ContestsEasy Come, Easy Goby Eugene L. Meyer © 2005 by Eugene L. Meyer 2005 When diamondback terrapins thrived in the Bay, an enterprising man came to Crisfield and made a bundle on turtle soup. Like most booms it went bust. Long before the University of Maryland basketball team made the "Terps" a household name, and a century before the diamondback terrapin become Maryland's official state reptile in 1994, there was the Terrapin King of Crisfield, Md. In 1887, Albert T. LaVallette Jr. of Philadelphia, armed with family money, a winning way and a Caribbean recipe for turtle soup, breezed into Crisfield and, to the puzzlement of local watermen, began buying up all the diamondback terrapins he could find. This was indeed odd behavior on the Eastern Shore, where terrapins had long been regarded as nuisances, unwelcome incidental catches, and hardly a culinary delicacy. Indeed, terrapins still had the reputation from pre-emancipation days of being mere "slave food." So it was little wonder that watermen were happy to sell their inadvertently caught terrapins to LaVallette at any price—not knowing, of course, that he was making an obscene profit by selling the turtle meat to high-end East Coast restaurants—where he himself had created a market for Maryland terrapin soup. No doubt the watermen soon caught on. Perhaps they even reaped a small share of the profits as LaVallette amassed his fortune over the next two decades, built a waterfront home just outside Crisfield—and, yes, contributed more than any other person to the decimation of the diamondback population on the Eastern Shore. But, while the terrapin's decline at first seemed to have little effect on his business—no doubt because prices rose accordingly, and also perhaps because LaVallette was a master of what we now call "spin"—the bubble eventually burst. By 1908, all that remained of LaVallette's turtle kingdom were the house he had built on Hammock Point and the empty terrapin pounds nearby. I first learned of LaVallette and his exploits from Steve Liberatore, a Washington, D.C. stockbroker who bought the LaVallette homestead in 1999. Liberatore was intrigued by the man whose fortune rose and fell by the banks of Jenkins Creek, and I decided to see what I could find out. In Crisfield, nobody seemed to know much. The J. Millard Tawes Museum contains displays on oystering, crabbing, picking and packing. It chronicles Carvel Hall, the classic cutlery business that once thrived there. It celebrates the famous Ward brothers and their fabulous decoys. But I found nothing about terrapins. In a small pizza shop in town, I spotted a small painting of LaVallette's home, which he had named "Ruthelie" after two of his children. It was a detail on a mural depicting notable landmarks of Crisfield and Somerset County, and the shop's owner told me that she had a dinner bell of uncertain vintage from the house. Digging into historical sources, I had no problem unearthing information about LaVallette's ancestors, dating all the way back to 16th century France. The family moved to Philadelphia in 1796. One ancestor, Elie LaVallette II, who lived on a Severn River plantation near Annapolis, had been Register of Wills in colonial Maryland. Another, Elie IV, a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, had once commanded "Old Ironsides," as the iconic U.S.S. Constitution was known; in fact, two 20th-century Navy destroyers, as well as the seaside resort of Lavallette in New Jersey, were named after him. I tracked down Barbara Vallette, the historian of the New Jersey-Philadelphia branch of the family, but she could shed no light on the Terrapin King. And then I hit pay dirt—a book by the late Crisfield historian Woodrow T. Wilson (no relation to the 28th President) contained the names of LaVallette's son and two daughters, including their married surnames and their dates of birth and death. Eventually, with help from the 1930 census, I picked up the trail of daughter Ruth LaVallette Bluhm, who had lived in Vienna, Md. That led to the widow of one of her sons in Elkton, Md. She knew a little about my elusive quarry but said that her late husband's sister, Elsie, knew more. I reached Elsie Bluhm, now in her late 70s, at her home in Ocala, Fla. I must admit, her reaction to my questions surprised me. "Terrapin King, indeed!" said his sole surviving grandchild with a snort. "He left my grandma. He was a cad." LaVallette, it turns out, made a clean break of it when he left Crisfield. At about the same time his terrapin business fell apart, he ran off with the family governess. With the help of Elsie Bluhm and a wide assortment of historical sources, I was able to piece together LaVallette's story. In some places, we can only speculate, but one thing is for sure—Albert LaVallette was a memorable character. He was the son of Albert Tallmadge LaVallette Sr., who was the son of the rear admiral of "Old Ironsides" fame and the vice-president of the Barnegat Land Improvement Company. When LaVallette Sr. laid out Lavallette, N.J., in 1877, he named the resort town in honor of his father. That same year, he established a toehold in Maryland's Somerset County, when he purchased oyster grounds on a tributary of the Manokin River. The following year he and eight others—a mixture of Philadelphians and Somerset County locals—formed the Manokin River Oyster Company. The 1880 census for Dames Quarter (a village on Monie Bay, a northeast arm of Tangier Sound) includes LaVallette Sr. (occupation: Gentleman), his wife Sarah and their six children, including Albert Jr., 16. From 1880 to 1882, Albert Jr. was attending prep school in Pennsylvania, although he earned no degree. For at least two years thereafter, he worked as a schooner pilot "in coastal waters." Then, in March 1887, he married Amy K. Ricketts—born in England, she had grown up in Philadelphia, where she had known Albert nearly all her life. The couple then moved to Crisfield in southern Somerset County, where they had three children: Amy in 1888, Elie in 1893 and Ruth in 1896. Crisfield was already booming when LaVallette and his new wife moved there. The arrival of the railroad in 1867, bringing with it fast, refrigerated shipping to big East Coast cities, had opened up a huge market for crabs and oysters. And LaVallette's father—with his social and business connections in Philadelphia and Somerset County, and