January 30, 2006
Renaming the District's Neighborhoods (Updated)
We didn't mean to, but it seems that we set off an interesting discussion about new names for the city's neighborhoods.
As we mentioned this morning, real estate prices in NoMa are fast rising. For those of you unaware of a neighborhood called "NoMa" within the District, it's a large swath of land north of Massachusetts Avenue and east of North Capitol Street, fanning out from Union Station and encompassing a once industrial wasteland that now includes the headquarters for XM Satellite Radio and the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, and Firearms. And it wasn't too long ago that we discussed Mid City, the name given to the cluster of businesses around the vicinity of U Street and Fourteenth Street in Northwest.
This wholesale renaming of neighborhoods serves to re-brand and present them in a more positive light, one which is more likely to attract developers and urban pioneers looking for the next big thing. Just as newly named NoMa is being billed as "one of the last opportunities for new, large scale [development]," we could easily imagine developers re-christening parts of Shaw or Capitol Hill to attract more young and affluent urbanites.
So what's next? Should we expect a rash of neighborhood renamings aimed at cashing in on the fast-spreading process of gentrification and development? What part of town could fall next to the power of corporate thinking and crafty abbreviations? Will we see a WeFoBo (west of Foggy Bottom)? A SoDuCi (south of Dupont Circle)? Will the new developments around the stadium along South Capitol Street be christened SoCa? But more importantly, will these new monikers be added to the already crowded Metrorail station signs?
Update: Our friend chrisafer has already taken it upon himself to rename many of the city's neighborhoods. From now on we will refer to the following neighborhoods as such: AdMo (Adams Morgan); CoHe (Columbia Heights); WoPa (Woodley Park); DuCi (Dupont Circle); LoCi (Logan Circle); LePa (LeDroit Park); CaHi (Capitol Hill); WeEn (West End); FoTo (Fort Totten); FoBo (Foggy Bottom); VaNe (Van Ness); NaYa (Navy Yard); and EaRi (East of the River).
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Not to pimp my blog or anything, but I came up with a few of these some time back when I first heard of NoMa:
http://chrisafer.com/2003_10_01_blog_archive.html#106563003628980082
That said, I do half-jokingly refer to my home in CoHi.
I tell my suburbanite friends that my neighborhood, Hillcrest, overlooks Anacostia. Hmm... OverAnaco? Nah, I think I'll stick with Hillcrest.
I hate to post the same comment over and over, but this area is Swampoodle. Why do these real estate dudes think they can come in and invent a New York City-ish name for a place that already has one? Swampoodle sounds silly, but so does Foggy Bottom! Of course, there haven't been many opportunities to use the name in the past, but since folks are trying to redevelop the area, I don't see why we can't call it Swampoodle again.
I remember seeing a craiglisting ad for an apartment in LeDroit Park called "Capitol Hill North."
But I am not sure how new the term NoMa is - District to issue RFP in conjunction with NoMa plan - 2001-04-09
the eastern edge of Shaw is now often called Truxton Circle.
NoMA was called so by artists living and working there in the 90's. its just starting to stick.
SoFlo is a term that i was told realtors coined to sell houses in Near NE. south o florida....
When we were looking for a house early last spring, we were told that SoFlo (the triangle b/w Florida Ave NE and H Street NE, and essentially part of NoMA) was *hot*. Oh, and Lincoln Park and every inch of Old City 1 & 2 was Capitol Hill East, anything abutting Pennsylvania Ave SE was Hillcrest...but this NoMa thing seems to be sticking - unless you live along the H Street Corridor....
1. They do it in New York, too. DUMBO, anyone?
2. Cap Hill will never be renamed. Too good a brand already.
3. I sort of like Ween... and I might actually use AdMor if it came into parlance. Adams Morgan is kind of a mouthful… But in all seriousness H Street and the Near Northeast are probably next. Perhaps NeNo? Or Trolleytown, since it’s going to get one? How about Williams Village (WillVill) in honor of our dear mayor? I am just bursting with horrible ideas :)
the fact is that a lot of these places have old neighborhood names that just haven't been used in a while, or are being ignored/phased out because of a concern that the names aren't positive enough. take 'shaw' for example. to a great number of suburbanites that i work with, shaw=1968 riots. they think that the area is still mostly crack houses and burned out storefronts. combine that with real estate agents who practice 'neighborhood creep' and you end up with some names being pushed out (i.e., the people who call EVERYTHING north of rhode island and east of the red line 'brookland', ignoring michigan park, north michigan park, queen's chapel, woodridge, etc.)
it's just laziness, using either these corny abbreviations (sorry people, it worked for tribeca and soho, but after that, it's just like you're trying too hard to sound cool). get to know the history of your neighborhood, and learn the historical names!
