From the NY Times Sunday Travel section:
December 16, 2007
Day Out | Washington
H (as in Humming) Street By CLAY RISEN
ITâ??S been almost 40 years since riots ripped through Washington in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.â??s assassination, and few areas were hit harder than the H Street Northeast corridor. Running from just north of Union Station toward the Anacostia River, H Street never fully recovered, even as other riot-scarred neighborhoods began picking up in the 1990s.
Over the last few years, though, H Street, also known as the Atlas District, has seen a marked revival. Four years ago, half of the streetâ??s 300 storefronts were empty; now only about 45 sit unoccupied. The areaâ??s anchor is a collection of bars and music clubs opened last year by a local entrepreneur named Joe Englert, who also helped drive the night-life explosion in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood.
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One of Mr. Englertâ??s venues, a popular stop-off for indie bands called the Rock and Roll Hotel (1353 H Street; 202-388-7625;
www.rockandrollhoteldc.com), has become a neighborhood hub, with a wide range of acts and a spacious upstairs bar and lounge, outfitted with worn-in sofas and winged guitars hanging from the ceiling. A few doors down is the Atlas Performing Arts Center (1333 H Street; 202-399-7993;
www.atlasarts.org), a renovated Art Deco movie house with two 250-seat theaters and two smaller spaces and performances from plays to cabaret to to jazz to light opera.
The 1200 block is home to the Palace of Wonders (1210 H Street; 202-398- 7469;
www.palaceofwonders.com), a bar that doubles as a vaudeville theater, and the Cajun-inflected Red and the Black (1212 H Street; 202-399-3201;
www.redandblackbar.com), another Englert enterprise, which offers Abita beer ($5) and a spicy chicken jambalaya ($8) downstairs and rock shows upstairs. At the H Street Martini Lounge (1236 H Street; 202-397-3333;
www.hstreetlounge.com), bar-hoppers can enjoy jazz acts while sampling from a 60-drink martini menu.
Perhaps just to see how many bars one block can handle, the 1200 block is also home to the Pug (1234 H Street; 202-388-8554), an inviting neighborhood bar, and Dr. Granville Mooreâ??s Brickyard (1238 H Street; 202-399-2546), a cozy two-floor pub featuring Belgian beers, a range of mussel dishes and enormous bowls of twice-fried frites (mussels start at $14; large frites are $7).
Clubgoers looking to check out go-go, the D.C. homegrown dance music style, should stop by Roseâ??s Dream Bar and Lounge (1370 H Street; 202-398-5700;
www.rosesdream.com), where the go-go veteran Little Benny takes the stage every Friday night.
The one drawback to H Street is its lack of Metro access. Fortunately, local proprietors offer a free shuttle service (301-751-1802) Friday and Saturday to and from Union Station, where patrons can catch the Red Line.
H Street gets less hectic during the day, with little commercial activity beyond a Payless shoe store and an auto parts store. But that is slowly changing, too. A few art galleries have opened recently, including Dissident Display (416 H Street; 202-332-3346;
www.dissidentdisplay.com), as well as Sidamo (417 H Street; 202-548-0081;
www.sidamocoffeeandtea.com), an airy coffeehouse with a roaster on the premises.
In Washington, wherever night life flourishes, high-end condo development is never far behind. The streetâ??s first luxury condo building debuted recently, and local developers are quickly buying up land along the entire strip.
If H Street is anything like 14th and U, the now-trendy neighborhood that was the center of the 1968 riots, in five years it will be completely made over â?? and jam-packed. For those who want to see the area before it really takes off, get to H Street now.