his stake in Eastern Shore oysters—had already paved the way for his son to participate in the seafood boom. But it was the diamondback terrapin—a turtle that thrived in the shallow brackish water of the marsh-hugged Eastern Shore—that attracted Albert Jr. He saw that, unlike crabs and oysters, the terrapin was still a largely unexploited resource. So what exactly was this resource that caught LaVallette's interest? Of the seven subspecies of diamondback terrapin, it was the northern diamondback that was ubiquitous in the Bay's salt-marsh country. Today, as then, this variety is found in coastal waters from Cape Cod down to Cape Hatteras, while the other six sub-species occur as far south as Texas. The reclusive reptile gets its name from the scales on its shell, which have deep, diamond-shaped growth rings. Females mature at 12 years, weigh about 7 pounds and reach about 9 inches in length; males mature at 7 years old, weigh only a pound and are about two thirds the length of the female. Fast swimmers with their webbed feet, they prey on fish, crabs and snails as well as worms and plant roots. On May nights, the turtles mate in the water, and for two months afterward the females move up marshy creeks and crawl to just above the high tide line, where they lay their eggs and bury them in six-inch-deep sand nests; remarkably, a female can also store male sperm for up to four years before she produces her eggs. Although she may lay up to 18 eggs, only about 1 to 3 percent of the eggs hatch. Those that do hatch, an inch in length, make their way to the water in late summer or early fall. Until the late 19th century, those hatchlings that made it to the water and got a little growth under their shells had a pretty good chance of survival. Until, that is, a new predator came along—man. According to Crisfield writer Glenn Lawson, LaVallette's first structure on Hammock Point was a shanty, where he established his operation by purchasing terrapins from passing watermen. It's said that the watermen at first thought LaVallette was mad, but it turned out he knew exactly what he was doing. Armed with his recipe (it is now lost, but it probably included sherry and heavy cream and was undoubtedly delicious), the savvy salesman cornered the market. First, he persuaded restaurants in Philadelphia to serve the "exclusive" dish at high prices, and then he did the same thing in Baltimore and New York. Holding agreements from the restaurants naming him as their sole terrapin supplier, he bought the diamondbacks for a song, penned them up at Hammock Point, and fed them using crab waste from the picking plants in town. When LaVallette settled in Crisfield in 1887, terrapins were abundant. In 1891, the first year for which data are available, an estimated 89,000 pounds were harvested in Maryland. Yet, only two years later came a pessimistic assessment. "This small but expensive animal fills such a prominent place among the luxuries for which our State is famous," said a report prepared for the 1893 Columbian Exposition, "... but its occurrence in our waters is too irregular and infrequent to give it an established place among our resources." But since the demand was so strong, LaVallette just raised the prices as the supply dropped. In 1893, LaVallette got as much as $180 for a dozen "full counts" (a full-count terrapin had an underbelly at least seven inches long, and weighed three to six pounds), and in 1896 he boasted to the New York Times, "I have controlled the entire supply of Chesapeake Bay diamondback terrapin for a good number of years." His biggest market was New York City, where, in 1896, the visit of Chinese statesman Li Hung-chang brought LaVallette an order for $3,000 worth of terrapin; and a dinner at Delmonico's, given in 1890 by financier Jay Gould, brought him $4,700 for 28 barrels of turtle meat. But, as with crabs, finfish and oysters, the depleting terrapin stock couldn't be kept quiet forever, no matter how well LaVallette could spin the truth. By 1897, the Maryland harvest was down to 7,266 pounds; by 1901 it had fallen to 1,583 pounds; and by 1904, nearly all the terrapins being passed off as Maryland diamondbacks were coming from somewhere else. Smaller terrapin operations, LaVallette complained, were supplying terrapins they had bought in the Carolinas and Texas, "trying to palm them off on buyers as the genuine Chesapeake article." Yet, throughout these years, LaVallette managed to get great press. In 1897, the Baltimore Sun reported that he continued to have "an immense trade in terrapin" in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. The paper took note of his "handsome dwelling" on the south side of town, securely fenced "so as to prevent the escape of the high-priced inmates" from his terrapin pound across an arm of the adjacent small creek. In the winter, the paper reported, LaVallette's 10,000 terrapins lived in his basement, "kept dark and above freezing point, but not too warm." And, in 1898, the Portrait and Biographical Record of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, published in New York, noted that LaVallette "is familiarly known as the 'king terrapin' dealer of the world." Even as the harvest numbers fell, LaVallette continued to insist that his own terrapins were Maryland diamondbacks. Perhaps he was telling a half-truth. According to Wilson, in the early 1900s LaVallette headed up the Maryland State Experimental Station for terrapin propagation at Lloyds in nearby Dorchester County. It's not such a reach to wonder if this wasn't his way of supplementing his own stock with diamondback eggs from other regions. Whatever the case, with the market still clamoring for the reptiles, scarcity continued to have its upside. In 1906, terrapins brought $96 a dozen. "One may commit murder, steal a horse, or run away with another man's wife on the Eastern Shore and stand some show of coming clear," observed the Washington Post in November 1902, "but woe betide the hapless one who is caught poaching about the pounds, interfering with the eggs or taking terrapin out of season, for he is as certain of punishment as the sun is to rise. These pounds are jealously guarded night and day, for on the Eastern Shore terrapin is the most profitable crop raised. In fact, a pound full of diamondbacks is as good as a gold mine any day." Three years later, the same newspaper