City Year volunteers from Baltimore, Boston and San Francisco painted a mural on Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday.
Yesterday volunteers from City Year collaborated with Metro Teen AIDS to make art with a message. As their first assignment of the 10-month stint, the volunteers, young people from around the country, ranging in age from 17 to 24, picked up paintbrushes and promoted AIDS information though the website RealTalkDC. The mural is located in the middle of the north side of the 1200 block of Pennsylvania Avenue in Southeast. There’s no specific address because the fence (hence the mural!) protects deteriorating properties and vacant lots.
This fall, the Metro Teen AIDS volunteers will collaborate with City Year volunteers to teach AIDS and STD awareness classes in DCPS classrooms for students in 7th to 12th grades.
Other City Year projects will include tutoring, physical volunteering projects and leading Saturday service events throughout DC. We’ll keep our fingers crossed other spots on the Hill will be identified for volunteer “action.”
The long-suffering fence that runs the length of 1/2 of the block is a huge opportunity … just like the lot behind it. Over the years, a number of groups have created murals in this space, and earlier this summer the first AIDS-related images went up. In a city where the infection is twelve times the national average, keeping the message in front of people of all ages is key.
The history of that part of the block, and owner Larry Quillian’s role and responsibility, is long and worthy of more research by this writer. Suffice it to say, much of the block has been in decay for the last 15 years, and the situation seems to hinge on the sale or restoration of the famed Shotgun House of E Street, SE. The Capitol Hill Restoration Society has certainly had a role in the ongoing drama, and I wonder if its well-intentioned restoration policies have worked against the neighborhood in this particular situation.
That would be Condemnation by Neglect real-estate speculator and neighborhood menace.
The restoration society’s “policies that worked against the neighborhood” are SO outweighed by the venal, anti-neighborhood “policies that worked against the neighborhood” of real estate speculation that it ain’t a valid comparison.
This parcel is the poster child for bad acting.
My next-in-line parcel is the two “not-quite-abandond” rowhouses on on 11th St. SE between Independence and C St. but those are only decrepit neighborhood destroying parcels that hurt housing. The Penn. Ave. parcel kills the commercial corridor and housing — and has for 25 years and more.
By all means, follow up with a Quinlan article.
Much agreed. The majority of the blame certainly lies with the property owners. It’s beyond me how city law can support a situation that has turned out as badly as this one.