Since I've had a little bit of experience with census digging (I did a lot of my family's geneaology back in the early 2000s, before I began some other project that soon sucked up all my free time), I took a few minutes and found the links to the five enumeration districts that cover Near Southeast, along with the map that shows their locations.

So, if you live in Capitol Quarter, ED 204 covers you (from 2nd to 5th and Virginia to M). ED 203 goes east from 5th to 11th, while ED 205 includes all the blocks between 2nd and South Capitol north of M, for you Velocity/Onyx/CHT/Capitol Yards folks. ED 206 goes from M to the Waterfront and over to what's now the WASA site, while ED 207 covers the Navy Yard, which at that time ran from New Jersey Avenue to 11th. (It's actually funny how those boundaries from 72 years ago do a pretty good job of reflecting how the neighborhood's various sub-areas are still seen today.)

This was more than 10 years before the Cappers were built, but the neighborhood wasn't exactly a rich enclave. Plus, not many houses that were standing in 1940 remain in existence today, so only a few people will get the fun of seeing who actually lived in their house back then. But I thought one or two people might enjoy wandering through the many pages to get a feel for the people who lived in Near Southeast as World War II was looming. (You'll probably want to use the Questions Asked page to guide you across the columns. Note that the street name is written vertically in the first column, with the house number next. And the pages don't always perfectly follow the grid, so you may need to page through much of the ED to find the spot you're looking for. Plus, the image display is really cruddy right now, so using the option to download an entire ED and then browsing with the image viewer on your own computer might be preferable.)

Please post in the comments anything interesting you find--you'll make an old lady historian very happy.

(And I guess I might have to dig up the same information for earlier censuses. Not tonight.)

PS: If you don't live in one of these EDs, you can wander through the city map to find yours.

Early 2007 is the optimum time for seeing the last vestiges of the old neighborhood west of New Jersey Avenue juxtaposed with the stampede of new construction. There's a lot of "holes in the sky" where we're now used to seeing 70/100 I, 909 New Jersey, Onyx, 100 M, 55 M, Velocity, and 1015 Half.

And there was this big project underway south of N Street:

There's even images that surprise me, like seeing the South Capitol Street viaduct again (it was demolished five months later). And, of course, Normandie Liquors still stood alone.

Over the next four months, demolition would clear 25 buildings directly north of the ballpark, including all of the remaining night clubs from the neighborhood's old days (Wet, Edge, Club 55, the Nexus Gold Club, and Nation). Construction would begin on 55 M and Velocity, and 70/100 I, Onyx, and 100 M would come out of the ground. And the US Department of Transportation opened.

There's a lot going on in the neighborhood once again these days, but it'll never be anything like 2007 and 2008. So check out both pages of the gallery, and prepare to be amazed! (Or not.)

UPDATE: It might also be interesting to look at my gallery from one year later, Feb. 10, 2008, to really get a sense of how much things changed in 12 months.

Not surprisingly, it was the arrival of DC's subway in Anacostia that was the main focus of opening day celebrations: "At long last, after two decades of planning and delays, site squabbles and legal hurdles, Metro's Green Line came to Anacostia yesterday and Anacostia rolled out a green carpet of welcome," reported the Washington Post.

But, a few days earlier, the Post published a piece focusing on what changes the new Navy Yard station would bring to its surroundings:

"Metro's newest neighbors on downtrodden M Street SE have been coping for months with the dust and shambles of tunnel construction by holding onto one hope: Maybe Metro can make things better."

"'I hope that it will stop the drug traffic,' said Ann Mose, a secretary at an Aamco Transmission shop just a few yards from the new Navy Yard stop, which is at M and Half streets SE and New Jersey Avenue. 'I know one thing: Metro and the police are going to have their work cut out for them. People are scared.'"

Then, see if this part sounds familiar: "About two years ago, the biggest names in Washington real estate bought up acres of vacant lots and ramshackle warehouses there in anticipation of a mini-boom town of offices, town houses, retail stores and recreation areas to be spawned by the arrival of the Metro. In the past year, as financing for speculative development has dried up, buyer enthusiasm has ebbed."