I think each city gets one neighborhood like this. SoHo (London), SoMa (SF), and I guess ours can be NoMa...
Hey Tom. No one FROM San Francisco calls South of Market, SoMa. Although, admittedly the name South of Market (or South of Slots for the slots for the street cars on Market Street) is an historic name, so the change to New Yorkify it wasn't all that odd. But San Franciscans have never taken to real estate marketing. (And in the words of Herb Caen -- don't call it Frisco.)
Chicago has a similar phenomenon where everything seems to be called Lincoln Park anymore. When all those neighborhoods actually have individual names. (As the city maintains a database of the over 300 different neighborhoods in Chicago, they have the last word on that though.)
Truxton Circle is a legitimate neighborhood name in that it's actually historic. Truxton Circle used to be the centerpiece of the intersection of North Capitol Street, Florida Avenue, Q Street, and Lincoln Road.
Today, XM Radio is situated two blocks east on Florda Ave. from here. The circle is gone now and has been replaced by a KFC and a gas station.
imgoph - Thanks for pointing out the Brookland bit. We finally found a house in Woodridge (which, yes, some real estate agents were calling "Brookland" at the time - probably still are now since it makes it easier to tack on another $100-200K). Either people think I'm saying Woodbridge (VA), or just stare at me blankly. Then I tell them "Greater Brookland." Sadly, it's just easier.
I always liked to shorten Georgetown to GTown becuase it was easier to type. Georgetown will never change it's name (there is no need to), but eh, it could catch on.
I always liked to shorten Georgetown to GTown becuase it was easier to type. Georgetown will never change it's name (there is no need to), but eh, it could catch on.
I write Gtown too, and knew a lot of GW people who said G-town. (Although, with all the G-world and G-everything else, it was probably just an extension of a weird naming habit at the university overall).
As for Truxton Circle, they need some more press, badly. I ran across the name on flickr the other day and found it challenging to find out much about it. (I hadn't heard of it before that). There was one web site, and though helpful, it didn't provide that much information.
The city of Washington does NOT officially recognize neighborhood names.
Dude, ALL of the cool kids have been calling it AdMo for years, man. You're not hip unless you bag G-tizzie for AdMo on Saturday night.
I officially hate all these neighborhood names.
official or not, this comes from the dc.gov site
Washington, DC Neighborhoods
The District of Columbia boasts over 120 neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are divided into Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, which are further divided into Single Member Districts (SMDs).
the site also has a list of all ( or most) dc hoods.
The link to the list of neighborhoods is http://neighborhoodaction.dc.gov/neighborhoodaction/cwp/view,a,1163,q,487308.asp
katmere - A good start is Mari's blog, In Shaw (now with more gentrification) http://www.inshaw.com/blog/. Today she addresses NoMa. Also her less personal site In Shaw/Truxton Circle http://www.inshaw.com/. And she's on Flickr as "In Shaw".
(sorry if this posting comes up twice - I tried to use links and the commenting "protector" sent it off to be approved)
Tom Bridge, Soho in London is a real name, not one of these abbreviations. You're thinking of SoHo in New York City.
local names are for local people. this whole project of Naming Neighborhoods is suburban and hegemonic (cousin to the far more idiotic Naming Subdivisions). why not be a little more straight forward, sell the 'neighborhood' out, make some sponsorship money. how do you like "XM Village"? people in Columbia Heights could cash in that old tag for Giant's naming rights. "Giant Heights" has a nice ring to it, at the right price.
I think they should rename Arlington, "Boring."
Forgive my London friend, I didn't realize the second H was lower case, I must have been thinking of NY's SoHo, and I have heard some San Franciscans call it SoMa, so...take that with your grain of salt.
Re: Arlington? I'll give you boring: Fairfax. Arlington's way hotter than boring.
DCist Jim: Wow, with such a well-supported argument as that for renaming Arlington, how could anyone argue? I love how the anti-Arlington posts always make such coherent points...
I too, am way too lazy to fully pronounce words! Livin in wash, eatin food at the sto, down the road is Con and Cal but Wapo has nuppin onda mapo bout Admo and this being a happenin hood. I'm really much better off having my friends and I inventing words to describe stuff. Plus it makes me feel like an insider.
