10th anniversary post: Still sillypants

In contrast to 2013, Washington's Stanton Park remains open

DISCLAIMER: Also in contrast to 2013, I now have a son who works for a federal contractor. So this has become personal!

Ten years ago, I wrote two posts about the U.S. government shutdown, one about the difficulty of knowing when essential conversations about our common life are open and fair to all, and the other a pictorial reflection about being in Washington during the early days of the shutdown. "Some people," said a mother to her daughter explaining why there was a wee fence around Stanton Park, "are being sillypants."

That little girl must be 12 or 13 now, and presumably maturing in an age-appropriate way. That is less clear for congressional Republicans. This week I returned to Washington during another game of congressional chicken over federal budgeting. (I'm not ambulance chasing--really! Both years I was representing Coe College at the October meeting of Capitol Hill Internship Program advisers.) As it happened, the threat of a shutdown seems to have been averted Saturday, or at least postponed for 45 days, and anyhow my trip this year would have occurred too early for another round of shutdown pictures.

Still, as close as we got to a shutdown, with the demolition derby that our national politics has become, occupied the thoughts of all of us who take government people. To paraphrase Lincoln, ours is a government of people, by people, for people--so it will never get things exactly right, it will always leave some if not everyone unsatisfied, and yet it matters a lot to the quality of our lives together. Government is not meant to be a plaything, or a weapon.

After our meeting, I went up to U Street NW clutching the invaluable Frommer's 24 Great Walks in Washington, D.C. [Wiley, 2009... this is walk #15]. Jazz great Duke Ellington (1899-1974 grew up here, and for decades it was a center of black culture, even after suffering much from the 1968 riots.

"Community Rhythms" mural by Alfred J. Smith, U Street station

13th St NW: Young Duke Ellington lived here

13th and T: Adult Duke Ellington stayed here

 

11th and U: This club hosted the greats of 50s/60s jazz

There are other landmarks here as well, including a memorial to African-Americans who served in the Civil War that lists every known participant. There also was (on this day, anyway) a young man in a Civil War uniform, expounding considerably about the war and the memorial.

10th and U: African-American Civil War Memorial

Names on the memorial

11th and U: Oldest black-owned bank in DC

12th and S: Wax Abraham Lincoln with wicks for lighting

U Street has gentrified a lot in recent years.

Some of the multitude of new construction

While I'm normally rather sanguine about gentrification, which does bring wealth and racial integration to places, it's jarring to see it to such a degree in a neighborhood so closely identified with black history. At least that history is being preserved.

U Street, too, is Washington--a place that embodies America's ongoing efforts to build and rebuild the good life. Washington is more than the cartoonish caricature presented by so many politicians, like former U.S. Representative Rod Blum, who served Iowa for two terns in Congress, and who is probably best remembered for wanting to inflict a recession on Washington. 

Once you get away from the Capitol and into the neighborhoods, though, you find Washington is full of people, a lot of whom work for or with the federal government, and who are trying, as we all are, to do their jobs.

10th and U: This too is Washington

Letter from Washington (XI): Religion, organized and civil

Franklin School (1869) with a tiny Benjamin Franklin on the roof
(now Planet Word, 925 13th St NW)

Washington, D.C. is a strange place, being at once a town with residents and businesses and such, a museum of national history, and a fortress around working government buildings. Last weekend, in town for a Washington Term advisors meeting, I experienced all three. Walking from my hotel on the southwest side to the program headquarters on the northeast side, I passed through the mostly-empty Capitol grounds, dotted with security guards and barricades.

But on to more inspiring matters!

Churches 

One feature of residential Washington that is both historically interesting and aesthetically pleasing is the plethora of old church buildings. They testify to the variety of faiths present here, as well as the importance of faith to those who built this city.

Church of the Ascension and Saint Agnes (1874),
1217 Massachusetts Ave NW

National City Christian Church and Luther Place Memorial Church face each other across Thomas Circle in northwest Washington. I was guided here by my trusty Frommer's guide (cited below).

National City Christian Church (1930),
5 Thomas Circle NW

cupola at National City Christian

Luther Place Memorial Church (1860s),
1226 Vermont Ave NW

Worshipers in these congregations included Presidents James A. Garfield, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson.

