Surviving Trials of Time and Fire
Eastern Market Named One of 10 'Great Neighborhoods'
By Stephanie Cavanaugh
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, November 3, 2007; Page F01

Nancy Metzger was out for a stroll one balmy October day when a man stopped her on the street and asked, "Nancy, where's the Eastern Market neighborhood?"

The chairman of the Capitol Hill Restoration Society's Historic Preservation Committee replied: "Whoever goes to Eastern Market is the Eastern Market neighborhood. All of Capitol Hill is the Eastern Market neighborhood."

That's as good an answer as any to a question that has befuddled much of Capitol Hill since the American Planning Association named Eastern Market one of 10 "great neighborhoods" in the United States. Though the Hill is made up of numerous neighborhoods, Eastern Market isn't one of them.

The 134-year-old Eastern Market is just a building, but a building that happens to be a focus of Capitol Hill life.

When the market was gutted by fire one morning in April, the loss was traumatic. Within hours, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty was promising swift restoration. Within days, the Capitol Hill Community Foundation was spearheading fundraisers to support the merchants. By early September, a temporary market had been completed across the street, and the festival atmosphere was restored.

The D.C. Office of Planning nominated the blocks of Victorian homes, shops and restaurants that surround the market for the APA award, which was announced in late September. "We wanted to make people know nationally that Eastern Market is a treasure," said Anita Hairston, chief of staff in the planning office. It's a "key amenity" of Capitol Hill, along with Barracks Row along Eighth Street SE, on the other side of the plaza surrounding the Eastern Market Metro station.

But it was the fire, and the community's impassioned response, that provided the motivation. "Eastern Market and Capitol Hill were chosen because of all this personal investment and the effort put into preserving and restoring," Hairston said.

Eastern Market helped draw British journalist Maggie Hall to the neighborhood when she and Gary Humfelt, a marketing manager, moved from Manhattan 23 years ago. "The market shone like a beacon," she said. "It was like the street markets of London."

The Hill's appeal was not so cut-and-dried for Humfelt. He first showed Hall a house in Virginia that backed up to the woods. " 'It's absolutely gorgeous,' I told him. But in this location, I'd die in a month," she said.

She converted him with the promise that he would never have to drive to get a beer or have to cut the lawn. And they neither mow nor drive. Their 23-year-old car just passed 60,000 miles.

Each morning, and often in the afternoon, you'll find Hall holding court at one of the coffeehouses that have proliferated around the market. "For people who work from home, I don't think there could be a better place. Going to the market is like going to the water cooler," she said.

When she's down, she takes a walk. "It's an instant cure," she said. "I get a kick out of it every day of my life that when I leave the house I see the Capitol. I'm here, at the center of the world. This is where it all happens."

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