The article then speaks of the plans to redevelop the Southeast Federal Center with 1 million square feet of office space for 23,000 federal workers at agencies like GSA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Navy, and perhaps FEMA.

"But today, as Metro cars rumble through test runs on the new extension of the Green Line, those dreams seem obscured by drug traffickers who walk undisturbed up and down M Street, in the shadows of boarded-up buildings that neighbors call crack houses, from which Metro workers solicitously warn visitors to stay away. [...]

"Between that and the subway stop is public housing. Trash piles up on the sidewalk. Hypodermic needles are discarded in open lots.

"'You've got to be something of a visionary to see what this is going to be like in five to 10 years,' GSA administrator Dick Austin said. 'There are a lot of those who are skeptics and say it's not going to happen.... Did you ever see the movie 'Field of Dreams?'"

And, in referencing the commercial developers who had bought up much of the land in the neighborhood, the article says: "Their hopes[...]: that the lackluster waterfront from Buzzard Point to the Washington Navy Yard could be turned into the Tysons Corner of the 21st century."

According to NextGov, the first of NGA's 8,500 employees arrived at their new home in January with more continuing to make the move, and I've confirmed that this includes some employees from the Near Southeast location as well as NGA's other locations in Bethesda, Reston, and Ft. Belvoir. The moves are happening in a staggered fashion, working toward the required "fully operational" date of September 15 in Springfield. (You can see construction photos of the new campus on Flickr, or learn more about the history of NGA via Wikipedia.)

The 1st and M building, known as Building 123 213 in Southeast Federal Center parlance, is the northwestern-most portion of the footprint of The Yards, and the long-term plans for the site are for new office space with ground-floor retail. Perhaps once NGA has completed the move there will be a freer flow of information about the site (if the building will be torn down or used for other purposes in the interim, if the fence will come down, etc.). It also is more than likely that there are other somewhat shadowy outfits operating in this space as well, and I'm not sure whether they're heading for even more shadowy pastures elsewhere during this move.

But the departure of NGA is a step toward replacing the armed encampment one block from Nationals Park with something a bit more welcoming--and I'm sure the building's security folks aren't terribly unhappy about no longer being surrounded by red-clothed hordes (toting cameras! the horror!) 80 days a year. (I will admit to once starting to point a camera at a few of the guards behind the fence--without coming close to squeezing the shutter--just for the fun of showing the people I was with how quickly the guards would reach for their guns.)

It's not like there's ever been a whole lot of detail about the goings-on on this corner: the Post reported back in 1964 that the CIA moved into the renovated Naval Weapons Plant warehouse in January 1963 with "no announcement, no little ceremony, no welcome-to-the-great-southeast-sector fanfare." There also hadn't been any announcement in November 1961 when the GSA awarded a no-bid contract to get the building renovated.

(Current residents and observers will get a kick out of the Post's 1964 description of the building's surroundings as "liquor stores, run-down shops, a railroad spur, and, right around it, a formidable chain link fence topped by five rows of unfriendly barbed wire," which WaPo said made "the six-story cream-and gray building [...] positively glamorous" in comparison.)

If you look at this map of the future layout of the Yards, you can see the 1st-and-M site at upper left, with plans for three buildings and a new east-west street (which this map says will be called Quander Street) about halfway down the block, along with the new "1 1/2 Street SE" running north-south from Quander to N Place.

We left the Hill--and Washington--in late 1969 when Dad took a job in Chicago, but we returned to the area in 1977, living in Chevy Chase but always keeping our ties the Hill strong, both professionally through Dad and my brother's jobs and then personally when I moved to the Hill in 1994.

When my now-husband and I bought our house in June 1995, right as DC was hitting rock bottom and just before the financial control board was instituted, most of our friends were more than a little concerned about our decision, especially given that this was how many people thought of Washington outside of far Northwest and the National Mall. But Dad and Mom certainly approved of my decision to put down stakes back in the neighborhood where their life together--and my life!--had started.

