Come out to learn about "The History of Bloomingdale: Why It Should Become a Historic District".
The first presentation was held on Thursday, May 19th.
The second presentation is on Thursday, June 16th, 7 pm at St George's Episcopal Church, 2nd and U St NW.
Don't miss this comprehensive overview of Bloomingdale's amazing past and present!
This is the last of the two presentations.
Note that the Bloomingdale Historic Designation Coalition is not affiliated with the Bloomingdale Civic Association.
ReplyDeleteOur guest speaker Kim Wiliams wrote the National Register of Historic Places nomination for McMillan.
http://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/places/13000022.htm
This document is a thorough history of the Sand Filtration Plant and Senator McMillan with many excellent photos too.
She is the Architectural Historian at DC HPO, and she describes a remarkably intact, fascinating, even charming engineering marvel.
Unfortunately DC govt. has dictated the destruction of the 20 acre "underground" and paving over the site with 50 buildings and 3000 parking spaces. Any other city would be offering, the whole city, a great community amenity, as 25 acres of open air green space, and adaptive-reuse in creative and imaginative ways. Like a huge outdoor concert space(see Hyde Park, or Lansdowne, or Sheep Meadow in NY Central Park. Really, why don't we have a large community campus for arts/education and performance (see Glen Echo), why no DC Central Park like NY? Why should we get a "McPark" in front of condos, we already have only one fifth the proper park land as Upper NW?
The worshippers of profits are telling us to demolish 20 acres of fascinating underground cisterns and over build our public land, with a crass suburban office and condo park that violates the DC Comprehensive Plan and federal covenants which were assigned to the sale from GSA to DC in 1987..I certainly support the Historic District designation for Bloomingdale and it was a shame that Brooklanders rejected the protections, about 14 years ago, stupid, now we are headed to become another Columbia Heights.
The 31,000 additional autos that traffic experts predict will crowd the (www.envisionmcmillan.com) "walkable neighborhoods" of EYA, are coming on top of the existing 38,800 autos at present congesting, N. Capitol daily. And 24,000 mass transit users coming from the McMillan Town Center will need 600 buses and shuttles a day to use the Brookland-CUA or RI Ave metro rail. So please Bloomingdale pass the historic district and start protecting Bloomingdale and don't lose
McMillan to become the "Monstrosity on Michigan Avenue". It is our neighborhoods to lose. Join us at McMillan Coalition for Sustainable Agriculture to Save McMillan Park email is amglassart@yahoo.com