Kingman Park, Washington, D.C.
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Kingman Park is a large neighborhood in Northeast Washington, D.C. Its proximity to Capitol Hill has led some zealous real estate agents to coin it as "East Capitol Hill," but the neighborhood has a history and identity of its own.
Kingman Park's boundaries are 15th Street NE to the west; East Capitol Street to the south; Benning Road to the north; and 19th Street, 21st Street, and Oklahoma Avenue to the east. Historically, Kingman Park stretched all the way east to the Anacostia River; however, when RFK Stadium was built in 1961, much of the neighborhood was bulldozed to build parking for the stadium.
The residents of Kingman Park have fought hard to maintain the neighborhood's status as a quiet, residential enclave of mostly African American families (many of whom have lived in the neighborhood for decades). RFK Stadium has proved the largest challenge to that character, playing host to raucous crowds at sporting events and rock concerts; in a particularly controversial move, RFK's parking lots were the site of a Grand Prix event in 2002. But the active and influential Kingman Park Civic Association has won a number of other important victories. In 1978 they successfully prevented the Washington Metro from building an Oklahoma Avenue station, which residents argued would unnecessarily create traffic problems for both automobiles and pedestrians. More recently, in [1996]], Kingman Park fended off a proposed theme park for two islands in the Anacostia River. Instead, those islands have been developed into a nature preserve.
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