reported, "Today terrapin are so scarce and costly that only kings and money kings at that can afford to eat them." Meanwhile, throughout the 1890s, LaVallette had secured his position in Crisfield as a local man of means. In February 1898, for example, he loaned the Crisfield Opera House Association $5,000, at 5.5 percent interest. Although he was a relative newcomer, his wealth bought acceptance for him and his family, whose social comings and goings were duly chronicled in the "Local News" columns of the Crisfield Times. There was, however, one member of the LaVallette household whose name never made the social columns. It is unknown precisely when a young woman named May Bussey went to work for the LaVallettes as a governess. Census records indicate she was born in Maryland in the early 1870s, making her perhaps 10 years younger than the Terrapin King. "She was what you call the third party," Elsie Bluhm told me. On February 29, 1908, the Crisfield Times reported that Albert was "spending some days with his family at Ruthelie," raising the question of where he was the rest of the time. Then came this report in the April 11 edition: "Mrs. A.T. LaVallette and daughters Amy and Ruth left Tuesday evening for an extensive visit to relatives and friends in Los Angeles, California." The following August, the newspaper reported that "Mrs. A.T. LaVallette and her daughter, who have enjoyed the summer in a bungalow on the Pacific, at Venice, Calif., unique among American resorts, have returned to Los Angeles." From then on, the LaVallettes were no longer residents of Crisfield. By the 1910 census, Amy LaVallette was living with her mother in Long Beach, California—and the Terrapin King and May Bussey were living in Wythe, near Hampton, Va. It must have been quite a scandal in its time. Amy LaVallette filed for divorce in 1912 in Circuit Court in Princess Anne, claiming that her husband had "abandoned and deserted" her in April 1908. He left her "wholly destitute," she claimed, while he still owned "a large amount of real and personal estate" in Maryland and elsewhere. Sadly, she also claimed that he had rejected her repeated efforts at reconciliation. Crisfield Times publisher Lorie Quinn signed an affidavit on Amy LaVallette's behalf. Albert responded that he had contributed "as far as he was able" to the support of his wife and children, but that he owed "considerable money." Ultimately, Amy LaVallette received alimony payments of $50 monthly for life and, in 1913, title to Ruthelie. But she would never again live there. Details of the Terrapin King's later years remain sketchy. According to Elsie Bluhm, he and "Miss May," whom he married in 1915, lived comfortably on a houseboat—the Valletta—in Hampton, Va. During World War I, at age 52, he served a remarkably brief 27-day stint in the U.S. Navy as an ensign; skippering his own 15-ton fishing boat, he watched over security nets that were designed to prevent German submarines from entering the Chesapeake Bay. A decade later, in the summer of 1927, he and May traveled to San Francisco to visit the destroyer U.S.S. LaVallette (DD-315), which had been named in honor of his grandfather. "Mr. and Mrs. Albert LaVallette, who live at Hampton, Va., came out for lunch on this ship," according to the ship's official papers. "The visit to the ship was very pleasant to all that came in contact with them as they were a delightful and interesting couple." The 1930 census found Albert still living with May aboard the houseboat in Wythe (now part of the city of Hampton), and from time to time local papers reported on his activities. "LaVallette's 'quiet haven,' " reported one, is "one of the landmarks of Hampton Roads." Another likened a visit with him to "a tale out of a book, for he had innumerable stories to recount, the romance in which were enhanced by the museum-like character of his abode." Yet another described him as "at one time famous, locally at least, for his breeding of terrapins." LaVallette apparently also raised terrapins while living on the houseboat, but the Hurricane of 1933 wiped out that operation. It would prove to be the beginning of the end for LaVallette. By May 1937, the one-time Terrapin King was ill and broke. Suffering from an enlarged prostate, he entered the Veterans Administration hospital in Kecoughtan, Va., and asked the government for $6 to pay for a hairbrush, razor and blades, shaving cream, cigarettes, envelopes, matches, writing paper and stamps—items he claimed he could not afford. Then, in July, he died from internal bleeding following what should have been a routine diagnostic procedure. He had, his hospital file noted, "only thirteen cents" in "personal funds." Nonetheless, thanks to his service in the Navy, LaVallette was buried at Hampton National Military Cemetery, and the Veterans Administration paid the burial cost of $37.44. His widow May and his son Elie attended the graveside ceremony. When the American flag was presented to May, she gave it to Elie. Reporting on LaVallette's death, a local paper called him "perhaps the most picturesque character who has honored the Peninsula with his residence," while another observed that he "sought and found life as he wished it." A decade later, applying (unsuccessfully) for a pension, May wrote that she was homeless with no means of support—her husband had left her destitute. All that remained of the Terrapin King was Ruthelie, the home he had built in Crisfield. Amy LaVallette sold Ruthelie for $600 in 1923, after which it changed hands several times. In the 1930s, the Old Bay Amusement Park occupied part of the property. In 1989, a PBS movie entitled Jacob Have I Loved, based on a Newbery-Award-winning children's book about a girl growing up on the Chesapeake Bay, was filmed at the house. By the time Steve Liberatore came to Crisfield in 1998 to look for investment property, Ruthelie was vacant. When he saw the one-story house with its hip-and-gable roof and three chimneys, he couldn't resist it. He and his wife Ginny have since renovated it and use it as their weekend retreat. Their collection of ceramic turtles covers the five fireplace mantels, and a turtle knocker adorns the side door. The terrapin pound is still there, several dozen pilings arranged in a square in a pond behind the property's small Bay-front beach. To the north, the new condos near the City Dock now dominate the Crisfield skyline. But the view south across Jenkins Creek remains unspoiled. At night, when the moon illuminates the water and marsh, or early in the morning when the workboats rumble past Hammock Point on the way to the crab pots, things actually don't look all that different from when the Terrapin King ruled.
