Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Friday, January 06, 2006

H Street: Then and Now

It's hard to find good "then and now" photograph comparisons of the type popularized in such books as Washington Then and Now by Peter Penczer. See this blog entry, "Washington DC: Past and Present," for a "then and now" that I did a few months ago for the 1600 block of Benning Road.

Elise Bernard took a black and white shot of the H Street Self-Storage building (top photo), which reminded me of the second photo, from the Theodore Horydczak collection at the Library of Congress. The large building shown in Elise's photo wasn't built until the mid-1950s.
Frozen Tropics H Street Self Storage.jpg North side, 600 block H Street NE, Washington, DC. 2005.

Ourisman Chevrolet, 600 block of H Street NE, 1948. Same shot, 1948.

Note the trolley tracks in the middle of the street. The H Street-Benning Road-Rosslyn streetcar line, the 10/12, stopped running around February 1949. I'm not sure when the trolley tracks were pulled up.

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posted by Richard Layman @ 11:35 AM&Permanent Link

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