Every few hours, Jane Armstead leads her five small dogs onto the front porch of her home in Deanwood. And she expects her neighbors to do the same for her. That kind of neighborly activism is common in Deanwood, located in the northeastern corner of the District, bounded by Eastern, Division, Nannie Helen Burroughs and Kenilworth avenues.
Residents have ties to the community and one another that go back almost a century.
Brooks still returns to Deanwood to attend the Deanwood First Baptist Church on Sherriff Road, which is home to at least a dozen churches, and to visit her daughter and son, who share the home in which she grew up. For her and others, Deanwood, a middle-class enclave, is home even when they live somewhere else. That feeling has remained, even though times have changed for Deanwood, as with many areas of the city. Many of the estimated 8,500 Deanwood residents fear the advance of crime and illegal drug use. And for the times when she walked to school along the railroad tracks, picking blackberries along the way.