Shaw is a neighborhood located in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. It is roughly bounded by M Street, NW or Massachusetts Avenue NW to the south; New Jersey Avenue, NW to the east; Florida Avenue, NW to the north; and 11th Street, NW to the west. The area also includes the U Street Corridor, which is the commercial hub of the Shaw area, extending westward to 16th Street NW.
Florida Avenue marks the northern boundary with the adjacent neighborhoods of Columbia Heights and LeDroit Park. The area consists of gridded streets lined with small Victorian rowhouses. It is dominated by Howard University and the shops and theatres along U Street, 14th Street in the Logan Circle area, and centered along 7th Street NW, the original commercial hub of the area prior to redevelopment in the wake of the 1968 riots and Green Line Metrorail construction.
Shaw is sometimes considered to include Logan Circle, Truxton Circle, and other neighborhoods east of 16th Street and north of Downtown Washington, D.C., but in recent years those neighborhoods have become seen as separate entities.
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Shaw grew out of freed slave encampments in the rural outskirts of Washington City. Originally called "Uptown", in an era when the city's boundary ended at "Boundary Street" (now Florida Avenue), in the Urban Renewal Era the neighborhood began to be referred to as Shaw because of the neighborhood Junior High School named after Civil War Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commander of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.
The neighborhood thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the pre-Harlem center of African American intellectual and cultural life. Howard Theological Seminary received its first matriculates in 1866; by 1925, Professor Alain LeRoy Locke was advancing the idea of "The New Negro", and Langston Hughes was descending from LeDroit Park to hear the "sad songs" of 7th Street. The most famous Shaw native to emerge from this period—sometimes called the Harlem Renaissance—was Duke Ellington.
Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, riots erupted in many D.C. neighborhoods, including Shaw, Columbia Heights, and the H Street, NE corridor. The 1968 Washington, D.C. riots marked the beginning of a decline in population and development that would condemn much of the inner city to a generation of economic decay.
Shaw is a mostly residential neighborhood of 19th century Victorian row houses. The architecture of these houses, Shaw's central location, and the stability of D.C.'s housing market have transformed the neighborhood through gentrification.[1] Shaw's notable place in African American history has made the recent influx of affluent professionals particularly controversial.
Shaw is served by the Mt. Vernon Square Metro, Shaw – Howard University and U Street Green Line Metro stations.
Among Shaw's many landmarks are Ben's Chili Bowl, the Lincoln Theatre, Shiloh Baptist Church, the Twelfth Street YMCA Building, and the north portion of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
Since 2001, a number of Ethiopian restaurants and retail businesses have either opened or moved from nearby Adams Morgan into Shaw, settling in particular on the once desolate block of 9th Street, NW between U and T Streets. This influx of Ethiopians has revitalized the corridor, prompting members of the Ethiopian American community to lobby the city government to officially designate the block as "Little Ethiopia". Although no formal legislation was proposed, Shaw residents, have expressed opposition to the idea, feeling that such a designation would unfairly isolate that area from the historically African American Shaw.[2]
District of Columbia Public Schools operates public schools.
District of Columbia Public Library operates the Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Community Library.[3]
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