Down by the Riverby Eugene L. Meyer Clayton Wirtz, a 29-year-old engineer, didn't buy a car when he moved from Ohio to Washington five years ago. He bought a 23-foot powerboat, which he named For Better or for Wirtz. He later got a car and began an unusual method of commuting. On Fridays— whenever "weather and life permits," he says—he trailers the boat from his home in Alexandria to the Belle Haven marina. He then brings it up the Potomac to Georgetown, ties up at Washington Harbour, and walks or cabs to his job at Northrop Grumman in Rosslyn. This commute positions him perfectly for the Friday-night frolics on the Georgetown waterfront. "It's about the only place to go at night on the Potomac," he says from the deck of his boat, one of 20 or so tied up this evening along the promenade that stretches from 31st Street almost to Thompson's Boat House. On busy nights, the dock is so crowded that boats tie up to one another and stretch out into the river. It's called rafting, with as many as a dozen—big yachts, cigarette boats, and everything in between—tethered together. This is party time, with coolers of beer and good spirits. There's no charge to tie up and few rules: Boats must be off the seawall around midnight, after which many boaters anchor in the river and keep partying until 3 or 4 in the morning. Located at the foot of 31st Street, Washington Harbour is a happening place, with half a million square feet of offices, shops, and restaurants such as Sequoia, Nick's Riverside Grille, and Tony and Joe's, all with al fresco dining. Not to mention 35 condos with penthouse units that sell for $4 million. Designed by Georgetown architect Arthur Cotton Moore, the playful collection of fountains, towers, and turrets cost $300 million to build. "The Potomac is such a resource, and it's underutilized," Wirtz says. "If I were the dictator of DC, I'd add more places like this." Washington Harbour is arguably the best attraction along Washington's 20-plus miles of riverfront. It may not be coincidental that it's the result of private enterprise. Though the project faced neighborhood opposition and had to pass muster with DC and federal agencies, it is not the product of a government plan for the waterfront, of which there have have been many. Almost since the day the Founding Fathers settled on the confluence of the Potomac and its Eastern Branch as the site for the nation's capital, the waterfront has excited and confounded Washingtonians. Planners, bureaucrats, and politicians have tried to mold the Potomac and Anacostia shore-lines to their liking—and usually failed. Now a new plan has emerged to energize the unwieldy coalition of interests that claim a stake in the city's future. For the first time, federal and local officials appear to be on the same page. The private-sector market seems poised to capitalize on a riverfront renaissance. "This is a totally unique situation in the history of Washington," says Ewe Brandes, who's one of Mayor Anthony Williams's top officials on the city's waterfront initiative. The plan—dubbed the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, though it touches the Potomac—would make over more than a half dozen areas, many of them neglected outposts. A key strategy is to open access to shorelines—many of which are blocked— and create parks, promenades, and other attractions along the water. Just south of RFK Stadium, the plan calls for a new residential neighborhood, Hill East, that would extend Capitol Hill to the Anacostia's banks and a new waterfront park. Continuing south, near the Navy Yard, planners aim to remake what they call Near Southeast, replacing public housing with mixed-income housing and office buildings—including a new Michael Graves-designed headquarters for the Department of Transportation. The Nationals baseball stadium, which would be built in Southeast near the South Capital Street Bridge, would anchor a revitalization of that gateway to the city, now a bleak stretch of vacant lots, gas stations, and fast-food chains. Planners hope to make this a stunning approach, with the stadium and Capitol adorning the skyline. Across the bridge at Poplar Point there would be new housing, gardens, a museum and amphitheater, and possibly a new soccer stadium. On the Potomac, the Southwest waterfront—home to Arena Stage and the Fish Wharf—is envisioned as a mix of mid-rise condos, restaurants, and stores along a widened and more pedestrian-friendly riverside promenade. Independent of the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative, the National Park Service is planning a $10-million park on the Georgetown waterfront next to Washington Harbour between 31st and 34th streets. It also envisions a cluster of boathouses stretching past Key Bridge and a promenade stretching from Washington Harbour to the Kennedy Center. The big thinkers behind these plans invoke images of riverfront cities in Europe— London, Paris, Hamburg. They believe a river revival will enhance real-estate values, spark development, and bridge the city's social and economic divide. "The downtown is built out," says Andrew Altman, CEO of the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation, recently established to oversee the project. "Development is moving inexorably to the waterfront. The opportunity lies in how we harness that growth to help neighborhoods that haven't participated in the city's robust growth." Only a few American cities have survived as major commercial ports. In others, Washington among them, superhighways have isolated waterfronts from neighborhoods. Construction of I-395 through DC cut off its Southwest neighborhoods from the Mall, while the Whitehurst Freeway made Georgetown's waterfront a stepchild. Many cities are rediscovering their waterfronts. Boston's Emerald Necklace, San Francisco's Embarcadero, the South Street Seaport in New York, Pittsburgh's Waterfront—they're all examples of redeveloped waterfronts that have brought new life and energy to their cities. Around the world, Altman says, cities that have invested in the