We shall begin this catalog of places with Georgetown, by far the oldest in the city.
Not all who reside in Georgetown are rich, red or queer, nor do all Washington millionaires, Commies and/or fags dwell in Georgetown.
But if you know anyone who fulfills at least two of the foregoing three qualifications don’t take odds he doesn’t prance behind Early American shutters in a reconditioned stable or slave-pen in this unique city within a city.
Georgetown was a thriving Colonial village when the rest of the District was swampland. It was included in the District of Columbia from the time of the original grant, but Georgetown remained an independent municipality until 1895.
If you like that kind of stuff, Georgetown, which lies in the extreme NW section of the city, has a charm all its own.
Some people like the smell of dead fish in Provincetown. Others like to climb up four flights of stairs to ratty garrets in Greenwich Village. Georgetown is quaint that way, too. Now all this is to be preserved for posterity forever, through an act of Congress setting up a commission to keep it looking the way it is under penalty of the law for modernizing anything in the community without the permission of some bureaucrat.
Until twenty years ago, Georgetown was just another rundown backwash in a great city. Most of its residents were Negroes. Most of its real estate wasn’t even good enough for Southern Negroes, and don’t forget that a Southern Negro is forced to live almost anywhere. New Dealers and the bright young braintrusters from Harvard reversed what seems to be a foreordained rule in every city in the country. In other words, the whites drove the Negroes out—as many as they could—and took over for themselves what was practically a blighted area.
This is how it came about: When Washington was suddenly flooded with a horde of crackpots from the campuses, Communists, ballet-dancers and economic planners, there was no place for them to live. They abhorred the modern service apartments. These people were “intellectual.” The women wore flat-heeled shoes and batik blouses, and went in for New Thought. The men, if you could call some of them that, wore their hair longer than we do, read advanced literature, and talked about the joys of collectivism, though all of them were so individual they couldn’t bear to live in skyscrapers.
Most of these people had dough. The others got good government jobs, became “contact men” or spoke at meetings and wrote for publications sponsored by rich left-wingers to provide automobiles and other luxuries for the needier pinks.