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Downtown (doun’toun’): n. The lower part or the business center of a city or town.
Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.
A decade ago when I first moved to DC, I wanted to know what people meant by downtown. What I asked what area they meant by “downtown,” three of the boundaries were almost always the same (and all in NW); Mass Ave to the north, 22nd St to the West, and Penn Ave to the South. The Eastern boundary could be as shallow as 17th ST, or as distant as 11th. While the North, West, and Southern boundaries still seem like fairly reasonable markers, what about the Eastern boundary? Does it extend to 6th ST? 3rd? Maybe to the Capitol?
In his columns & chats Gene Weingarten refers to his “house in downtown DC,” yet he lives near Eastern Market. Does anyone else consider Capitol Hill to be downtown? (“anyone else” does not include Weingarten’s disciples). What about Shaw, or Logan?
The Downtown Neighborhood Association has boundaries that go no farther West than 13th ST. The Downtown Business Improvement District has an Eastern boundary of North Capitol, and a Southern boundary of Constitution Ave.
Is the term downtown so generic that places like the Metropolitan at Pentagon Row can be considered “downtown living?”
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I think the North, West, and South borders are reasonable for downtown. I would probably put the east border at about 11th. I would not, however, consider the 7th street area as downtown. It is Penn Quarter, a wholly separate and distinct neighborhood IMO.
But, in the end, it is really just minor hair splitting. DC is SO small, that it seems a bit presumptuous to try and discern between “uptown, downtown, and midtown.” That sort of thing is best for a big city, and any real action is DC only exists in 20 block area.
Have you ever heard someone refer to a part of DC as “Uptown”? I haven’t. I live in Meridian Hill, which really feels like “up-town” because of the incline leading to up to it, but I’d feel silly using that term to describe where I live.
Also, Pentagon Row should not be considered downtown by anyone’s standards.
Rather than “Downtown,” the future nominclature is “Center City.” On Monday, March 3, 2008, Mayor Fenty unveiled the District’s “Center City Action Agenda 08.” As background, the DC City Council adopted a revised Comprehensive Plan for the city in December 2006. In response, the DC Office of Planning, in conjunction with the Downtown Business Improvement District, developed a new plan for Washington’s “Center City,” an area stretching from Dupont Circle to the SE-SW Waterfront and from Foggy Bottom to Capitol Hill. The purpose was to develop a list of key strategic initiatives that need to be implemented over the next 18 months in order to reach a set of goals for the center city. The Mayor’s press release touted new retail and entertainment attractions, high-quality parks and open space, streetcars, and improved streetscapes.
It’s all relative. To anyone outside DC, anything within the DC borders is “downtown.” Problem with trying to define “downtown” is that you inevitably get into the real estate sales problem of trying to put neighborhoods into close proximity to “hot” properties. Hence W Street being “North Logan or NOLO” back before U Street was considered “safe.” Or Potomac Avenue being “East Capitol Hill.”
To me, “downtown” is anything in close proximity to the Mall, but then again, I’m a monkey.
It’s like when you meet somebody outside of DC and they say… ‘I live in DC’… then you ask ‘where?’… a lot of times they say ‘alexandria’ or ‘rockville’… funny.
All the boundaries overlap, and have shifted over time. Look at the “Mid City” Fish market at 14th and P and the “Mid City” Post office for examples of how “Logan Circle” used to be in “Mid City”.
Historically (depending on when) Downtown was South of K, Mid City went from there North to Fl, and Uptown was above that. But within those broad ranges, there were many neighborhoods.
Now, I’d guess “Downtown” would go to N or M. And, yes, Penn Quarter is part of Downtown, not a world unto its own.
Columbo, we live Downtown and more importantly we live Intown. All those downtown wannabees can never say they live intown.
I’m a Gene Weingarten fan, but do not consider Capitol Hill to be “downtown.” I think of Downtown DC as being the central business district, only going as far as Union Station in the direction of Capitol Hill. Some refer to the the K Street area west of 16th Street as “midtown” but it’s pretty vague, and I think of “uptown” as consisting of Woodley Park, Cleveland Park, etc (the Uptown Theater), but more commonly called upper NW DC. Then again there’s also “mid-city” as in the 14th Street corridor Logan Circle up to U Street.
According to the DC Comprehensive Plan, “Washington’s ‘traditional’ Downtown includes Chinatown, the arts district around Gallery Place, the retail core near Metro Center, the mixed use Penn Quarter and Mount Vernon Square areas, and concentrations of government office buildings at Federal Triangle and Judiciary Square.”
ooh, this is a pet-peeve of mine. Downtown is the Central Business District. The borders can change with new construction, but not with new ad campaigns. Logan is NOT downtown, Floirda Ave is NOT downtown, and Capitol Hill is NOT downtown.
