Monumentality in Microcosm

Industrial land uses in the southern quadrants of the City – associated with the port and naval yard – created markedly different residential settlement patterns. The southwest quadrant in particular did not enjoy the same investment in public space as elsewhere in the District, where steady middle-class gentrification wrought pleasant gardens and parks. Indeed, many of the triangular reservations delineated by the Office of Public Buildings & Grounds in the late 1800s are, in the southwest quadrant, now nonexistent or exist in the same state of abandonment documented by the OPB&G in the 1920s and 1930s. Other sites in the far northwest and northeast – at suburban communities outside the historic city, and settled later in the 20th century – are also typified by a sort of benign neglect. Site visits to the neighborhoods of Petworth (NW) and Woodridge (NE) confirmed that triangle parks there appear exactly as they did in photographs from the 1920s and 30s.