DCentric

By Mary-Alice Farina

Before the transformation of the Anacostia Waterfront and the Navy Yard began, there was Foggy Bottom. The fashionable Northwest neighborhood, now home to luxury condominiums, pristine river views and affluent seniors, was characterized by tenement dwellings, smoke stacks and slums 60 years ago.

At the end of the 18^th century, the riverbanks now dominated by the Kennedy Center were D.C.’s gang-ridden and malaria-infested industrial hub. Breweries, lime kilns, shipyards and the Washington Gas Light Company facility brought an influx of European immigrants to Foggy Bottom. Foggy Bottom residents, mostly unskilled manual laborers, often spoke no English.

The area around Washington Circle, named “Round Tops” after the notorious gang that controlled it, was considered one of the most dangerous parts of town. During the population boom after the Civil War, Foggy Bottom’s “ethnic” and working class inhabitants were primarily Irish and German. A Washington Post article quoted a then-resident: “If you picked a fight with an Irishman at 17^th Street, you’d have to fight every other Irishman down to the river at 27^th Street before you could escape.”

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