Today, before reading this post, I decided to try calling Adams Morgan "the Morg." Sometimes attempting to convert people passes the time at work, and I think it sounds cool to say you're heading out to "the Morg." No?
I'm pained by how stupid those nicknames from chrisafer are, but I'm slightly more pained by how little thought went into them. How hard is it to take the first two or three letters of a two-word name and come up with a nickname?
What I think pains me the most, however, is the condescending assumption that throwing a slick name on a crappy area somehow makes it desireable. Good nicknames, awkward as "U Street Corridor" may be, grow organically from the community, or at least from some distinctive feature (Dupont, Logan, Capital Hill, etc) in the community, not from real estate brokers trying to put lipstick on a pig.
That said, I've always enjoyed calling it A-Mo -- snappy enough to roll off your tounge and confuse the uninitiated. The perfect nickname!
Calling my neighborhood "the Morg" makes me want to flee the city even more.
No, no, no!
Don't support this pompous and contrived renaming of neighborhoods to four letter New York imitations. Adams Morgan, Georgetown, Mount Pleasant, Shaw or simply "U Street", Tenleytown, Dupont Circle are tight neighborhood names already. You wouldn't save any time calling Dupont Circle "DuCi." Everybody already calls it Dupont.
These abbreviated names have been much overused, especially in New York, and have passed from some sort of 'hip' 'insider' nomenclature to a bland excuse for a massive markup by gentrifiers and developers. None of the youngsters gentrifying Washington Heights in New York right now are calling it "WaHei" or "NoHa" (North of Harlem), and nobody who just moved to Park Slope tells their friends they live in "PaSlo," though that does have a cool cartoon-character ring to it.
Enough of this bullshit renaming. DC already has an identity. Don't let developers take the names out along with the soul...
What I like about DC is the fact that people can have this same discussion every 3-4 months for years and years and years. It's like the jokes (and "insights") never get old. I mean, christ, BeDuCi has been closed for years now.
It's like, hey, can you believe what those bozos did in Congress today? Those bozos!
Jay, it is called humor. But maybe they don't have that in Arlington.
That NYCers willingly went along with "DUMBO" is nothing more than a testament to their assininity. As the Bronx gets gentrified, look for SoBro to become ubiquitous in real estate parlance.
zfr
Did you see the daily show (I think that was it) where they covered the North Texas down that really did sell their naming rights to a sponsor organization? I have heard of public schools doing the same thing (albeit not too many of them).
Although it is a long way off, I wouldn't be surprised if that sort of thing was more and more prevalent as time marches on. A little creepy if you ask me.
Could be worse. I was in Tampa a few weeks ago, which now has a SoHo (South Howard Avenue). And it's got restaurants--like a Starbucks and an Smoothie King!
I would like to recommend CapGun as a replacement for CaHi. Better describes what goes on there. Come up with a new nomenklatura for your burg that works, kids and have fun. DUMBO was coined by the tab dropping freaks who used to sit under the bridges and watch the sun come up, the developer wanted to call it Fulton Landing. Maybe you could dub Arlington as "BornAgain" or behind Capital Hill as 'SchwartzTown.' FoBo has definite possibilities though.
Anyone have a nick for the Lafayette Park area? Maybe 'Honky-Ho'?
To my knowledge G-Town is already used by Georgetown, Guyana. A lovely place to visit.
I am not a fan of new names either but often historical names are simply forgotten by planners who do not live in the area they are planning. I have the impression that they are quite interested.
When I went to the first public NoMA meeting, they did not plan to add signage describing historical districts within the area. I pushed for it but other voices will help.
Swampoodle, Old City, DC Farmers market, Gallaudet University, Truxton Circle etc with directional indicators add a lot of interest at a very low cost to the city. I pointed to Portland, OR signage as an example of what I would like to see in NoMA.
The more interest we express by questionnaire and feedback the better.
http://www.planning.dc.gov/planning/frames.asp?doc=/planning/lib/planning/project/noma/questionnaire.pdf
kevin.brady@dc.gov.
patricia.zingsheim@dc.gov
Ellen.McCarthy@dc.gov
Shyam.Kannan@dc.gov
Deborah.Crain@dc.gov
Half of NoMa is west of North Capitol.
Katmere, I think Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, was the first town that did something like that.