It’s simple in DC, neighborhood of row houses = not downtown.
BTW, the area south of Thomas Circle now has signs up proclaiming IT to be midtown, I wonder if the U street signs know. So lame, a NYC name is not better than a local name.
The local TV stations avoid this issue altogether by being so vague that when they report local news, they just give a quadrant. No matter that the neighbors might care to know that the shooting happened down the street, they merely sign off with, “Reporting from Northwest, this is Joe Schmo,” leaving us to figure out where they are based on what the scenery looks like behind the reporter.
I live in Southwest. Any questions? Hahaha. It’s also referred to as the Waterfront but that sounds so haughty to me.
I believe Tom at 400 Mass hit the nail on the head.
Chinatown and the area around Gallery Place has historically been referred to as “downtown”.
The new growth in the Penn Quarter/Downtown area seems to be creating some confusion as residents are wanting some sort of identity as to where they live.
Other areas are simply referred to by the neighborhoods…Cleveland Park, Logan Cirlce, The HIll, etc. It seems that Penn Quarter/Gallery Place is the neighborhood name give to this area.
It certainly is easier to describe where you reside than trying to decide if you are uptown, downtown or intown.
How about “midtown?”
I met a couple on vacation who said they were from DC also. I asked wherebouts. They said “Front Royal.” True story.
Hah, great point number 13, the worst is Fox 5 News at Ten. They’ll have a live shot from “Northwest”, and it’s obviously Wisconsin Avenue right outside their station.
DC defines a “Central Business District” – for among other things, traffic regulations and planning. For example, it is ILLEGAL to ride a bicycle or segway on the sidewalk anywhere in the Central Business District.
The Central Business District is defined by section 9901 of Title 18 of the District of Columbia Municipal Regulations (18 DCMR § 9901) to have the following boundaries:
Beginning at 23rd Street and Massachusetts Avenue, Northwest, then east
along Massachusetts Avenue to Second Street, Northeast, then south on Second Street to
D Street, Southeast, then west on D Street in a line crossing Virginia Avenue, Southwest
to 14th Street, Southwest, then north on 14th Street, Southwest to Constitution Avenue,
Northwest, then west on Constitution Avenue to 23rd Street, Northwest, then north on
23rd Street, Northwest to Massachusetts Avenue, Northwest.
If the laws treat where you are as being “Downtown”, then you are “Downtown”.
Anything else is really real estate mumbo-jumbo – such as ads describing an 11th St NW address as “Dupont East”, etc.
and get those bicycles and Segways off the sidewalk…
I used to work on 18th & Penn. Back in the late 70’s, it was referred as “Downtown” and “Uptown” was past Foggy Bottom, mostly Georgetown area. Never dyd hear anyone say “Midtown”.
Our downtown has actually be defined by the US Congress (where we have no floor vote).
Downtown = zone 1 of the soon to be extinct taxi zone system.
http://dctaxi.dc.gov/dctaxi/frames.asp?doc=/dctaxi/lib/dctaxi/MapWithRates.pdf
I agree that it’s definitely a relative term. To someone in Reston, Dupont is downtown, but to someone in Dupont, Penn Quarter is downtown.
But if I try to define it, I go with the business areas north of the mall, roughly to K, stretching from Foggy Bottom to around 5th NW. I would say it goes all the way to Union Station, but the retail-dead Judiciary Square area and 395 block the way.
I would never consider Capitol Hill downtown! I would consider Shaw, Logan, Dupont as all being part of dowtown though. I would say downtown goes east almost to the capitol.
Petula Clark (and composer Tony Hatch) solved this 40 years ago. Downtown is:
– Where there’s noise and hurry
– Where there’s music of the traffic
– Where the neon signs are pretty
– Where the light are much brighter
– Where there are movie shows
– Where you can forget all your troubles
Sounds like the Penn Quarter to me!
#17 – Similar experiences. When we meet people out of town and say we live in Washington DC we always get – “Oh, my cousin lives in Leesburg…Where do you live”. We live “downtown” in the city.
“Oh, you actually live in the city [look of horror or excitement]”
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I think like everything else, it is relative. For those living South of Florida Avenue and West of North Capitol, downtown is probably the North Capitol/Mass/22nd/Constitution box. For those that live in Upper NW or on Capitol Hill, probably means everything south of Florida, West of North Capitol and East of Rock Creek Parkway and North of the National Mall. SW will always be SW, and East of North/South Capitol Streets will always be Capitol Hill and Ballpark.