Park View, Washington, D.C.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Map of Washington, D.C., with Park View highlighted in red

Park View is a neighborhood in central Washington, D.C., immediately north of Howard University. It is situated in the Northwest quadrant of the city and bordered by Park Place and the Armed Forces Retirement Home (known in the neighborhood by its historic name, the Old Soldiers' Home) to the east, Harvard Street to the south, Sherman Avenue to the west, and New Hampshire Avenue and Rock Creek Church Road to the north. The name of the neighborhood comes from its views west into the campus of Old Soldiers' Home . At the time Park View was developed, and well into the 1960s, the Home's grounds were open to the public as a park. Those grounds were a designed urban landscape, including pedestrian paths and ponds, modelled along the principles of New York's Central Park. Indeed, when the Home's campus was developed into a public park in the later 1880s, it often was compared to Central Park. (The neighborhood has also been referred to by some inhabitants as "East Bethesda.")

Politically, Park View is in D.C.'s Ward 1.

A solidly residential community, Park View is a quiet corner of the city, one in which the recent trend toward gentrification has only recently found a foothold. Its one commercial corridor, Georgia Avenue, is somewhat seedy, with a generous share of strip clubs and liquor stores. But the recent addition of a sit-down restaurant, Temperance Hall, and a yoga studio, Yogahouse,have reignited interest in the neighborhood. The Lamont Street Lofts at Lamont St. and Georgia Ave. offers probably the only genuine loft-space dwellings in the city. Further, a new charter school promises to build a new facility at Georgia Avenue and Otis Place.

The neighborhood itself is well maintained and pleasantly suburban, populated mostly by lower-middle and middle-class African Americans. Park View Elementary School, a major community anchor, is one of the most consistent and highly regarded public elementary schools in Washington.