Realtors and journalists can call neighborhoods whatever they want, but those nieghborhoods have names. Mt. Vernon Square, Shaw, LeDroit Park. I don't think I've heard anybody in those neighborhoods refer to NoMA stuff.
I miss Rob Goodspeeds's Shaw pics. Where ya at Rob?
Sorry Jay. My three years of living there went unstated.
Ah yes, the game show town.
I say we rename Dupont Circle, "butt butt"
RH: I don't get it!! Naybe...oh...wait....I think I see what you're talking about....
Do you mean because you think of DuPont as a popular area for homosexuals, and when you think of homosexuals you think of gay men in particular and when you think of gay men you think of anal sex as opposed to all other possible forms of sexual expression (despite the fack that straight people engage in it to) and so you use the word "butt" as symbolic for homosexuals in general?
I think the word I'm looking for is "pathetic." Certainly not "funny" though.
DuPo is popular with gays!? My real estate agent didn't tell me that. WTF?! I was looking at LoDuPoNoFogBot, but she sold me on DuPo. If I wanted to live with gay people, I would have just bought in SoReHo!
Oh, Juan, it took a lot of thought from me to make those names. I mean, the whole point of my post was how f-ing brilliant the NoMa terminology was and how we should extend it to all points of the city. For real.
NoMa is trying just too hard. I'm not a big fan.
One thing that does differentiate DC from NYC, for instance, is the fact that the Metro stations here are generally named after neighborhoods, or at least streets that can be used as place names...unlike NYC's subway stops, which are normally named after numbered streets of course. Even when streets are used as the name of Metro stops, entire outlying areas have adopted that name. For instance, I live at Connecticut and Albemarle, which traditionally is considered part of Forest Hills...however, I'd challenge anyone to find anybody living here who wouldn't say that they live in "Van Ness". Same for Woodley Park--basically a name that WMATA invented, and Gallery Place, and so forth.
Hell, not too long ago, in the days before gentrification, real estate agents were referring to Logan proper as "Dupont East". Things have a way of smoothing themselves out...
I live in the Koreatown neighborhood of Northern Virginia. You wouldn't believe the selection of karaoke and Pho around here. Back when it was called Annandale pretty much all we had of note was Fudrucker's, H.I. Ribster's and that Steely Dan song but these days it's totally hip to be square in Koreatown.
What?
I think the name "Adams Morgan" itself is only as recent as the 1950s (named after the integration efforts of the Adams and Morgan schools). In maps and references to the area before that you see names like "Lanier Heights" and "Kalorama Heights".
Three cheers for Foggy Bottom as "FoBo." I've been using that since we moved here two years ago. This boring hood could use a little sauce.
Unlike Van Ness or Gallery Place, Metro didn't invent the neighborhood name "Woodley Park." The name predates Metro's arrival in 1981, and is derived from Woodley Mansion (part of the Maret School campus).
Isn't Gallery Place actually the name of the building that houses the theater, shops, etc connected to the MCI/Verizon Center?
How about we call it NoMas and never do something like this again?
From the first day I moved here I have lovingly referred to Adam's Morgan as Adam's Organ (before I even knew about Madam's Organ -- thank you, I am an original pervert if anything) and Sloppy Bottom.
On the subject of sloppy bottoms, it's silly to assume that they gays still live in Dupont. A few months ago I went on an interview at an apartment there where the straighty mcstraightster who lived there asked me if I "hung out in the area" often. I assume she was trying to find out if I'm a big ol' lez (which I am, yay for me) and so I felt--and still feel--like it was my duty to clear things up: gays don't hang out in Dupont anymore. They've moved on to developing other lovely areas of the city (I believe Logan Circle is due for a straight invasion any day now) in their never-ending quest to bring fabulousness, over-priced health food and 24-hour accessible porn to what are, in essense, the very boring lives of breeders.
Am I the only one who's ever heard realtors trying to sell Shaw as NoLo (north of Logan Circle)? Or Barney Circle as "East Capitol Hill?" Or, for that matter, Trinidad as "North Capitol Hill?"
Is it only a matter of time before Ivy City becomes "East NoMa?"
Yeah, I think Gallery Place is the name of the new theater/shop complex next to the Phone Booth. But, the name pre-dates that buiding by several years. I assume it's a reference to the national portrait gallery across the street from the arena.
Thirty feet from the intersection of V and 11th Sts NW is called MyHouse.
