The Place: Crispus Attucks Park
Where: Bloomindale, surrounded by N. Capital, U, 1st, and V Streets NW.
Why Live Here: The premise of this site is that you want to live near places that you love, and sometimes I know that’s a stretch, but this Place is the real deal. Crispus Attucks Park is a perfect little spot of land that truly feels like a hidden green oasis off of one of the major north to south thoroughfares in the city. Neighbors can mingle at various events and movie nights or while resting on benches, picnicking, or walking their dogs. What’s not to love?!
Things to Know: It’s been called more than one thing, from ‘The Cave Yard” to “The Secret Park” and this gem consists of 1.06 acre of flowers, trees and grass, stretching the length of a city block and the width of a six rowhouses.
Crispus Attucks Park is named in honor of Crispus Attucks, an African American former slave and the first person to lose his life in the Boston Massacre and thus first death of the American Revolution.
In the early 20th century, the site was the location of a cable yard and a building that housed the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company switching station. Operations there ended in the late 1960s, and a decade later, neighbors lobbied the telephone company to let the community use the abandoned building as a community center. For a time, the center and its green space were funded by the city, but in 1987, the DC’s Parks & Recreation budget was cut, and the site was once more left idle. In 1995, neighbors took action again to clean up the park, but three years later, due to unpaid taxes the city foreclosed on it. Eventually the debt was forgiven, and the city council passed a law that gave control of the park to the Crispus Attucks Development Corporation (CADC).
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