Monday, July 21, 2014

Street Level: Geranium Street

The next stop on our tour of D.C. is Geranium Street, way up in Northwest D.C., not far from Silver Spring, Maryland.   It's a quiet residential street, just steps from the busy Georgia Avenue corridor.   Geranium Street is in the Shepherd Park neighborhood, where all of the streets bear the names of flowers and trees.  The streets are named for Alexander Robey Shepherd, former territorial governor of D.C., who once lived on the corner of Geranium and 13th Street.  Shepherd owned a nursery, and he planted many of the trees around the city.
 
The neighborhood, which was developed to be a "high-class neighborhood" in the beginning of the 20th century, was one of the first integrated neighborhoods in D.C., largely due to dedicated efforts of the residents to stem "white flight." 
 
Oddly enough, I didn't see many geraniums while I was there.