POLL: What Do You Call This Bit of Southeast D.C.?
A Hill Now story about an armed robbery at a McDonald’s on the unit block of I Street SE sparked a debate last night over how to identify this chunk of the District.
In our piece, we wrote that the area is in Navy Yard. We’ve traditionally called the area in Southeast D.C. bounded by the Anacostia River, South Capitol Street and the Southeast Freeway as Navy Yard. We refer to the Navy instillation in the area as the Washington Navy Yard.
Although the unit block of I Street SE is at the edge of this area, it fits within these boundaries.
NBC Washington reporter Tom Sherwood released these tweets shortly after we published our story, unleashing a torrent of comments on whether this block is in Navy Yard and whether Navy Yard is even a real neighborhood name:
@tomsherwood Because now most people call everything south of the freeway "Navy Yard", whether it makes any sense or not?
— JDLand (@JDLand) May 3, 2016
it's idiotic if they do. And certainly dumb for any news organization to do so. https://t.co/zRt84prNDg
— Tom Sherwood (@tomsherwood) May 3, 2016
We’re no strangers to debates about neighborhood names at Local News Now, the parent company of Hill Now. At one of our other websites, Borderstan, which covers a large swath of Northwest D.C., we looked at whether “North End Shaw” is a valid neighborhood name.
Unlike North End Shaw, Navy Yard as a neighborhood name has been around long enough that a neighborhood association and The Washington Post, Washington City Paper and other local news publications use the moniker. This week, for example, DCist, used Navy Yard to describe the neighborhood that is the focus of local blogger Jacqueline Dupree, who runs JDLand.
Instead of Navy Yard, we’ve heard at least part of the neighborhood called Near Southeast, Old City I and Capitol Riverfront.
What do you call the unit block of I Street SE? You can weigh in through the poll and in the comments.
Photo via Google Maps