water's edge are reaping big dividends. "It's Washington's time to do that," he says. From the promenade at Washington Harbour one summer afternoon, I boarded the Nightingale II, a 50-year-old tour boat carrying a contingent of Korean-American seniors and two tourist families. Frank Frager, the boat's owner and a native Washingtonian who launched his business in 1992, told me, "For the longest time, nobody every looked at Washington as a waterfront tour. The waterfront was secondary to the monuments and the memorials. It's a whole different perspective." Passengers hear Frager's recorded voice on the tour: "You might remember the Watergate was made famous by Richard Nixon in the 1970s," he notes, skating any partisanship. He points out the Water Gate steps, by the Lincoln Memorial, where military bands performed on a floating barge before airplanes landing and taking off from National Airport became too frequent. For decades after the government moved to the new nation's capital in 1800, the Potomac marsh and mud flats made for a shifting shoreline from Foggy Bottom to Turkey Buzzard's Point, where trash trapped by crosscurrents at the Anacostia's mouth attracted scavenger birds. The Potomac Flats at high tide were awash, almost to the south lawn of the White House. Storms flooded the lowlands, even submerging parts of Pennsylvania Avenue. Filling in these tidal swamps and the many canals running through the city became a cause celebre during the 19th century. Draining them made way for the National Mall, the Tidal Basin, and West Potomac Park. The Army Corps of Engineers created the peninsula that is East Potomac Park with sediment dredged from the Potomac. "We shall have reclaimed about 730 acres of land," declared Army Corps of Engineers Major Peter C. Hains, after whom Hains Point was named, in 1882. On the Anacostia, the corps in 1880 commenced a 50-year project to put the meandering river on a straighter course, eliminate the malarial Anacostia Flats, and replace the river's marsh with miles of stone seawalls. Before there was a Washington waterfront, there was Georgetown, or more properly George Town. Chartered in 1751, Georgetown thrived as a tobacco port and later as a milling town to which barges on the C&O Canal delivered coal from western Maryland and wheat from the Piedmont. The canal's closing in 1924 after it was damaged in a Potomac flood depressed but did not decimate the waterfront. As late as the 1970s, the Georgetown waterfront was industrial, and it was apart from the gentrifying streets of Federal-style town-homes—a division reinforced by the Whitehurst Freeway, which opened in 1949. When I went to work as a reporter for the Washington Post in 1970, the Hopfenmaier rendering plant—on the K Street waterfront since 1880—was an odiferous eyesore. It closed a year later and was demolished. Other plants on the waterfront would be saved for "adaptive reuse," including the Georgetown incinerator stack and façade, which was converted and reopened as the Ritz-Carlton hotel and condominiums in 2000. About the same time that I came to the Post, the National Park Service—federal proprietors of portions of the Georgetown waterfront—began to develop shoreline plans. The Kennedy Center, working with an array of federal agencies, hired consultants to try to reconnect its outdoor terrace to the river just below Thompson's Boathouse, a Park Service concession. The resulting study envisioned "a grand open stairway to link the Kennedy Center west terrace to the riverfront promenade." Government planners moved slowly. The National Park Service considered acquiring seven acres at the foot of Georgetown owned by CSX and Inland Steel. But when it balked at the $25-million asking price, the property was snatched up by the DC-based Western Development Corporation—headed by mega-mall developer Herbert S. Miller—and Washington Harbour opened in 1986. Its success was not immediate. Offices were slow to rent in an overheated real-estate market, and restaurants failed and were replaced. The property changed hands two or three times before it caught on in the late '90s as an attractive place to live, work, dine, and play. In many ways, Washington Harbour offers a blueprint for developing the rest of the riverfront. It's the closest thing Washington has to Baltimore's Inner Harbor or to Ego Alley in Annapolis, where yacht owners parade their vessels along the City Dock. Hundreds of people eat at Washington Harbour restaurants and walk the promenade. Some say it's the best pickup spot in town. Tony Cibel, whose family owns three of Washington Harbour's five restaurants, was sitting outside at Nick's recently, soaking up the sweeping view that takes in Key Bridge, Theodore Roosevelt Island, the Kennedy Center, and monumental Washington. "It's beautiful," he said, "the best view in the city. Sometimes you look and you think you're in Europe." The National Park Service has big plans for the waterfront near Washington Harbour. It acquired the land for a now-abandoned idea to build a bridge to reach the rocky outcropping upriver known as the Three Sisters. The Park Service also owns "the front yard" of the new Swedish Embassy, which is being built on a narrow tract wedged between Washington Harbour and Rock Creek. The goal, says John G. Parsons, associate regional director for the Park Service, is to create a public strip of parkland and promenade from just below Key Bridge to Rock Creek, giving strollers the chance to walk from Georgetown to the Kennedy Center. At a cost of $15 million, the Park Service plans to create the ten-acre Georgetown Waterfront Park, with a broad plaza at the foot of Wisconsin Avenue, a children's sculpture garden, trails and trees, walkways, and overlooks. Congress has appropriated $5 million for the park, and the nonprofit Georgetown Waterfront Commission—originally chaired by former senator Charles Percy—has raised $6 million. The group's Web site calls the park "the vital last link" in a revitalized Georgetown waterfront, "a unique setting to have a picnic, watch the splendor of the sun rise over Washington landmarks and set over Key Bridge. The Potomac River, as it was in the past, will be the shining centerpiece of it all." For much of Washington's history, Southwest DC has defined the city's waterfront. Union troops disembarked at the Seventh Street wharves to march to the defense