After years of community-led effort, Bloomingdale is Washington, DC's newest Historic District! The Historic Preservation Review Board just voted unanimously in favor of designation, recognizing Bloomingdale's exceptional social and architectural history.
Bloomingdale is bounded by Channing Street (north); North Capital Street (east); Florida Avenue (south); 2nd Street (west). These photos represent a small fraction of the 1,600+ contributing structures in the Historic District.
DCPL filed this nomination in July 2017 on behalf of the Bloomingdale Historic District Coalition. BHDC has led designation efforts for years. BHDC raised money to pay for local research firm Prologue DC to write the Historic District nomination. BHDC made presentations at dozens of community meetings and events in order to educate residents about the nomination and process. BHDC gathered letters and statements of support from residents and other interested individuals and organizations. BHDC is a loose coalition of Bloomingdale residents who supported historic designation of their neighborhood.
Bloomingdale's period of significance is 1892-1948. The Historic District meets DC Criteria A, B, C, D, and E. Bloomingdale is significant for its status as one of DC’s largest cohesive rowhouse neighborhoods. Its development began with the arrival of a streetcar line and was continued rapidly by a small group of speculative developers and builders. It boasts a large stock of rowhouses of high-quality design and materials, houses intended to attract stable middle-class residents. The size and quality of the architecture illustrate that the success of speculative development for DC’s rising middle class was all but assured during the years in which the neighborhood was built.
Bloomingdale also demonstrates the architectural transition of DC’s rowhouses away from fanciful three-story Victorian buildings of the early 1890s to the more regular, two-story, front-porch rowhouses of the 1910s. Bloomingdale is also one of the first large developments in DC laid out in conformance with the Permanent Highway Plan of 1893, which standardized the layout of new subdivisions beyond the city’s original boundaries. The buildings retain a high level of integrity.
These factors, along with Bloomingdale’s prominent role in the struggle to abolish racially restrictive housing covenants in the District and nation from 1907-1948, make the neighborhood significant. Bloomingdale is associated with the two DC cases that advanced to the Supreme Court and were part of the landmark 1948 decision that ruled racially restrictive covenants unenforceable. Bloomingdale played a major role in the civil rights history of DC and the United States. A number of Bloomingdale’s developers used racially restrictive covenants. These prohibited sale or rental to African Americans in deeds for lots and houses. Bloomingdale was blanketed with racial covenants, but from the start of development was home to African American residents.
By 1907, white residents organized to enforce racial covenants in deeds. By 1913, the local citizens association passed a resolution opposing real estate sales to African Americans. Bloomingdale’s racial covenants by agreement, combined with those placed by developers, restricted nearly all housing between First and North Capitol streets from R Street to Channing Street. Of the 43 legal challenges to racially restrictive covenants in DC documented to date, almost half were associated with Bloomingdale.
Additionally, the neighborhood is associated with the lives of persons significant to the history of DC and the nation. These include major individuals who worked to break down racial barriers in Bloomingdale, among them: Charles Hamilton Houston, Raphael Urciolo, and Senator Edward Broke.
You can read the complete Historic District nomination here: https://planning.dc.gov/…/Bloomingdale%20Historic%20Distric…
