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An East-of-the-River View
Anacostia Heritage Trail
7 Roads That Divide
In the early evening of November 22, 1963, a clutch of people stood forlornly on this bridge spanning Suitland Parkway. They awaited the procession carrying the body of slain President John F. Kennedy from Andrews Air Force Base to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where it would be prepared for burial. Kennedy had been assassinated earlier that day in Dallas, Texas. The vehicles also carried his widow Jacqueline and newly sworn-in President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife Lady Bird.
Suitland Parkway had opened in 1944 to connect the new Camp Springs Army Air Base (later Andrews Air Force Base) and the Anacostia Naval Station and Bolling Field (later Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling). It also connected new federal office buildings in Suitland to downtown DC via the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge. To build the parkway, however, the U.S. government razed house and separated communities.
A decade later, when the National Capital Planning Commission considered building I-295 to provide commuters a shortcut through east-of-the-river neighborhoods, Anacostians protested that the project would destroy school recreation areas, reduce property values, and harm businesses. Eventually the commission agreed to place the I-295 freeway in Anacostia Park, and construction started in the late 1950s. While the compromise saved the neighborhoods, it did not stop the highway from separating them from the riverfront.
The modern Sheridan Station replaced the run-down Sheridan Terrace public housing, built in the later 1950s. Because urban renewal was pushing low-income renters out of neighborhoods across the river, the city rezoned much of Anacostia for affordable apartments to house them. Some of the new units were shoddily built and wore out quickly. By 1975 about 85 percent of Anacostia's housing was rental property. Within a generation this once-rural section had become solidly urban. |