These churches might not be as full as they used to be, but they continue to perform vital ministries. National City Christian, for just one example, lists on its webpage refugee and immigration ministry, food pantry, youth ministry, and an LGBTQ community, in addition to weekly worship services. Both Luther Place and Ascension/Saint Agnes were promoting upcoming blessings of the animals.

Mt. Olivet Lutheran Church (1883), 1306 Vermont Ave NW
(formerly Vermont Avenue Christian Church)

Community Church (1903), 1405 15th St NW
(formerly Grace Reformed Church)

 

 

Memorials

As full of religious buildings as Washington is, there are memorials to national heroes everywhere--not just the big names around the Tidal Basin. Frommer's tells us Irish residents celebrated around the statue of John Barry from County Wexford, "Father of the American Navy."

Revolutionary War: Commodore John Barry (1745-1803) in Franklin Park

 

There's much representation of 19th century wars, particularly the War of 1812 and the Civil War.

Civil War: General George H. Thomas (1816-1870) in Thomas Circle

civil rights: Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) Council House, 1318 Vermont Ave NW

Civil War: General John A. Logan (1826-1886) in Logan Circle

27 years in Congress: Daniel Webster (1782-1852), 1301 Bataan St NW

 

These memorials are spiritual, too, in their way, contributing to the national spirit--what Gail Gehrig (1979: 2), following Sidney Mead and Robert Bellah, calls the "transcendent universal religion of the nation." We are who we are--for better or worse, I might add--because of who and what we celebrate. Bellah, writing during the Vietnam War, concluded the American civil religion is:

...genuinely American and genuinely new. It has its own prophets and its own martyrs, its own sacred events and sacred places, its own solemn rituals and symbols.... It does not make any decision for us. It does not remove us from moral ambiguity, from being, in Lincoln's fine phrase, an "almost chosen people." But it is a heritage of moral and religious experience from which we still have much to learn as we formulate the decisions that lie ahead (1966: 18-19).

As a visitor, I am regularly reminded that I am part of an ongoing American project... I don't know if residents get used to it?

There were other things to notice as I walked around with Frommer's. Franklin Square, northwest of downtown Washington, features these whimsical seats:

Of course, I had to try them out!... even though they were wet and muddy from the rain:

I passed the Hungarian Embassy, which I include because I'm obsessed with embassies:

Embassy of Hungary, 1500 Rhode Island Ave NW

 

My son Eli starts work here next week:

Resonance, 1121 12th St NW

SOURCES:  

Robert N. Bellah, "Civil Religion in America," Publius (1966): 1-21

Frommer's 24 Great Walks in Washington, D.C. (Wiley, 2009), ch. 13

 Gail Gehrig, American Civil Religion: An Assessment (Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1979)

 

SEE ALSO: 

"Letter from Washington (X): Finding a Quiet Place," 7 March 2022

"Open Streets DC 2021," 7 October 2021

Letter from Washington (X): Finding a quiet place

 

Heurich House Museum grounds

With a spring-like Saturday afternoon off in Washington, D.C., Jane and I grasped our trusty guidebook [cited below] and walked in the neighborhood of Dupont Circle on the city's northwest side. The circle itself I find chaotic, formed as it is by the confluence of five major thoroughfares, and there are busy commercial strips in every direction. Real estate must be pricey even by Washington standards, judging from the dominance of new commercial offices and franchise chains. (Compare with the somewhat more modest Adams Morgan neighborhood to the north, which has more indigenous offerings, including a coffeehouse called Tryst recommended to me this weekend and which I must some day check out.)

But walking around quickly reveals more to Dupont Circle than CVS and Subway. There are embassies, including those of Chile, Indonesia, Mozambique, and Peru. The think tanks American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution are near the circle on Massachusetts Avenue, with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the National Trust for Historic Preservation between them. 

Across the circle on 20th Street is the 1898 building where the Church of Scientology was founded.

This 1909 mansion on New Hampshire Avenue is now the headquarters of the Order of the Eastern Star, of which my Grandma Pochert was a proud and active member.

