Bloomingdale, Washington D.C. In Images Of America
I have lived in Washington, D.C. for nearly fifty years and enjoy learning more about neighborhoods in my city through the pictorial histories in the Images of America series. This book in thes series focuses upon Bloomingdale, a small, venerable area centering around Rhode Island Ave. N.W. and First Stret and North Capitol Street. The precise boundary is unclear, but Bloomingdale borders on the Washington, D.C. neighborhoods of Eckington, and Le Droit Park. Howard University is also nearby. The author of this book, Rosemarie Onwukwe had lived in Bloomingdale for fiteen years when she wrote this book in 2010 and had been active in the community. She is featured prominently in this book, and properly so, as it shows her engagement with the community.
The book opens with a brief history of Bloomingdale from the late 19th century as it transitioned from large estates to a home for working class individuals through the rise of the street car. More information would have been welcome. The body of the book consists of three chapters of images and Onwukee's commentary describing the community from its early years, through the 1960s, and then through the 1970s to the present.
The large, ornate, four story row houses with their distinctive turrents are the defining features of the Bloomingdale area. These old homes receive much attention in this book. The commercial strip near Rhode Island Avenue, the large churches that have served the community for generations, and the old McMillian Reservoir site also receive attention in this book. The book includes some good images of the busy first street traffic that capture the feel of this urban area.
The book gave me more of a sense of the Bloomingdale neighborhood than I had before reading but it left me disatisfied. The images in the book often do not illustrate the time periods of the chapter headings, particularly for the earlier years. Books in this series properly focus on residents of the community, but in this volume a small number of families and home interiors are over-represented, taking away from a broader consideration of the area. I think there are too many photos from outside the area, and too much emphasis on the large snowstorm of 1996 for such a short, broadly based survey of Bloomingdale. The book mentions but does not cover adequately some of the homes of famous residents in the area, including Samuel Gompers and the Hurd House, which was the subject of a famous 1948 decision of the Supreme Court invalidating racially restrictive covenants. The most important difficulty with the book is that it doesn't describe well the changes in the area over the years, from from a diverse community to a predominantly African American community. In the late 1970s through the 1990s the community sufferend severe decline and many old homes were vacant and boarded up. Crime and drug use flourished. This time period and images documenting it should have received attention. Then, in about 2000 the community started to gentrify as it became of interest to real estate developers and young professionals. Parts of the area are now trendy and upscale. It would have been valuable to have some focus on the relationship between the old Bloomingdale neighborhood and the new.
In summary, Bloomingdale deserves to be included in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood books of the Images of America series. This book gives an adequate short overview of the community for those wanting to learn about it. There is more to the story, however. This book barely skims the surface.
