Effect of the Parking Act of 1870. Photo by StevenM_61 on Flickr.

The original “L’Enfant” streets of Washington, DC were extremely wide. For example, East Capitol is 160 feet wide, but the actual paved roadway is only 50 feet. In 1870, leaders realized that the city didn’t need the huge avenues of the original plan, and passed the “Parking Act”. According to HPO’s Capitol Hill Historic District brochure, the Act

provided for green “parking strips” to either side of a central, paved area. Within this “parking,” the city government would be responsible for planting trees and laying sidewalks. The act allowed the owners of the property facing the street to landscape and later (1899) fence the remaining land between the sidewalks and the property lines.

In 1870, “parking” did not mean a paved-over area used for storage of motor vehicles. There weren’t even any motor vehicles at all. Today, by calling this the “parking area”, we perpetuate the impression that this area is properly designed for car parking.

Mere semantics? The language we use influences our thinking. At least one activist has proposed widening a roadbed to add on-street parking, arguing that this is a “parking” area. And when an issue surrounding motor vehicle usage comes before an ANC, as one did to Dupont’s on Tuesday, will the terminology of the “parking” area influence our decisions?

Dupont’s issue concerned one of the many semicircular driveways that puncture the streetscape in the neighborhood. These curb cuts were granted in the mid-20th Century at planning’s nadir, converted green front yards into car storage and made our streets less pleasant and less walkable. But they’re there, and they’re grandfathered.

Or maybe not. DPW recently started ticketing cars parked in these areas, claiming that while the curb cuts and driveways are legal, using them for parking is not. For owners, this was a shock, and at least two have applied for permits to rent the use of this public space in the way that they have been for decades.

Corner of 19th and R. From Live Maps.

1901 R (the white building above) has long stored seven cars in their front yard, some for residents and some for a doctor’s office. The thought of depriving cancer patients of their ease of reaching treatment was too strong an emotional appeal for the ANC to resist. And in this case, I agree; we shouldn’t upend a stable and well-established status quo simply because of a sudden change in enforcement by DPW. Property owners and pedestrians all deserve a more thoughtful debate on the topic.

But back to my original point: when we do have such a debate, we should consider the appropriate use of this public space unaffected by linguistic bias. The area is properly used for sidewalk cafes and front yards. In my opinion, it should never be used for new driveways or new parking. Can we devise a better name for what’s now technically called the “parking area”, to better reflect its function in the English of 2008 rather than that of 1870?

David Alpert created Greater Greater Washington in 2008 and was its executive director until 2020. He formerly worked in tech and has lived in the Boston, San Francisco Bay, and New York metro areas in addition to Washington, DC. He lives with his wife and two children in Dupont Circle.