The Cairo--I'm from Illinois, so I pronounce it KAY-ro, but you be you--was built on Q Street in 1894 as the tallest building in Washington, which did not thrill its neighbors, leading to the adoption of the city's strict building height ordinance.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals boast some striking yard art.

The Dupont Circle area also has the Tabard Inn on N Street, built in 1922 and long a favorite of my Creighton University colleague Graham Ramsden...

...and gourmet toast. Whatever that is.

There are also lots of churches, some quite architecturally striking.

The Church of the Holy City (1894)

Foundry United Methodist Church (1904)

Perhaps my most surprising find was the 1894 house of Christian Heurich (1842-1945), who owned D.C.'s largest brewery. The house is now a museum, which is open part of the year for limited hours. It promises to be "honestly exploring what it takes to achieve the American Dream," which sets an intriguingly high bar. The castle garden was open, and quite a few people were lounging about on the picnic benches and Adirondack chairs. The carriage house houses the 1921 Biergarten, serving a variety of beer and wine, and has restrooms, which I was unfortunately not able to experience.

Anyone who blogs about our common life has surely been vaccinated against the coronavirus, but unfortunately had neglected to bring the little card along. (This is the only time on my trip when I would have needed it, too.) 

So I had to hurry along to more permissive facilities, but not before noting what an oasis the castle garden is. On an irresistible spring day, there was a steady trickle of people into the garden for a bit of peace and quiet in company, away from the traffic and busy-ness of Dupont Circle's commercial areas.

Of course, there's plenty of peace and quiet to be had in large-lot suburban subdivisions. That's pretty much what they sell, along with space and privacy. But, as it has been repeatedly argued in this space and elsewhere, those subdivisions are neither financially nor environmentally sustainable, and they oppose the very existence of a common life. We need cities if we are going to survive, and yet... we need peace and quiet, too. Places like the Heurich House's castle garden are pearls beyond price.

SOURCE: Frommer's 24 Great Walks in Washington, D.C. (Wiley, 2009), ch. 16

Christian Heurich would have been part of this Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC). "It was, however, the last cyberspace left in Dupont," quips Matt' Johnson, AICP on Twitter.

Open Streets DC 2021

 

"Celebrating the People of Park View,"
mural by Rose Jaffe and Kate Zaremba in 2016

"If you close it, they will come?" Washington's Open Streets program returned to Georgia Avenue NW this month and got a turnout every bit as numerous, diverse, and fun-loving as they had two years ago.

Georgia Avenue north of New Hampshire Avenue

Again, job stuff kept me away until the last hour or so. This year, though, I walked south from the Metro station instead of north, so while the joy was the same, as was my commemorative t-shirt, the pictures are different.

Out of the Metro

The absence of cars on the street enabled activities including...

The Honey Larks on the Reduce Energy Use DC Main Stage

young and very young walkers

Enjoying snacks and company in the shade of street trees

Recreation at Bruce Monroe Community Park

Chalking and painting

Services along the route included...

Water station

Roller skating lessons

Police chilling with everybody else

Dance lessons in progress

Information booth (where I filled out a survey to get the t-shirt)

City Council member Brianne K. Nadeau

I did not see Council member Nadeau, but one of her staff was in a vigorous discussion about the future of Bruce Monroe Community Park, where a housing development is planned. Conversations like this can happen naturally when the design brings people together.

There seemed to be less public anxiety about the chaos that would ensue when the street was closed, possibly because I didn't have the local FOX station on during breakfast. Local merchants were definitely taking advantage of the opportunit

antique shop

restaurant with outdoor seating

more outdoor seating with jaunty pretzels

They have all the herbs

They have all the beans

Ice cream!

The long festival came to an end at the intersection with Barry Place...

...adjacent to historic Howard University

By this time, they were taking down their booths...

...and the police were warning all the mellow people that cars were about to return.

I'm glad Washington gave people the opportunity to imagine for a day all the many things we could do with some of the space we currently devote to cars. Soon, the city will try other streets. I hope I can be around when it happens!

SEE ALSO: "Open Streets DC," 11 October 2019