Seeing The Familiar With New Eyes
Mara Cherkasky's book on the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington D.C.(2007), so inspired me that I took time off on a late, cold afternoon earlier this week [2008] to walk the "Mount Pleasant Heritage Trail" through the community. The trail is a 17 stop walking tour that takes about two hours to complete. The tour comes with a guidebook prepared by the D.C. Office of Cultural Tourism. Cherkasky helped design this walking tour, and it tracks many of the people and places discussed in her book. The book and the tour taught me a great deal about the city in which I have lived for 35 years.
The Mount Pleasant area is located about two miles north of the White House on the 16th Street corridor. It is bounded on the south by Harvard Street on the north and west by Rock Creek, and on the east by 16th Street. Mount Pleasant features many narrow, winding and hilly streets, in contrast to the grids that prevail in the rest of Washington D.C. Even though it is close to the center of the city, Mount Pleasant has a certain isolation to it, tucked in as it is behind 16th Street and Rock Creek Park. The booklet for the walking tour I followed aptly describes Mount Pleasant as a "Village in the City."
For me, the Mount Pleasant area signifies a lively, diverse community in which people of many origins,backgrounds and religious faiths, including whites, African Americans, Latinos, and East European immigrants, share their culture and bring the best of their experiences to create a neighborhood with place and purpose. But Mount Pleasant has seen many changes over the years. Beginning as a private estate, Mount Pleasant then was sold to and settled by veterans following the Civil War. For much of its history, Mount Pleasant was a middle to upper class white enclave. Over the years, African Americans and refuges from Latin America moved to Mount Pleasant, attracted in part by the home prices which tended to be less expensive than elsewhere in Washington D.C. With the riots following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in 1968, Mount Pleasant experienced difficult times, but the community restored itself through local effort. During the 1970 and 1980, Mount Pleasant shimmered with community activism. The area remains diverse and alive today with large old homes, many churches and landmarks, and a colorful retail district on Mount Pleasant Street. There is, however, a hint of returning gentrification. Mount Pleasant was also famous for its streetcars, which were replaced by buses in 1961. The community observed a period of mourning when its streetcars were abandoned, a feeling I understand well.
Cherkaskys' book picks up momentum as it moves along. In five chapters of photographs and commentary, she describes the early estate history of the community, the building phase of the late 1800s, businesses, organizations, and people in Mount Pleasant's days as a "streetcar suburb", everyday life in Mount Pleasant in the mid-20th Century, and the community's current status as an urban village, which Cherkasky describes aptly as a "Distinctive Place in the World."
The most impressive landmark to me was the old "House of Mercy" located deep in Mount Pleasant near Rock Creek Park. The House of Mercy functioned for many years as a home for wayward girls, including unwed mothers and young prostitutes. After several changes in its roles, the property today has the more pedestrian role of a day care center. The House of Mercy is about mid-point in the walking tour. It is also the landmark most difficult to find, and I almost passed it over in my walk as twilight turned to dark.
Mount Pleasant was once a center of music of every kind from hillbilly to the blues. Bo Diddley and Jimmy Dean were among the many singers who called Mount Pleasant home. Mount Pleasant Street teemed with nightlife. The area features many small distinctive parks, including the Park Road Triangle Park and Lamont Park, a former turning point for streetcars. Streetcars once were everywhere in Mount Pleasant and they receive great attention in this book. Mount Pleasant Street, with its bakeries, shops, restaurants, Latino bodegas, community celebrations and nightlife is at the heart of the community and of the book. I enjoyed reading about these and other places in Cherkasky's book and then seeing them for myself when I walked the community trail.
I have read several books in the "Images of America" series that describe various D.C. neighborhoods. This book is the best I have found in the series on Washington D.C. in terms of showing a neighborhood in its complexity and history, rather than as a collection of interesting old buildings. The book and my walking tour gave me a fresh and inspired look at a familiar city.
