DC's Hidden Places: Flagler Place

• April 27th 2016

by Nena Perry-Brown

This week, UrbanTurf visited another of DC’s Hidden Places, a one-way street just steps from North Capitol Street and Rhode Island Avenue NW in Bloomingdale.

Flagler Place is a quiet three-block street full of history, starting with the Tiber Creek, a bygone tributary of the Potomac River that used to run where the street is now. The street runs parallel between First and Second Streets NW, from Adams Street to U Street (map).

Famed DC developer Harry Wardman, along with architect A.H. Beers, was responsible for developing at least thirty-nine of the two-level rowhouses on Flagler Place during the early part of his career. Accomplished Broadway entertainer Chita Rivera lived at the recently-expanded 2134 Flagler until she was 15.

The street is also home to Parker Flats, a condominium building fronting 2nd Street that repurposed the historic former Nathaniel Parker Gage School.

Flagler Place resident Tolu and his wife purchased a rowhouse on Flagler Street in 2009 when Bloomingdale was less trendy and pricey. “It’s a good mix of people,” Tolu said. “Straight, gay, old, young, black, white, brown, etc. So it’s pretty diverse…mixed-income [since] not every house has been turned over.”

Recent addition Jennifer Lynn lived six blocks away for fourteen years, and didn’t know that Flagler Place existed until recently.

While the construction of the First Street Tunnel as part of DC’s Clean Rivers Project has closed off a portion of Flagler’s northernmost block, then-resident artist Nessar “Jah” Jahanbin saw the inconvenience as an opportunity to enhance the neighborhood with “Doors of Perception”, a series of paintings hung along the construction fence. “The 31 doors are designed to celebrate health and community brought on by the Clean Rivers Act and to bridge the public relations gap through the idea of bees and butterflies; hard work and metamorphosis,” Jah explains.

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This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dcs_hidden_places_flagler_place/11155.