East Edge: A better name for H Street NE's developing arts and entertainment district?

Jill Fisher and James Taylor at the Showbar on H Street, a spinoff from Baltimore's defunct Dime Museum. (By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)

Frozen Tropics beat me to blogging about the Palace of Wonders, the new entertainment extravaganza on H Street NE. The Post writes about the Palace today, in the Style section, "Palace of Wonders: A Very Strange Brew." (Click here for the full FT entry.)

The article explains that the impresario behind it is one of the founders of the American Dime Museum in Baltimore. Interestingly enough, at the ADM in Baltimore they charged $3 to get in, maybe that's why it goes in and out of financial difficulty. While it opens and closes from time to time, it is not defunct, although clearly their collection has been reduced by the opening of the Showbar on H Street.
Lucy Wilson holds her son Arthur O'Malley up in front of a parabolic mirror at the American Dime Museum. (Baltimore Sun photo by John Makely) Nov 27, 2005

Frozen Tropics writes:

If you haven't been by to check out this circus themed bar, or even if you have, you might want to check out the Grand Opening celebration (you'll need to click on "events") taking place tonight & tomorrow night. Doors open at 7pm & shows start at 8pm. Tickets are $12 in advance (buy them at Palace), or $15 at the door. That buys you some well known performers doing an assortment of things including (see the schedule to learn what is on for a certain night) burlesque dancing, sword swalling, Bufallo Bill style stunts & more.

Frozen Tropics also beat me to the punch in commenting on a full-page ad in yesterday's City Paper, highlighting the Red & Black, The Showbar, and the Argonaut, in the entry "DC's Only Bohemian Neighborhood?"

Something that FT didn't comment on, something that bugs the s*** out of me, is the Joe Englert inspired labeling of those three blocks--1200, 1300, and 1400 blocks of H Street ... the Atlas District. (Yes, I caught the address errors in the ads, but did you notice the Red & Black ad on the adjoining page, with the correct address?)

Just like I never refer to the National Airport as the Ronald Reagan National Airport, I will never refer to those three blocks as the "Atlas District," and I think the arts-based revitalization down there is the greatest thing since decayed and boarded up buildings...

I think that the Atlas Performing Arts Center is great, and so is the H Street Playhouse, and so is R&B, and so are the Englert-based places, etc.

But Atlas District? Maybe H Street East Edge or something. I still like my idea of Northside for the area (north and east of the U.S. Capitol, north of Capitol Hill, north and east of Union Station), which I came up with in the spring of 2002.

Usually "districts" are named based on extant definitive landmarks. The Atlas has been around for a long time, but it's not really the defining element of the street. Maybe there is no one defining element, but H Street has had a great history, as a once-strong retail district with entertainment elements, ranging from the Co-Co (Kavakos) Club to pool halls and such decades before places like Atomic Billiards were created.
Matchbook cover image courtesy of Peter Sefton.

For identity development resources, check out this article: Becoming West Edge: Branding Gives a Nameless Neighborhood an Identity which is an open access article from the National Main Street Center. The article is about an identity development and branding campaign for the neighborhood, with both residential and commercial elements, in the area around the Pike Place Market in Seattle.
Flickr photo by Thane.

Also see:
-- So that would make downtown East West Edge? from the Puget Sound Business Journal (2001)
-- DSA puts a downtown neighborhood on the ‘Edge’: An area between Belltown and Pioneer Square is being marketed by the Downtown Seattle Association as the West Edge (form the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, and there are many links to other good articles about urban revitalization at the bottom of the piece)
-- Spin City: A New Marketing Plan Transforms "Downtown" into the "West Edge", from The Stranger, Seattle's free alternative weekly newspaper

Index Keywords: urban-revitalization