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Places adjacent to Capitol View (Washington, D.C.) | |
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