* FROM FAR ABOVE, 2015: With thanks to reader Maelstrom for the heads up, I've added Google's new satellite view of the neighborhood from April 11, 2015 to my Images From Above page, which displays annotated images first from 1949 then every few years from 1988 to the present, showing the changing landscape of Near Southeast.

This From Above page allows you to choose certain photos to compare, and now you can also click them to pop them up, easily toggling between them for better comparisons. (The new pop-up option also now means I need to do a better job of cropping and matching the photos, but not today.)

This particular shot marks the changes since the October 2012, and there's a pile of them, as you can see by the yellow highlights, since it was taken just as excavation had gotten underway at four sites and work was well underway at quite a few others. (The 2017 image should be a beaut!)

* FROM NEAR ABOVE, 1965: DDOT has a cool Tumblr where they post long-ago photos of the city from their archives, and recently they tossed me a bone with two helicopter (?) shots of the construction of the Southeast/Southwest Freeway taken in 1965, one of which shows the northern portion of Near Southeast, including the building on the site where the Park Chelsea and 800 New Jersey are being built, that I looked at for years from the freeway but never took my own photos of before it was demolished around 2000. (WAAAAAH) I hope they don't mind my reproducing them here, and adding them to my Historic Photos page.

Of course, if you want to see what the construction of the Southeast Freeway looked like from ground level in about 1964, I can once again go to the well to show you this photo of my brother on the swings at Garfield Park, with the new freeway looming (and the former Washington Star building at 225 Virginia, now better known as the renovated 200 I, at rear). There's also the brief snippet of Super 8 film my grandmother took in 1969 from the tennis courts at South Capitol and I, where she panned across the freeway vista. (I'm the one burning rubber on the tricycle.)

And if that makes you want even more of a peek into the past , I can again point you to the series of posts my dad wrote for JDLand of what life on the Hill was like in the 1960s, with more photos and home movies.

First, at the large open space along 1st Street south of M that I've taken to calling Spooky Park in honor of the former inhabitants, the beginnings of the new foot paths through what will eventually be green space on the northern end of the block are in evidence, as is the new parking lot in the southwest corner, closest to the ballpark. (Not quite so obvious at the moment is that the southeast corner, at New Jersey and Tingey, is slated to be the new home for the trapeze school.)

These spaces are temporary uses for the site, which is expected to eventually be where the bulk of The Yards's office space inventory will be situated, perhaps as much as 1.5 million square feet.

Meanwhile, a few blocks to the north, a lovely sidewalk was laid down recently on the south side of the new one-block stretch of I Street between 2nd and New Jersey, which remains fenced off while WC Smith continues work on its Park Chelsea and 800 New Jersey apartment buildings.

Wouldn't it be keen if this lovely sidewalk could be opened for pedestrians and cyclists even while waiting for the stretch of road to come open? Especially for, say, all those neighborhood bloggers who are getting really tired of having to walk down to K Street and then back up to I Street while being tormented with the view of a fenced-off cut-through? Who will think of them??

Finally, it's nice to see a covered walkway being built along the Half Street frontage of the 909 Half Mystery Building construction site. Wouldn't it be keen if one could also be built on the north side, along I Street? (Dock 79 also gets props for its new covered walkway along Potomac Avenue, one I'm sure will be used by tens of people each week, but rules are rules.)