Washington D.C. Neighborhoods

Here are several short descriptions of my impressions of neighborhoods in or near Washington D.C. Some neighborhoods deserved longer write-ups: Penn Quarter and Chinatown, Dupont Circle, Georgetown, and Old Town Alexandria. Those neighborhoods are not included here. For general impressions of Washington D.C. as a whole, see my overview post.

Adams Morgan
Adams Morgan is quirky and eclectic. The commercial streets have some unusual shops. Residentially, the housing consists of densely packed row houses, mostly all individualized (i.e., different from their neighbors').

Cleveland Park
On a blustery, surprisingly warm (for being post-Thanksgiving) Sunday, I found myself wandering around Cleveland Park. It's an upscale neighborhood, perhaps even more so than Dupont Circle. Both these neighborhoods have embassies, but Cleveland Park consists of nice single-family homes and a relatively smaller number of apartment buildings whereas Dupont Circle is mostly townhouses. This means the majority of buildings in Cleveland Park are larger and more expensive. That said, Cleveland Park's commercial area isn't anything like Dupont Circle's.

Indeed, many months later, I had a reason to further explore Cleveland Park's commercial strip. I found it's a charming neighborhood center, several blocks long, filled with single-story, densely packed shops. Some of the charm comes from its older feel, including for instance an old-fashioned movie theater. The commercial area has everything you'd want; as such, it could be a small town's downtown. But, it actually has too much stuff for a small town--its density and variety could only be supported by having the density of a city around it.

After writing this section, I read more about Cleveland Park. I agree with its tagline: "A small town in the city." It has the feel of a small town center yet is more than a small town center.

U Street
U Street is an up-and-coming neighborhood. I understand it's been up-and-coming for a decade or two now. It seems a bit stagnant; there's no obvious new developments. It's fairly hip, at least judging by the restaurants, but it could use more, or at least more shops. There are occasional gloomy, closed buildings.

Di Yin and I liked the look of an modern apartment building nearby and its many big plate glass windows.

Further away from the main commercial section, U Street is edgy. For instance, off the eastern end (near the Shaw metro station), all businesses have bars in their windows. This area has lots of African stuff. For instance, one short block had three African (including Ethiopian) restaurants. I heard lots of a language I didn't recognize. There are also lots of fences in this neighborhood for construction/repair zones. We were in that east end for dinner (Ethiopian, naturally), but it's not really a destination. U Street itself is a destination for some people however, though not for us. Over the course of the year we didn't find ourselves there very often.

Columbia Heights
I stopped by this neighborhood twice, only briefly for pizzas. It seems like a nice, modern, yuppie neighborhood, with many upper-middle-class chain restaurants and big-box chain stores. Everything looks new. It reminded me of Clarendon except this neighborhood is built up. Around the metro station are high-rise residential buildings with commercial establishments in the first story. Meanwhile, Clarendon is relatively flat, with few buildings more than a couple of stories.

On my second trip (for pizza at a different place), we left the town center. The older residential section was mostly well-kept-up townhouses with deep, attractive front gardens. We found neighborhood restaurants and bars on some corners. They felt like community places. I could live in this area.

Indeed, the town felt like an integrated community. We saw evidence that whites, blacks, and hispanics all lived in the area (walking dogs, carrying groceries, etc.). Di Yin guessed that the white people are newer folk, gentrifying the neighborhood, and the big name retailers are coming with them.

H Street
H Street NE is a neighborhood we kept hearing about, the new up-and-coming neighborhood replacing U Street. On various bus and driving trips that passed through this area, we saw fast food joints and an intriguing restaurant or two but not much of anything overall. We weren't impressed.

It was only near the end of our stay in D.C. that we made it there in person, for a Japanese (ramen) restaurant. By this point, I had tips from various people for half a dozen restaurants in this neighborhood. We walked the eight or so blocks of the main commercial strip eying stores. It definitely seems like a hipster destination, certainly more so than U Street. It's funkier. I felt more comfortable on H Street than U Street. (Don't take that to mean I'm claiming to be a hipster.) I think it's that H Street shops tend to sell food or items that people became interested in over the last five years whereas U Street shops moved in years earlier and thus tend to be for things that interest me less at the moment.

The Mall
When friends visited, we'd take them on strolls around the Mall, sometimes at night. I wrote more about the Mall in a different post.

