Shaw, Washington, D.C. - History

History

Shaw grew out of freed slave encampments in the rural outskirts of Washington City. Originally called "Uptown", in an era when the city's boundary ended at "Boundary Street" (now Florida Avenue), in the Urban Renewal Era the neighborhood began to be referred to as Shaw because of the neighborhood Junior High School named after Civil War Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commander of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

The neighborhood thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the pre-Harlem center of African American intellectual and cultural life. Howard Theological Seminary received its first matriculates in 1866; by 1925, Professor Alain LeRoy Locke was advancing the idea of "The New Negro", and Langston Hughes was descending from LeDroit Park to hear the "sad songs" of 7th Street. The most famous Shaw native to emerge from this period—sometimes called the Harlem Renaissance—was Duke Ellington.

Following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, riots erupted in many D.C. neighborhoods, including Shaw, Columbia Heights, and the H Street, NE corridor. The 1968 Washington, D.C. riots marked the beginning of a decline in population and development that would condemn much of the inner city to a generation of economic decay. Following the riots, Shaw civic leaders Walter Fauntroy and Watha T. Daniel led grassroots community renewal projects with the Model Inner City Community Organization (MICCO) .

Shaw is a mostly residential neighborhood of 19th century Victorian row houses. The architecture of these houses, Shaw's central location, and the stability of D.C.'s housing market have transformed the neighborhood through gentrification. Shaw's notable place in African American history has made the recent influx of affluent professionals particularly controversial.