We start today at Rhode Island Avenue and 3rd Street NW. And we will end at North Capitol Street, where NW becomes NE. On these three blocks, we will see houses, churches, and restaurants, and end with a surprise. Or at least I wI’mas surprised.

We are leaving out one thing at the beginning. We omit the headquarters of the United Planning Organization, at the corner of 3rd and Rhode Island. We omit it because we can’t see it. There’s a small berm, followed by a fence, and then a parking lot. So you can’t see the large UPO building (large for Rhode Island Avenue, smaller than, say, the Pentagon). UPO is a social service agency created in 1962 as part of the Johnson War on Poverty and going strong ever since.

We then come to brick row houses from the early 20th century, many of them recently renovated. You can buy them from about $750,000 to well over $1,000,000.

We also come to our first church, Mt. Pleasant Baptist.

Mt. Pleasant Baptist is primarily a Black Baptist church (I say this from looking at website pictures), which has been here for 75 years, having bought the property in 1950 from a white congregation that moved away. It looks to be thriving.

On the next corner, you see the Mt. Bethel Baptist Church. This is an impressive building, about 120 years old, with extensive stained glass windows. Sadly, it is abandoned, as the church sold the property for almost $6 million to a developer, and moved to a different location. I don’t know who bought it or what their plans are.

The church itself has moved onto 9th Street, not too far away, into a modern, large facility.

When you get close to 1st Street,  you pass three restaurants which share one building. Boundary Stone is a typical pub, El Camino is a typical Mexican restaurant, but Sylvan Cafe is more interesting. It’s an Ethiopian/bagel shop. As you can see, they serve New Jersey bagels (sometimes spelled “bagles”, like they might do in Gondar) and great coffee, and Ethiopian food.

The interesting thing about these restaurants is that they share the former Sylvan Theater. The Sylvan was the first theater in DC built for movies, opened in 1913. It closed in 1965 and the building has been used in various ways afterward,  including serving as the home of the Back Alley Theater, the city’s first live Black theater.

We are now in a neighborhood known as Bloomingdale,  which is filled with rowhouses and restaurants. If you turn the corner onto 1st, you find more restaurants, including the popular Red Hen and the equally popular Big Bear Cafe. As well as a yoga studio and a real estate office, where you learn that this neighborhood might be old, but isn’t cheap.

There are two more restaurants on  the other side of Rhode Island. One is Turkish and the other Vietnamese. So, you see, quite an ethnic mix. And let’s not forget Show Time, known as a dive bar with music every night until 2 or 3 a.m.

We cross 1st Street.  Only one block until North Capitol. A primarily residential block, where about a third of the town houses seem to be under renovation. One house has a for sale sign. It’s part of a group of 11 houses with identical doors. We also see an iconic bicycle art display. The bikes stay constant. Their decorations are seasonal.

Finally, North Capitol Street. Here is the photo I took looking south from the bridge that carries Rhode Island over North Capitol.

Then, I decided to test my phone’s zoom lens. I took the same picture from a few feet back.

See you next time from Northeast DC.