So, this brings this nice wintertime diversion to an end, and I hope people have found it interesting. And maybe it's spurred a few of you to get your parents' memories of your childhood neighborhood (wherever it may be), and maybe some longtime Hill residents have shaken loose a few of their own recollections while reading this. (I know I've gotten a number of "Yes! The Oakland Inn!" responses.)

Thanks for doing this, Dad, and now go get back on your bike: spring is coming.

This time he's written on a subject matter that's almost on-topic for JDLand: residential real estate, with a lot of detail from when he and my mother purchased 127 E St., SE, in early 1964. (He even dug into his files and found the paperwork from the sale, which amounted to all of about four pages, which I've included.) And he recounts a trip through the city bureaucracy to build the garage that's still out back of 127 E today--it wasn't smooth sailing, but I bet it was still a lot easier than it would be now!

He also talks a bit about the old Weisfeld's Market, from when it was at 131 E St. More recent Hill citizens may remember Weisfeld's in its later location, at the corner of 4th and E, where the Capitol Supreme Market now operates. There's also talk of The Rotunda, and a first mention of Mr. Henry's, which he says helped "extend the boundaries of where Hill people felt comfortable going." You know, alllllll the way out to 6th and Pennsylvania, SE.

I also took the opportunity to add some multimedia offerings to give everyone some looks at the 100 block of E during the mid-1960s.

Thanks again to Dad for taking the time to write this all down. Maybe when I get him and Mom down to the neighborhood for a baseball game this year, we'll set up for a bit beforehand somewhere (Das Bullpen?) and interested parties can swing by to chat.

There was also touch football, which of course was practically a requirement during the Kennedy era (and I've added a home movie clip to make this a true multimedia offering). He also talks about the old Oakland Inn just over the line in Maryland, famous for its fried chicken and to which I even remember being taken once when I was probably in junior high.

And, sadly, as with any memories of the era, it includes the events of Nov. 22, 1963.

I just can't help but picture the cast of Mad Men as I read all of these! I'm passing the comments that people have sent back to Dad (and I think he's peeking in as well), so thanks for the continued indulgence--I think it's a nice little side project during the less newsy winter months. And it's especially nice for me since I don't have to do the writing. Or pay him. :-)

Like a batty old relative pulling out the photo albums for the umpteenth time, I'll take a moment to mark today as the eight-year anniversary of my tracking the changes that were starting to take place south of the freeway. The 63 photos I took while Mr. JDLand drove me around aren't a complete archive of every building in the neighborhood at that time, because frankly all I was doing that day was getting a few shots for myself and not planning the launch of an obsessive compulsive project that would suck up almost all of my free time and energy for years to come. But I came home and put them on my web site so my father could see them, made up a page with some links so I could easily go back to sites to check for updates, and off we went.

And now maybe it's just as noteworthy to mark Jan. 19, 2003 as the day I took the shot of the Little Red Building standing alone, since that's become the somewhat iconic shot of where the neighborhood was compared to what it was about to become.

Anyway, it's been quite a ride for eight years, with a lot of words and a lot pictures (about 50,000 of them), and I hope that people are continuing to find the site useful and interesting. Thanks for reading, commenting, and sending me news and tips! Hopefully 2011 will be a bounty of news and happenings.

[PS: Is it a sign of a marriage that's getting long in the tooth that I swore the anniversary was actually tomorrow until I saw the "Today in (Recent) Near Southeast History" box on the right side of the home page? So--oops--I guess my State of the Hood is going to be posted on my eight-year-and-one-day anniversary. And I'll also note that today is not the actual JDLand.com anniversary, because I've had my own web site since late 1994 and bought the JDLand domain name in 1996. Old-timers may remember that I didn't even give my Near Southeast stuff the main JDLand.com URL until 2007.]