of the capital city under Confederate attack at Fort Stevens, at 13th and Quakenbos streets in Northwest. Schooners and steamboats unloaded produce, seafood, and passengers at the Southwest docks. Fishmongers peddled the catch, and hungry diners flocked to its crab houses and oyster bars. The creation of East Potomac Park by the Corps of Engineers in the late 1800s established the Washington Channel in Southwest as a safe harbor for marine activity and commerce. In the 1950s and '60s, the Southwest waterfront changed as a redevelopment agency created by Congress embraced an experiment in urban renewal. Troubled by low-income neighborhoods that they considered slums, they cleared 442 acres and turned out thousands of residents, most of them black and poor. While advocated by well-intentioned voices such as the editorial page of the Washington Post, the program of renewal became a model of how not to improve a community. It gave rise to the phrase "Negro removal," uprooted Al Jolson's old Jewish neighborhood, and planted the seeds of future problems of poverty and crime as Southwest residents moved to crowded public housing projects east of the Anacostia River. The "new" Southwest was a sterile neighborhood of upscale townhomes and condominiums. Tommy Long was on the waterfront before the big changes, running Long's Marine Service, a boat-repair yard alongside bars, ship stores, boat brokers, and sail makers. "There was about a mile of waterfront," he says, "and everybody was like family." Displaced by the redevelopment, Long moved his business to the Anacostia River, only to run afoul of environmental rules and be shut down by the Park Service in 2000. When I arrived in DC in 1970, the reinvention of Southwest was almost complete. Among the former shop owners hoping to return to the waterfront was Sarah E. Ellis, whose late husband had opened the Cy Ellis Raw Bar in the old Municipal Fish Market in Southwest in the late 1920s. Armed with petitions signed by 9,000 former patrons, she secured the right to open the raw bar in a restaurant to be run by a large New York firm. But like many promises made in Southwest, it never worked out. The "renewed" waterfront featured three restaurants, the Channel Inn motel, and gated marinas—the only enterprises that could get financing and overcome the bureaucratic obstacles. The restaurants that opened—including Hogate's and the Flagship—were big and uninteresting, says Ralph Werner, the redevelopment agency's lawyer at the time. I'm having lunch with Ewe Brandes, one of the mayor's waterfront planners, at Cantina Marina, a new restaurant that anchors one end of the Southwest waterfront. Across the channel, bicyclists peddle toward Hains Point—a rare use of underused East Potomac Park. The view would be nice— except for the locked gate and high chain-link fence that separates us from the boats at the 309-slip Gangplank Marina. Ed Frye, a congressional staffer who lives aboard his 47-foot Chris Craft cruiser at the marina—one of 100 "liveaboards"—says, "When I came here in 1990, they were talking about Southwest development, so this is not new to me. I hope they do it, but I first heard about it 15 years ago." Brandes knows the waterfront's history of raised hopes and broken promises. The challenge, he says, is to reconnect Southwest and the Mall. A spaghetti plate of highway—including the 14th Street Bridge and its ramps and overpasses—stands between the waterfront and the Tidal Basin. Tenth Street, which runs from the Smithsonian Castle to the edge of Southwest, is a long, uninviting road through L'Enfant Plaza that does little to draw foot traffic to the waterfront. Nor is the waterfront district pedestrian friendly. Maine Avenue and Water Street run side by side parallel to the waterfront, and their combined 11 lanes pose a barrier for Southwest residents, tourists, and others who want to walk along the water. The city plan calls for closing Water Street to traffic and expanding the waterfront's promenade, with small plazas and public piers built at the end of major roads leading to the water. High-rise condos with ground-floor restaurants and stores will replace the box restaurants. A square of shops will anchor one end of the waterfront, a park the other. "It's kind of a Fells Point environment we hope to create," Brandes says, referring to the bustling waterfront neighborhood east of Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The Maine Avenue seafood market, the last remnant of the old Southwest waterfront, is still vibrant, Brandes notes. It opened in 1916 and continues to operate in the shadow of the 14th Street Bridge despite occasional efforts by the District to shut it down. It's messy, and its patrons are not the well-heeled patrons that planners want to attract to the waterfront. But in the best of all worlds, there should be a place at the table for them too. The fishmongers operate from half a dozen floating barges at water's edge. Many are from Onancock on Virginia's Eastern Shore or Smith Island in the Chesapeake Bay. Nearby, customers line up at Maine Avenue Seafood, which sells sandwiches to go. There's nowhere to sit—no benches, no picnic tables. Two or three men sit on the bulkhead between the market and the locked Gangplank dock. A few years ago, the owners of Custis & Brown, the Onancock-owned seafood barge, put some tables in the small parking lot. "They said we weren't supposed to be a restaurant," Onacock's John Boole says. "We had trash cans everywhere, but people were leaving a mess," added Larry Merritt of Chincoteague, a 32-year fish-market veteran. That was that. The city banished the picnic tables. M Street in Southwest runs due east to the area along the Anacostia that planners are calling Near Southeast. Brandes says it's "the spine" that connects the two neighborhoods and the two rivers. Though the road doesn't reach the waterfront at either end, the mayor's initiative puts parks at the river's edge on both sides. Washington's Founding Planners intended that the Potomac shoreline would be home to the city's primary residences and monumental space, with the Anacostia serving as a commercial waterfront. That may be why the Washington Navy Yard located along the Anacostia in 1799, becoming America's first naval installation and a source of employment for generations of Washingtonians. Over the years, the Anacostia