Southeast
Not everything one hears generalizing about good and bad neighborhoods is true. For instance, one day I walked from the Capitol through SE D.C. to the Navy Yard / waterfront. (Some guides warn visitors against traveling outside NW D.C., saying the other sides are unsafe. For what it's worth, all the neighborhoods in D.C. listed above are in NW.) The southeast is a perfectly nice area. I first passed townhouses then, across the highway, perfectly respectable apartment buildings. Many people I saw wore suits and/or government badges. I spent another half an hour walking in SE circumnavigating the Navy Yard, and thought the neighborhood was fine.

Crystal City, Arlington (VA)
Crystal City is a neat place. We went to a restaurant there for dinner one evening and were impressed by the area's extensive underground malls and tunnels. Stretching more than half a mile in length, these passageways connect numerous apartment buildings, hotels, and office buildings with about two hundred shops (including several dozen restaurants covering a breadth of price points and cuisines), a metro station, and even a theater. One could get anything one needs without going outside, a great boon in cold weather. A bonus: the mall's/tunnel's walls were decorated with a huge photography exhibit. It was fun to gawk and walk. I'm led to believe that there's usually some sort of exhibit on display.

Clarendon, Arlington (VA)
I liked the feel of Clarendon on my first visit there years earlier and I still liked it on my first trip this year. It's a nice, walkable neighborhood center, filled with many shops, restaurants, and grocery stores. The architecture and especially the store selection reminded me more of California than another neighborhood in the Washington D.C. metro area. The Pinkberry shop perhaps drove that comment, but the area also has both Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, two stores one doesn't tend to see close together except in California.

Eden Center, Falls Church (VA)
One day when we had a car, Di Yin and I stopped by Eden Center in Falls Church. Like San Jose's Little Saigon, it's the Vietnamese center of the metro region. In a couple small indoor malls and large strip malls, Eden Center has dozens of restaurants, cafes, bakeries, and bars. It's a panoply of Vietnamese dining. It's clear the landlord doesn't enforce any variety in types of shops; there are many places competing with identical business models. Besides these restaurants, there are many jewelry shops, a few salons, a grocery store, and a handful of other types of shops.

Interestingly, the parking lot flies the American flag and the flag that South Vietnam flew before the Vietnamese war (and lost to the communists).

Alexandria (VA)
I wrote about my impressions of Old Town Alexandria in another post. During another visit, this time in the evening between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we observed Old Town's main street was nicely decorated for the holidays with lights in every tree.

One day Di Yin and I met a friend with a car (E) for lunch in Del Ray. Del Ray was a town near Alexandria built mainly in 1895-1930. Annexed by the town of Alexandria, Del Ray is now considered a historic neighborhood within it. Although we didn't walk around Del Ray, I feel I got a good impression of the neighborhood from our drive through it.

Del Ray is a nice middle-/upper-middle- class town. Along Mount Vernon, the main street, are a selection of quirky, fun shops and restaurants. The coolest thing about the street, however, is its architecture. The stores are either in row-shops, small stand-alone buildings, or converted single-family houses. It's a nice medley of styles, and all have a built-a-while-ago historic feel (though all are well-maintained). Not as densely packed as a modern urban street, nor with large-scale shops like modern suburban streets, it feels like an old-fashioned main street. Meanwhile, the residential areas nearby are similarly low-scale, with small-ish, old-ish single-family houses and townhouses.

Bethesda (MD)
Bethesda's town center is large. I biked through the town on multiple occasions and took the metro there on other occasions (mostly to eat) and rarely went down the same street twice. On every trip, I discovered new streets with blocks of restaurants and shops. At every time of day, there were always people on the streets. Maybe not as many people as in Georgetown, but it was always happening. One evening we found a professional band performing in a square.

The buildings are relatively tall in this vicinity, many a dozen stories. They look residential. I'd guess Bethesda has a higher population density than the area around most other metro stations.

The whole area feels new/modern and clean. It's definitely one of the nicer suburban destinations compared to others around D.C. and around most other cities.

Rockville (MD)
I twice made the trek to Rockville for Chinese food. (It has a large Chinese population.) Rockville is definitely suburban. I visited its town center, which seems like a smaller version of Reston's town center, including the central plaza / performance area and nearby library. The analogy to Reston's town center stretches further, as the roads around Rockville's town center are likewise large, high-speed roads, sometimes traffic-clogged. Outside the town center, it's not a town meant for walking.