Gallery Place is a reference to the two Smithsonian galleries (Nat Portrait Gallery & Museum of American Art), the several galleries in the area, and the more that were expected to be created on the opening of the subway...
Two problems with neighborhood naming is that the traditional names generally don't have well defined boundaries; this enables the edges to be pulled at will, particularly into areas that really don't have any particular name. Often this is done but not always by real estate markets, etc. For insatnce, in the late 1970's when I was in high school, Capitol Hill only went to 10th St SE/NE. Over the years it has stretched to the east eventually hitting the river. (It seems that the few efforts to jump the river: "Capitol Hill East" have failed. Thankfully.)
The other problem with names like NoMA is that they cover too broad an area - really will office workers in the GPO feel any real connection to condo dwellers at N Cap & NY? I doubt it. I think it will all even out over time, and artificial names like NoMA will either be subdivided and replaced in parts, or will simply fade away.
Most of those developer names are inane enough that they'd only stick in a lobotomized place like Tampa. But the original SoHo and TriBeCa were pretty clever - people here should be able to come up with clever names. U Street is a stupid realtor name, but if I say I live in Cardozo, the historic name, people think I live in Spain.
Frankly I wish my neighborhood were called the Chili Bowl after Ben's, but it's too late for that. There must be some landmark on H Street NE or south of Brookland that people can start using as the name of the neighborhood.
This is the stupidest post I've read.
If I'm not mistaken, Cardozo isn't the historic name for the U Street area. Cardozo is the renamed name for the old Central High School. Background here. Cardozo itself was a transplant from R.I. Avenue and Ninth Street NW.
kinda comes down to usage, no?
if i say "x" and you know where i'm talking about, thats become what its called.
enough people say "x", might as well be written in stone.
even if its a stupid name.
Like to me, Foggy Bottom will always be "Naughty Hiney", but said in Patrick Stewarts voice ala the SNL erotic bakery skit.
yep, stupid. oh well. i can't help myself.
According to longtime residents of Shaw, they never used to use Shaw to refer to their nieghborhood. It was always referred to as U Street, even when you weren't very close to U Street. Calling it Shaw appears to be a very Post-Riots phenomenon, and brought in by outsiders (gentrifiers) who looked up the real name in started using it to differentiate from U Street, since attracting attention to U Street didn't not attract attention to the Shaw neighborhood. Yes, people who started things like the Shaw Mainstreets org (a lot of gentrifiers) and the InShaw blog (Proud Gentrifier) may have pushed the use of that name. And not all gentrifiers are the same, so others may push a different name. Things will always change. Again, a lot of assumptions made around race, wealth, history etc. that are often plain wrong, but always seem to go in the anti-gentrification direction. Seems very biased to me based on some sort of prejudice.
It's all a moot point, people. Within six weeks, everything from Bangor, Maine all the way to Key West will be called SILVER SPRING. Mark my words.
I work at the irish times and am thankful to be on the other side of mass ave so that I don't have to ever tell anyone I work in NoMa. very thankful.
on a side note, over christmas I returned to my parents house in Somerton, subsection of Far Northeast, subsection of the Great Northeast, subsection of Northeast Philadelphia, subsection of Philadelphia. Nonetheless, a real estate add listed a house around the corner from my parents place as located in "Elm Valley." I don't know how a rowhome constitutes Elm Valley, but I'm not asking questions. The name 'Somerton' dates back past the 1800s and its widely recognized and accepted. I guess it happens everywhere, as I watch my parents neighborhood gentrified and priced-up. My mother told me the other day she saw a new dry cleaners open in a shopping center. You guessed it: Elm Valley Cleaners. It seems to me that the naming of stores is key. I bet you if I had Shelbyville Cleaners, Shelbyville Bar and Grille, and Shelbyville Barber shop on the same block of 12th street I could rename the area around metro center.
First of all, Ad-Mo is no easier to say than Adam's Moragan. That D in there really doesn't help it toll of the tounge. We prefer to call or A-Morgs. I have also heard Dupont referred to as "Dupes", as in "Yeah I live south of Dupes". While contrived and irritating, to each his own...
I saw a listing on Craigslist the other day that said Dupont Circle, but the address was 17th and V. That's not Dupont Circle. That's not even nebulous "Dupont". That's Adams Morgan.
Oh and it's not spelled Adam's Morgan, as if Adam had himself a Morgan.
Adams Morgan was the combining of two different school districts. It wasn't Adam and his Morgan, as Reid just pointed out. It just sounds silly when people get this wrong.