Living in Logan Circle, Washington DC

A bronze equestrian statue of Civil War general John A. Logan stands at the center of the traffic circle that gives this neighborhood its name, ringed by Victorian mansions built in the 1870s and 80s for the city's postwar elite. Fourteenth Street runs south from the circle through a corridor of restaurants, furniture showrooms, and boutiques that has filled the ground floors of century-old rowhouses over the past two decades. The circle and its surrounding mansions were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, a designation that has kept later development from touching the blocks closest to the park. No Metro station sits inside the circle itself; the U Street and Shaw-Howard University stations each lie about a ten-minute walk away, giving the neighborhood Green and Yellow Line service without a stop of its own.

Logan Circle's safety rating trails Dupont Circle's just to the west, and the busiest stretch of 14th Street means weekend crowds and a wait for a table at the newer restaurants.

Fourteenth Street's transformation from a stretch of long-vacant storefronts into one of the city's busiest restaurant rows remains the neighborhood's defining story, still visible in the mix of decades-old mansions and brand-new retail along the same blocks.