Another NW cynosure was Dupont Circle. It was social. There were the homes of such as Princess Eleanor Patterson. Now they’ve been razed or cut up because of taxes, death benefits, estate distributions and the high cost of maintenance. Those that still stand have been turned into embassies, headquarters of national organizations, and rooming-houses in between. One triangular corner was torn down to make way for the Dupont Plaza, a glassy and glossy apartment hotel, swell for lobbyists, flashy girls and 5-percenters. What happened to Dupont Circle hit all the way out the length of 16th Street, which runs off from the White House, and Massachusetts Avenue. These two long, broad avenues run through all NW. They are the “Ambassadors’ Rows.”
Of the sixty embassies, legations and chancelleries, almost all are on one or the other. Both have a liberal sprinkling of organization headquarters, such as unions, trade associations and eleemosynary institutions, with the ever-present furnished-room coops and apartment hotels.
The complexion of NW is changing, growing darker. The area always had a large Negro section. There are no racial zoning laws. Restrictive covenants cannot be enforced. There are no longer any racial boundary lines and some people think that is dandy. They have been in the driver’s seat since 1933.
You will find colored people living within a half a block of an embassy or around the corner from a new luxury apartment house. There is no reason why this should not be so, but the property-owners and the white residents do not agree. As the process continues, NW grows less swank and less desirable, while many of its rich residents move into Maryland suburbs such as Chevy Chase and across the river into Virginia.
The Negroes and other specific phenomena of NW will be considered in specialized chapters.
4. NOT-SO-TENDER TENDERLOIN
The District’s “red-light” region may be the largest on earth. That is because almost all of it is such, neither restricted by law, custom nor local habit to a particular part of town. But, more than any other, NW is the Tenderloin, in some ways more blatantly open than ever was New York’s infamous Satan’s Circus or Chicago’s 22nd Street.
Of all places, you would think Washington would be the last location a practical, professional prostitute would pick to pitch her camp. With so many more women than men, so many dames lonesome and far from home, on the eager upbeat for a meal, a drink or even a kind word, you’d figure mathematically, psychologically and pathologically that this would be a ghost town for the trollops.