A Fond Farewell to Columbia Heights

After about two months on the market, we received and accepted an offer on our condo. We’ve spent the last few weeks searching for a new home and getting ready for the move. After several disappointments, we finally located a nice rental home in Alexandria, Virginia, close to Old Town. If all goes according to plan, we should move on June 20th and close on June 26th. It’s been a hectic process, but we’re excited to have a backyard for Henry this summer. Our new home is located at 601 Hilltop Terrace. We’ll post some pictures of the new digs after the move.

As excited as we are to be moving, we’ll miss living in the city. Our old neighborhood, Columbia Heights, has gone through many changes in recent years. We moved to the area in 2006, when there were no restaurants, shops or amenities save for a single independent coffee shop around the corner. Today, Columbia Heights is one of the "up-and-coming areas" of DC, with a huge shopping complex (Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, etc.), several high rise condominiums, multiple restaurants and, of course, a Starbucks. We knew the neighborhood was on its way to being gentrified when the Starbucks arrived. This summer, the city is completing plans to install a public square with a fountain and space for a farmers’ market. And there’s a Giant supermarket and Metro stop just down the street.

Our favorite thing about Columbia Heights is the diversity of the people: walking down our street, Park Road, we pass older African American neighbors who have lived on the block for 20 years or more, newer Hispanic families, yuppie couples, and Vietnamese immigrants that moved here in the 1970s after the war. Our church, Sacred Heart, has Masses to cater to each of these groups: 10am (English), 12pm (Spanish), 3pm (Vietnamese); and 4:15pm (French and Haitian Creole). The neighborhood was devastated by riots after Martin Luther King’s assassination and slowly declined throughout the 70s and 80s, but has since been revitalized. Now, despite some grumbling from old timers and the bohemian crowd, the neighborhood has managed to reinvent itself without loosing its eclectic feel.

We'll miss our old neighborhood!