Matt McClain/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST - A stereoscopic image of Frederick Douglass hangs on a fence at the corner of Good Hope Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE. Residents want a totem pole erected at the corner.
The Gateway to Anacostia is now a corner lot with the faded remains of a wall on the brink of collapse, imprisoned by a chain link fence.
But it is here, at this intersection of optimism — Good Hope Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue — in Southeast Washington where some hope a monument will soon stand.
Over the summer, the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development surveyed nearly 200 people in Ward 8 to gauge their interest in a piece of public art in this scraggly place. Among the choices: murals, elaborately lit designs, landscapes.
But the people wanted a totem pole. The behemoth sculptures, typically carved from trees by native peoples to illustrate ancient legends, watch over lands in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. There are also some near Union Station, part of another installation.
“The things with the eagles?” asked Ralph Phillips, 29, as he walked along Good Hope Road. “That makes sense to me. The Indians, the Native Americans were the first ones here. It could be a nice tribute to them and help show off our neighborhood.”
One evening this month, the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities invited five local artists to share their ideas for a piece to symbolize the neighborhood’s past, present and future. The artists sat before fewer than a dozen neighbors, all interested in seeing the area move away from being the city’s portrait of poverty.
Washington boasts 120 public art installations, according to Mary Beth Brown, a public art coordinator for the commission. Few, if any, have as much significance as the one at Good Hope and MLK Avenue will, she said, because “the community is passionate about this corner.”
While revitalization marches across much of the city, Anacostia still aches for it. There have been bright spots, such as the slow uptick of black professionals returning to the neighborhood. But on the same streets as the future art piece, empty storefronts with a new coat of paint show a neighborhood still thirsty for business.
“I would envision that the totem pole would be our very own landmark,’’ said Michael Spencer, 32, a lawyer who grew up in Anacostia and lives in nearby Hillcrest. “A big opportunity. Something that has the potential to define and change the way the neighborhood feels about itself.”
One frigid night, a group of middle-aged men and women, all friends, stood along Good Hope Road, swapping stories of the corner’s tragic folklore.
“Two words: Slave trade,’’ said Darrell Gray, who grew up in Ward 8. “My mother told me that’s where they used to sell us.”
Plantation owners sold slaves in the area, but historians at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum couldn’t confirm whether auctions took place at that corner.
Rhonda Gunn, one of the friends, had another story.
“There used to be a bank around there,” Gunn said. But in the 1990s, “a bus came down the [11th Street] bridge and . . . it ran into the bank. Never built anything there since. They just had a wall up there.”
To James Pinkett, the wall signifies a devastating loss. “My nephew’s picture used to be up on that wall,” he said. “They’d put the pictures up there if the kids got shot. Jason Pinkett was his name.” He died in a drive-by shooting in 2003.
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