and its banks became a dumping ground. The Navy Yard was joined by the city's Kenilworth Dump, which closed in 1968 after a seven-year-old boy burned to death there. Its site now has playing fields that breathe potentially toxic methane gas into the air. The area's most noteworthy architectural feature is the tall stacks of a Pepco power plant; its most famous resident is Saint Elizabeths, DC's hospital for the insane. "The Anacostia is off the map of Washington," says Altman, director of the waterfront initiative. That's despite attractions such as the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, where the lotus plants are a palette of bright colors in July; the National Arboretum, which hugs the river; and the Anacostia's wildlife, including great blue herons and snowy white egrets that soar over the river. The Anacostia's western shore is home to the former DC General Hospital and the city's jail and morgue. Planners today call the west bank, with this collection of aging brick buildings, Reservation 13. Though Williams closed DC General in 2001, the complex still houses a detox clinic as well as clinics to treat sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis, and mental illness. "It's a travesty," Brandes tells me as we drive the area's maze of roads. Despite such challenges, dreams for the river won't die. Anthony Williams, who opened his 1998 campaign for mayor on the Anacostia's Heritage Island and regularly paddles his canoe on the river, says in a video promoting his plan, "We're going to transform the Anacostia into a model for the nation, a centerpiece for the world." Altman says Williams once told him that with a revitalized waterfront, the Anacostia could unite the city, not divide it. "This is the legacy I want to leave," the mayor told his aide. The federal government—with its dredging and filling and seawalls—created much of the shoreline that today defines the Anacostia, and it still owns virtually all of it—east and west sides of the river. One of the keys to the mayor's plan is to demolish most of Reservation 13, keeping only the jail, and build new healthcare and recreational facilities. This area above and below RFK Stadium would morph into Hill East, with 1,000 units of housing and 2 million square feet of office space. Robert Bobb, DC's city administrator, has floated plans to introduce a biotechnology park there as well as biodefense and homeland-security facilities. Massachusetts Avenue—which now dead ends at the 19th Street entrance to the DC General complex—would extend into a 15-acre waterfront park called the Meadow. "It's an opportunity to build a critical mass, a whole community," Altman says. Farther south along the Anacostia, the city is counting on the new baseball stadium to spark life in a neighborhood dubbed Near Southeast. This area is home to the Navy Yard, which is still an employment hub years after production of munitions and ordnance have ceased. Building is underway for the new Department of Transportation headquarters here, and a federal employment center is planned for the area that will bring in thousands of jobs. The city recently hired the Seattle-based design firm that did the Princess Diana memorial fountain in London to create Washington Canal Park, two acres of fountains, gardens, and promenades a few blocks from the proposed site for the stadium. It's also at work transforming a public-housing project into mixed-income homes and offices. At Buzzard Point, southwest of the proposed stadium, developer Douglas Jemal has acquired two office buildings, one of which will house the US Coast Guard. Jemal also is negotiating to buy 18 more acres. "I think the mayor's waterfront initiative is phenomenal," Jemal says. "At the end of the day, government may have a plan, but you have to have the real estate in a developer's hands. I'm not waiting for government. I kind of want to do my own thing. One of the things I want to do is create a Camden Yards-type atmosphere, an Inner Harbor, or [Manhattan's] South Street Seaport on the water. "The timetable is not up to me," Jemal adds. "It's up to the sellers. I'm ready." The New York native created the Wiz electronics-store chain here before turning to real estate, where he has found a niche buying and holding distressed properties until the market matches his vision. He's turned the proverbial corner on upper Georgia Avenue in Shepherd Park and on Seventh Street by the MCI Arena and with the former Woodward & Lothrop building on F Street in downtown. "I like frontiers," he says. "I like the excitement and challenge of doing something where people say there's no market but there is. Somebody's got to do the Nike thing and 'just do it.' Build it and they will come." Such visions keep bumping up against reality. It's hard to keep track of the many failed plans for Kingman and Heritage islands in the Anacostia. The last was to create a "children's island" theme park. Now, the city's waterfront plans call for a nature center on Heritage Island. A pedestrian bridge connects Heritage to the mainland, but a chain-link fence blocks access. The INTERIM ANACOSTIA RIVER TRAIL signs that dot the area near the river seem to mock the idea that this generation of dreamers will succeed. For now, there's very little trail along the Anacostia River. Along a narrow road near the 11th Street Bridge are five private yacht clubs, Park Service tenants that have been there for a long time. The oldest is Seafarers Yacht Club, founded in 1945 by African-Americans during the days of segregation. It's at the end of the road, between the river and the freight-train tracks. "You're down in the low-income district, the low-rent district, but we try to stay happy," Commodore Joe Quarterman, who is also an architect for a Bethesda firm, tells me one Saturday. Quarterman points to a boomlike contraption in the water placed there by the government to trap trash. "The trash stops right here," he says, and federal and District agencies don't seem to care. A nearby water and sewer outlet "spits water out" at high speeds, flooding the river. Other times, the river silts in, and without dredging, boaters can't get off the shoals. "We can't even take our boats out at low tide within 40 or 50 feet of the dock," Quarterman says. "My boat, at low tide, the props are sitting in the mud." It's a picture-perfect late-summer weekday—low