Surviving Trials of Time and Fire
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That a stylish shop has thrived in this location doesn't surprise her. "It's been a wonderful location to grow in," she said. "But I could have gone out of business if I wasn't smart."

Recently she expanded to two floors, with accessories and gifts on the ground level, clothing and shoes upstairs. "We draw customers from all over the world," she said, "and we have a record of sending them home alive."

Few can claim a longer record of involvement on Capitol Hill than Will Hill, who has lived in a house just off Pennsylvania Avenue since 1972.

Hill, who came from Culpeper, Va., worked as a page for the Senate until his retirement in 2002. He has also served on the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission for more than 20 years, volunteers for the police department's residents advisory council and sits on the police chief's advisory council.

Over the years, he's seen various tussles and tempests, but overall, "the neighborhood has remained about the same," he said. "It's very friendly and open and peaceful."

The biggest changes have been recent. "Before it was mostly single people," but with improvements in the schools and the availability of three-bedroom houses for the price of one-bedroom condominiums elsewhere in town, "people see more opportunity down here to raise a family," he said.

Every few years Hill threatens to take Porsche and Potuque, his Chihuahuas, to "a quiet place in the country where the little dogs can run," he said.

But whenever he gets the itch to leave, his neighbors urge him to stay. " 'Don't move, don't move,' they tell me," Hill said. " 'We'll lose a valuable asset to the community if you go.' So I'm still here.

"It gives me great pleasure to see small kids walk up and down the street and call me Mr. Hill -- and older ones, too, call me Mr. Hill," he said. "It's respect I've earned. It means quite a bit for people to recognize me for the work I've done."

The Main Street Look

Frame of Mine, the shop on nearby Barracks Row, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

Once considered Eastern Market's somewhat seedier sibling, the blocks leading from Pennsylvania Avenue down to the Washington Navy Yard are now spick-and-span. Thanks to a Main Street project put in place by merchants and landlords and paid for in part by the D.C. government, there are herringbone brick sidewalks, hanging flower baskets and flapping banners on the lampposts.

That was hardly the case when Frame of Mine's owner, Cissy Webb, set up shop. "The gay prostitutes in the doorway next door -- should we start with that? They would say things that would make me blush, and I'm no shrinking violet," she recalled. "It used to be in the old days, the bums walked down the street with hands out. Now they walk with a cup from Starbucks," she said.

"Actual Hill residents were never afraid to come down Eighth Street," she said. "But people from Northwest would call and ask if it was safe. I'd tell them no," she said. "But we had the hardware store, the paint store, we even had restaurants."

These days, bars such as Finn MacCool's are packed, lines form outside Belga Cafe, and shops such as Alvear Studio hum with browsers. "Now the challenge is avoiding homogenization and keeping the unique shops," Webb said. "Georgetown, Alexandria and downtown Washington, it's all chains. I think people want uniqueness. When I go home, I'm certainly not looking for Benetton."

And home, for Webb, is also the Hill. She lives a stroll from the shop. "To be where I am, right off the market?" she said. "I walk everywhere and I love it . . . The only reason I'd live anywhere else is if I could no longer walk."

Stephanie Cavanaugh, a 25-year resident of Capitol Hill, was a founder of the Voice of the Hill newspaper and its original editor.

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