Where is Penn Quarter?
“Penn Quarter” describes downtown’s Seventh Street corridor, where the 19th-century meets the 21st. It includes D.C.’s Chinatown Historic District.
A Mosaic of Cultures in Downtown D.C.
Interspersed among the hip hotels, restaurants, and attractions like the Shakespeare Theater, National Portrait Gallery, and Capitol One Arena are buildings that stand as silent sentinels, ready to relay the stories of a time when Chinese, German and Italian immigrants lived and worked on and around the Seventh Street.
Immigrant D.C. Historic Sites Seen on the Walk
- the former U.S. Patent Office where newcomer Emile Berliner filed applications for the first microphone and disk record invented
- the church-turned-synagogue where D.C.’s first Jewish congregation worshipped
- Washington’s small but significant Chinatown
- the still-intact campus of Holy Rosary Church, founded by Italian Catholic immigrants
The walk concludes at the Lillian and Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum, home to the first syngogue built in Washington, D.C. and named for a former resident of the Penn Quarter neighborhood.
Why the name “Penn Quarter”?
The fact that the southern boundary of the neighborhood borders Pennsylvania Avenue, NW influenced its naming, as did the fact that the former Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation’s Pennsylvania Avenue Plan called for its historic structures to be renovated, even as new buildings were developed. In early 2000s Washington, D.C., the name was also appealing to real estate developers as they wooed commercial and residential tenants.
More Washington, D.C. walking tours you might like: Foggy Bottom and Abraham Lincoln’s Washington
