Living in U Street, Washington DC

U Street earned the nickname 'Black Broadway' in the early 20th century, when the corridor's theaters and clubs made it one of the country's premier hubs for jazz and Black theater alongside Harlem's own scene. Duke Ellington played some of his first paid gigs at the True Reformer Building on U Street as a teenager, before he ever left Washington for New York, and Ben's Chili Bowl has served half-smokes from the same storefront since 1958, surviving the corridor's decline and its long recovery. The Lincoln Theatre, restored to its 1920s grandeur, still hosts concerts a few doors down, and the African American Civil War Memorial anchors the plaza just outside the U Street Metro station, its curved wall listing the names of more than 200,000 soldiers. The Green and Yellow Lines stop directly beneath the neighborhood's commercial heart.

U Street's safety rating sits below most of the neighborhoods around it, and the same nightlife that fills its clubs and restaurants on weekend nights brings crowds and noise that some blocks feel well past midnight.

Few corridors in the city carry as much documented musical history in as few blocks, and U Street's restaurants, theaters, and memorial plaza keep that history part of the neighborhood's daily foot traffic rather than tucked away in a museum.