Richard / Flickr

Whole Foods now has four locations in D.C., including the P Street Whole Foods pictured above.

D.C. gets another Whole Foods today. The grocer, viewed by many as one of the most obvious signs of gentrification, has opened the doors at 22nd and I Streets NW in Foggy Bottom.

Foggy Bottom is a far cry from a rapidly changing neighborhood — it’s been decidedly wealthy for a couple of decades. But it wasn’t always that way. Washington Circle, a stone’s throw from the new Whole Foods, was an Irish gang crossroads in the late 1800s. Tenement dwellings, smoke stacks and slums dominated Foggy Bottom through the first half of the 20th century, when most residents lived in abject poverty. Much different from expensive homes and grocers with organic salad bars.

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.”

When the slave trade was officially abolished in Washington in 1850, an increasing number of black families moved to the neighborhood for work opportunities. By 1920, prohibition and a faltering economy slowed Foggy Bottom’s previously thriving industry. Those who had the means to leave the neighborhood did, namely the German and Irish immigrants who were increasingly acculturated to white middle class America. Only the poorest residents remained, most of them, black.

Snow’s Court at 24th and I streets NW now houses expensive rowhouses in the shadow of a luxury condo building. But in the early 20th century, it housed alley dwellings that were some of the most notorious slums in Washington’s history. Most Foggy Bottom residents lived in abject poverty, according to a 1944 Washington Housing Association survey. Over half of the population shared or had no bathing and toilet facilities, a quarter had no running water and one-fifth had no electricity.

Dramatic transformation began in Foggy Bottom when the government targeted the area for redevelopment, and two significant moves laid the foundations for further development. In 1949, the Department of State moved into the neighborhood. Then Washington Gas Works—the last bastion of Foggy Bottom industry—closed in 1954.

Foggy Bottom’s skyline, no longer blighted by smoke stacks, had more and more government office buildings. Real estate developers took note of the potential; plans for “Potomac Plaza,” in the style of New York City’s Rockefeller Plaza, were drawn up. Developers’ plans for luxury high rises and civic buildings drew the attention of wealthy individuals, who swept in and renovated old brick slums like Snow’s Court. The Watergate and the Kennedy Center, constructed by the early 1970s, completed the transformation.

Conversations about neighborhood transformation and gentrification are burgeoning in the District, but some of those forces took place decades ago in many neighborhoods. Foggy Bottoms’ Washington Circle, once an Irish gang crossroads, will soon be home to a Whole Foods.

Mary-Alice Farina is a writer for 365DC. Read her in-depth Foggy Bottom history here and follow her on twitter at @mafalicious.