Shaw is a neighborhood located in the
Northwest quadrant of
Washington, D.C. It is roughly bounded by M Street, NW or Massachusetts Avenue NW to the south; New Jersey Avenue, NW to the east;
Florida Avenue, NW to the north; and 11th Street, NW to the west. The area also includes the
U Street Corridor, which is the commercial hub of the Shaw area, extending westward to
16th Street NW.
Florida Avenue marks the northern boundary with the adjacent neighborhoods of
Columbia Heights and
LeDroit Park. The area consists of gridded streets lined with small Victorian rowhouses. It is dominated by
Howard University and the shops and theatres along U Street, 14th Street in the
Logan Circle area, and centered along 7th Street NW, the original commercial hub of the area prior to redevelopment in the wake of the
1968 riots and
Green Line Metrorail construction.
Shaw is sometimes considered to include
Logan Circle,
Truxton Circle, and other neighborhoods east of 16th Street and north of
Downtown Washington, D.C., but in recent years those neighborhoods have become seen as separate entities.
History
Shaw grew out of
freed slave encampments in the rural outskirts of Washington City. Originally called "Uptown", in an era when the city's boundary ended at "Boundary Street" (now Florida Avenue), in the Urban Renewal Era the neighborhood began to be referred to as Shaw because of the neighborhood Junior High School named after
Civil War Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commander...
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