Get to Know Poplar Point
The original Poplar Point was the natural delta of “Stickfoot Creek”, a significant tributary of the Anacostia River that drained the hills of what eventually became southeastern DC.
The name Poplar Point, which dates to the late 1700s, suggests that the site once boasted a grove of native poplar trees, some of which can still be seen in the 1833 Cooke painting. The areas surrounding Stickfoot Creek and the riparian border of Poplar Point were significant natural wetlands essential to the healthy functioning of the river system.
Poplar Point was part of a farm bought in 1802 James Barry, and then passed on to his nephew, also named James Barry. After the Civil War, the younger Barry’s heirs sold the farm to the Freedmen’s Bureau of the federal government for subdivision into 359 one-acre lots for sale to formerly enslaved people.
It appears that only a few homes were built on Poplar Point, all along Sumner Avenue and Howard Avenue (now Howard Road), which ran down to the water.
In 1902 Congress appropriated funds for the improvement of the Anacostia River mudflats, which had formed as the river filled up with sediment and become mixed with raw sewage, creating a serious disease hazard for residents and Navy Yard workers.
Three years later, contractors for the US Army Corps of Engineers significantly built up and expanded Poplar Point into the river and to the east with mud dredged from the Anacostia River, building a thick masonry wall to separate the land from the water.
Anacostia Park, including the new and enlarged Poplar Point, was dedicated in a six-hour ceremony on August 2nd, 1923. The western part of the site quickly became a 34.5-acre DC government tree farm (the Landham Tree Nursery) and the 24.66-acre Architect of the Capitol’s Botanic Garden Greenhouse and Nursery at Poplar Point.
During the Great Depression of the early 1930s, Poplar Point was the site of a notable event in American social history. In 1932, the eastern part of Poplar Point hosted the largest encampment of the “Bonus Army” - thousands of World War I veterans and others who traveled to Washington to lobby Congress to expedite payment of their promised service bonuses. Marchers lived for weeks in tents and shanties at several locations in DC. Many of those camped at “Camp Marks” on Poplar Point marched into Washington on July 28th to participate in rioting on Pennsylvania Avenue. On the orders of President Hoover, the rioting was put down by DC police and federal troops, including MacArthur, Patton, and Eisenhower. Camp Marks was evacuated and burned that evening.
During the Second World War, the eastern portion of Poplar Point, where Camp Marks had been, was requisitioned by the Navy for use as a Naval Receiving Station. Eventually, dozens of buildings were built on the site for wartime naval purposes, most of which were removed in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Anacostia Freeway was constructed in the early 1960s, cutting the area off from the adjacent neighborhoods of Barry Farms/Hillsdale, Buena Vista, and Anacostia. Stickfoot Creek was confined to an underground sewer pipe and covered over. The Metro Green Line and the Anacostia Station parking garage were built under and adjacent to the site in the late 1980s. The Architect of the Capitol simply abandoned the greenhouses and offices of the former US Botanic Garden production facility when it moved to a new site in southwest DC in 1993. The derelict buildings are still there, are almost completely covered over by vegetation.
Development plans in the past 25 years
In the late 1990s, Dianne Dale, the President of the Anacostia Garden Club, Mrs. Freida Murray, and other Anacostia residents proposed that Poplar Point be the location for the Frederick Douglass Memorial Gardens. Ms. Dale and others formed a nonprofit, and Congress passed legislation in 2000 to allow the memorial gardens to be built, if entirely funded by private contributions. The deadline in the legislation was later extended, but the required funds never materialized.
Poplar Point was a key area of interest during the joint DC-Federal Anacostia Waterfront Framework Plan initiative of the early 2000s. The final 2003 Framework Plan says: “Approximately 60 acres of parkland will contain a variety of uses, including the primary visitors center to the Anacostia RiverParks, the riverwalk and trail, memorial gardens, and outdoor performance spaces. The site will also feature a cultural institution of natural prominence, restored wetlands, a rehabilitated Stickfoot Creek, improved recreation fields, and transit-oriented development.” This language is important, as the federal transfer law says of the plan that must be developed and approved: “To the greatest extent practicable, the plan is consistent with the Anacostia Waterfront Framework Plan.”
Notwithstanding the Anacostia Waterfront Framework Plan, just two years later the owner of the DC United soccer team proposed building a new soccer stadium, conference center, hotel, and housing on the National Park Service site. The project fell through after more than a year of negotiation, but it led to Congressional passage of 2006 transfer legislation, and it led the DC government in 2007 to issue an RFP for a plan for economic development of the area, which apparently was considered to be the land use plan for approval by the Secretary of the Interior.
Four groups of developers proposed plans for the Poplar Point site, and Clark Realty Capital was awarded the rights to develop 1,529,300 square feet of office space; 3,237 residential units; a 280-room hotel; 405,000 square feet of retail; and a 250,000 square foot National Museum of the Environment packaged around an open wetlands area. However, those ambitious plans fell through, at least in part due to the 2008 recession. Some years later, the DC government floated Poplar Point as the location for a new Department of Homeland Security Headquarters, for a new FBI headquarters, and for the Amazon eastern headquarters, but none of those plans materialized.
There have been at least two previous DC-government sponsored Poplar Point public planning exercises: during the Anacostia Waterfront Framework Plan creation process, and again in 2005 and 2006. It is not clear to us whether the ideas generated during those exercises still exist at the DC Office of Planning. A fair amount of public skepticism about the value of participating in more planning is justified when nothing came from those meetings.
For a taste of some of the various conceptual visions for development of Poplar Point proposed by planners, architects and developers, click here or on the Clark drawing.
Poplar Point today
Poplar Point sits at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, between the new Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge and the proposed elevated 11th Street Bridge Park. It is adjacent to the Metro Anacostia parking facility and a major mixed use development project along Howard Road called the “Bridge District”, and a short walk across the bridge from the booming Buzzard Point and Navy Yard neighborhoods. However, it remains largely cut off from the adjacent Barry Farms/Hillsdale, Buena Vista, and Anacostia neighborhoods by the I-295 freeway that opened in 1964.
Poplar Point by George Cooke, 1833
Baist Real Estate Map, 1903
Poplar Point overlaid on the Baist map.
“Camp Marks” on Poplar Point, July 1932
Navy buildings covering the eastern area, 1949
Poplar Point in 1999
Anacostia Waterfront Framework Plan, 2003
Clark Realty / 2008 Development Vision
Apart from Anacostia Drive along the river, none of Poplar Point is currently accessible to the public. The former Navy section is a secure area with the headquarters of National Capital Parks-East and the US Park Police and its helicopter aviation unit located in World War II era buildings. The section containing the old nurseries and greenhouses is fenced off and overgrown with vegetation.
Because of continued underground groundwater flow outside of the Stickfoot Creek sewer pipe, and probable damage to the pipe itself, Poplar Point has five designated DC and federally protected wetlands. Nearly all of the site also lies in the 100-year floodplain, which becomes a significant consideration in light of NOAA’s current prediction of an average 10-14 foot rise in sea levels along the northeast coast of the United States by 2050. The 117-year-old masonry wall separating Poplar Point and the rest of Anacostia Park from the river has significantly deteriorated, perhaps providing an opportunity for a “living shoreline” between the river and the land.
Within the DC Government, principal responsibility for the Poplar Point site lies with the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, whose website says that “Poplar Point is one of the last great urban waterfront redevelopment opportunities on the East Coast.” But Poplar Point can also be understood as one of the last great natural riverine areas in and around the District of Columbia, important to both the region’s natural environment and to flood control as sea levels rise.