humidity, blue sky—when Gayle Hazelwood and I put the canoe into the water at the Anacostia boat ramp. Hazelwood is superintendent of National Capital Parks-East, which includes Anacostia Park. A native of landlocked Cambridge, Ohio, she loves the river. It's easy to see why, as we paddle past a nesting osprey on a pole. Blue herons and egrets appear. Then behind us, a freight train rumbles over a river span, following railroad tracks that cross from the eastern to the western side. The seawall built by the Corps of Engineers to channel the river still defines most of its shoreline, but in spots the corps has re-created the marsh it drained, a 21st-century effort to correct what once was thought of as improvement. Whenever she sees a bird, Hazelwood interrupts a discourse on the park-service plans. "I just love those egrets," she says. "There's . . . God . . . they're just gorgeous," she says, spying a great blue heron. Then: "There's the hawk. I knew I heard that high-pitched whistle. . . . Oh, a kingfisher. Cool." The only sounds are crickets, birds, the paddles, and Hazelwood's cell phone, which she doesn't answer. We paddle upriver, into and around the Kenilworth Marsh. More birds, and two other people in a canoe. Then back into the river. It's empty, and both banks are wooded. We could be canoeing in West Virginia, but the Pepco stacks loom in the distance. Along the way, Hazelwood grabs floating plastic bottles and stuffs them into a trash bag. The river looks dirty. In 1997, the Anacostia won the distinction of being named America's dirtiest river. The Potomac, heralded as "the nation's river," was cleaned up thanks to federal money appropriated in the 1970s. But the Anacostia is virtually an open sewer, particularly after major storms when water and sewer pipes in the District are overtaxed. Bottom fish have cancerous tumors, and the water isn't safe for swimming. There is hope, however. A protracted legal battle between environmental groups and the DC Water and Sewer Authority over cleaning up the river was settled in December. WASA agreed to build three sewage-overflow storage tunnels over 20 years. The project—estimated to cost $1.9 billion—is projected to raise the average annual water bill for District households from $800 to $1,300 in 2024—unless the feds ante up some money. "When we get this one fixed, we will have eliminated the biggest single problem and a good deal of the pollution," says Doug Siglin, director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Anacostia River Initiative. Still, he says, "some people are so cynical. They say the Anacostia is so bad we're reduced to praying for it now." One night in September, about 150 folks did just that. They showed up at Matthews Memorial Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Avenue in Anacostia to hear the Reverend Susan Newman of the United Church of Christ and the mayor's senior adviser for religious affairs; a rabbi from Kensington; an imam from east of the river; and Episcopal bishop John Chane. They preached that environmental issues are really moral ones. "People went away feeling pretty jazzed," Siglin said the following day. "It was a breakthrough. Our focus has largely been making arguments to Congress, dealing with engineers on sewer, approaching it on a technical level. Last night was sort of a watershed, people approaching it on a moral level, and it was so interfaith." Sometimes you just have to believe. Envision this day of fun on Washington's revitalized waterfront, as described by Andy Altman: Breakfast on the Southwest waterfront, then board a water taxi that takes you around Buzzard Point and up the Anacostia to the Navy Yard, where you tour the Navy Museum. Then hop another water taxi and cross the Anacostia to Poplar Point, where you visit the Frederick Douglass Gardens and have lunch in historic Anacostia. Water taxi, again, to Kingman Island and its nature center. Then kayak up the Anacostia to the arboretum to walk among its flowering trees. Return to Kingman, where another water taxi takes you to the former Reservation 13 and the Massachusetts Avenue overlook with its sweeping river view. Finally, water taxi back to the Southwest waterfront for dinner and a play at Arena Stage. Altman says all this almost in one breath. It is, well, breathtaking. "It's good to have a dream to aspire to," Altman says. "But these dreams are happening. Barcelona built out its waterfront in 10 to 15 years. It's so inspiring; it shows it can be done, and the city has the market for it. That's why what we do over the next few years is so important. You've got to capture this market while we have it, capture people's attention while we have it." Back at Washington Harbour, it's a typical September Friday night. In the park, couples are strolling hand in hand. The Miss Mallory is about to depart with a boatload of tourists. Kim Newman, 43, is hanging out on her 47-foot Carver yacht with boyfriend Jerry Byers, 40. She works for a computer company; he's a web designer. The boat is usually docked at the James Creek Marina, near Buzzard Point. But for nine years now, it's been tied up on Friday nights at Washington Harbour. "We're probably in a thousand pictures," Byers says, "because everybody who comes down here has to take a picture in front of a boat." It's 10 PM, and there are hundreds of people at the outdoor restaurants, on the promenade, in the boats. Newman's boat is the Livin' Nauti.' Rafted to it is another boat, Liv 'n Cyn, out of Mount Vernon. Newman and Byers know some of their fellow boaters, the Friday-night regulars, but only by their first names. "There's Joe and Jill in the big boat," she says. "That's Randy and Ronnie in At Ease." Then there's John Gregg, 41, a Marine studying at the War College at Fort Mc-Nair. He's with Kim Reilly, a newly single thirtysomething mom who had come to Washington Harbour with her mother. "All of a sudden I'm on a boat with the entire Armed Forces," she says. "I've been coming here all summer," she says. "I ride my bike on the Crescent Trail. I met a Marine here three weeks ago." And tonight, too. "I'm just here for chicks, just to meet a beautiful woman, and I did well tonight," Gregg says. At that, Kim Reilly smiles, and off they go, strolling along the waterfront. Read the 2005 award-winning work Read the 2004 award-winning work Read the 2003 award-winning work |