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I guess someone who had no sense of the history of 8th and D Street SE could write, as Mr. Garber does, that it would be "short-sighted to use the corner retail space at 8th and D Streets SE as a day care center." This site was dedicated to use by DC Public Schools on the Fourth of July 1864, the first of a series of schools built across the District to educate rich and poor, white and black, the children of longtime free African-Americans and recently emancipated black families. That school building program demonstrated the Union's resolve to create a new, free nation by demonstrating how black and white children would be educated in the District after President Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves in D.C. a year earlier, on April 16, 1862. Imagine being so proud of dedicating a new development at 8th and D that you'd make it a reason to celebrate the Fourth of July in the middle of the Civil War! And this corner has endured in that use for 148 years, even attracting a Carnegie Library and a Catholic school across the street from this site.

What is so "short-sighted" about dedicating this corner to a use by all young families with children age 0 to 3, in a prominent way, to celebrate that history?

I guess someone who has no sense of what is unique about Capitol Hill's Central Business District (CBD) around Eastern Market could write, as Mr. Garber does that "a vibrant retail corner...would go a long way to visually connect retail activity on the north and south sides of Pennsylvania Avenue SE."

The funny dog-leg shape of this CBD was created when Eastern Market moved here in 1873. Somehow, for 139 years, the CBD thrived without "a vibrant retail corner" at 8th and D Street. [Deleted.] Street paving, street light and tree locations, trolley car routes and everything else for generations aimed to connect the two legs of the dog-leg across what is now Eastern Market Metro Entrance Plaza, strengthening and focusing the commercial link rather than dissipating it with a "vibrant retail corner" a block away from the CBD, at 8th and D, where homes belong. Until Mr. Garber came along and had a much, much better idea.

Or, in the alternative, we could build a monument to service to children in the form of a vibrant daycare center at that corner instead, if Mr. Garber did not object so strenuously to continuing to serve children at this corner, as we have for almost 150 years.

Is Mr. Garber ready to stack up his bold vision for "a vibrant retail corner" against what this neighborhood stands for and what it has come to represent? Thanks, but I'll take the judgment of L'Enfant, Washington, Lincoln, Wallach and Cluss over that of Mr. Garber on what will best serve generations to come.

by Trulee Pist on May 30, 2012 2:28 am • link • report