By Sadie Dingfelder
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Six years ago, Amber Gallup, 33, moved to Mount Pleasant with her boyfriend. The two were drawn to the Northwest Washington neighborhood by its low rents, Gallup said, but she soon found that Mount Pleasant offered much more than affordability.
Along Mount Pleasant Street, a six-block commercial strip on the east side of the neighborhood, Gallup discovered stores stocked with Peruvian hot peppers, homemade injera (Ethiopian bread) and thick corn tortillas. She tried restaurants specializing in Salvadoran pupusas -- fried corn cakes filled with meat or cheese -- and passed women selling fresh cut mangos.
"I love being able to speak Spanish on the street," said Gallup, who has lived in Mexico and Uruguay.
Although Mount Pleasant has many fine qualities, including stately rowhouses on tree-lined streets, parks and good public transportation, residents are perhaps most proud of their neighborhood's culture. In a city often derided for drab suits and gray buildings, Mount Pleasant is a colorful haven for activists, artists and musicians who hail from a variety of countries and social backgrounds, said Claudia Schlosberg, a three-decade resident.
"It has always been an ethnically and economically diverse neighborhood, and it's one of the reasons why a lot of people have been attracted and wanted to live in Mount Pleasant," she said.
Latinos have made up a major part of Mount Pleasant's mix since the 1940s, when many Central American embassies set up on nearby 16th Street and Massachusetts Avenue, said Olivia Cadaval, a historian and longtime resident of the neighborhood. Peruvians, Chileans, Mexicans, Cubans and others all came to Mount Pleasant, and many stayed in the neighborhood even after ambassadors changed. In the 1980s, Salvadorans fleeing civil war became a large part of the population.
"Mount Pleasant has always been the heart of the pan-Latino community in D.C.," Cadaval said.
That influence is clear today. Many of the neighborhood's murals were painted by Chilean artists, Cadaval said, and Spanish is commonly spoken on Mount Pleasant Street. However, Mount Pleasant's ethnic diversity is increasingly skin-deep. Rising rents have driven less affluent Salvadorans, in particular, out of the neighborhood, Cadaval said. Some have headed east toward more affordable housing, or to suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.
"I don't know how many Latinos really live here anymore," she said.
Blacks accounted for about a quarter of Mount Pleasant's population in the 2000 census. However, Elizabeth Trout, who has lived in her purple rowhouse for about three decades, has seen many fellow black residents move to suburbs in the past few years -- an unfortunate trend, she said.
"It'd be very boring in this world if we all had the same faces," she said.
Also losing their foothold in Mount Pleasant are group-house residents, said Louise Meyer, a 20-year resident of the neighborhood. Her block used to be mostly group houses, where generally young, single people split the rent and live together. Many of her neighbors worked for nonprofit agencies or had just returned from the Peace Corps, so they couldn't afford much rent. As property values rose, group houses migrated east to Columbia Heights, Meyer said.
"A lot of them were sold as single-family homes," she said.
Mount Pleasant's characteristic housing stock attracts many to the neighborhood, said Drew Gagliano, a real estate agent who lives in the neighborhood. The neighborhood, which was designated as a historic district in 1974, features a mix of architectural styles, including many Classical Revival rowhouses. Gagliano's house, like many, has an entry lined with hand-painted rectangular tiles.
Schlosberg's home features a stately walnut fireplace mantel, which her husband, Wayne Kahn, uncovered by peeling off layers and layers of paint.
"I used dental tools to scrape out the details," Kahn said.
The location and access to public transportation also appeal to buyers, Gagliano said. Lamont Park, at the north end of Mount Pleasant Street, serves as a transportation hub, with stops for crosstown and downtown-bound buses. For residents in the eastern half of the neighborhood, the Columbia Heights Metro station is a 15-minute walk. Also within walking distance are plenty of parks and trails -- something that Gagliano and his wife, Ying Lam, often take advantage of with their two children.
"The zoo and Rock Creek Park are our back yard," Gagliano said.
But, most of all, Mount Pleasant's busy main street and friendly atmosphere attract people to the neighborhood, he said. "You really feel like you are part of a community."
Cadaval said: "When you move here, you are buying more than a house. You are buying a whole street, a whole neighborhood."
Despite the recent demographic changes, Mount Pleasant has retained much of its flavor. On evenings and weekends, many Latinos return to Mount Pleasant to shop at Bestway and other small grocery stores, which stock Caribbean, Central American and Asian foods.
Neighborhood ties remain strong for former group-house residents.
One common gathering place is Dos Gringos, a cafe where, on Saturday nights, English speakers practice their Spanish and Latinos brush up on their English in informal one-on-one interchanges, or "intercambios." Usually the conversation partners ask each other simple questions, but sometimes they play charades, said Alex Kramer, who owns the cafe.
"I brought the idea back with me from an intense language program I did in Oaxaca, Mexico," Kramer said. "Since I always want to work on my Spanish, I thought others would, too."
And a few dozen former residents return to Mount Pleasant to visit a long-running food buyers' co-op in Meyer's house. Meyer returned from traveling in Africa in 1986 to find that her renters had started the co-op in her basement. The group now has about 50 members, who pool their money to buy grains, soy milk and other food in bulk.
"Why has it lasted so long; what has made it endure? Idealistic people," Meyer said.
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