Riggs Park is a residential neighborhood in Ward 4 of

Northeast The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A '' compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—eac ...

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

It is part of the greater Lamond-Riggs community (comprising the Lamond neighborood to the north, and Riggs Park to the south). Riggs Park is bounded by South Dakota Ave NE to the west, Eastern Ave NE to the east, Galloway St NE to the south, and New Hampshire Ave NE to the north. Riggs Park is adjacent to the neighborhoods of Michigan Park, and Fort Totten, located in Ward 5 of Northeast Washington D.C. In addition to these neighborhoods, Riggs Park also borders the city/neighborhood Chillum, which is located in

Prince George's County, Maryland Prince George's County (often shortened to PG County or PG) is located in the U.S. state of Maryland bordering the eastern portion of Washington, D.C. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, the population was 967,201, making it ...

. The WMATA Red Line train tracks pass through the Riggs Park neighborhood when traveling between the Takoma and Fort Totten Metro stations, alongside the adjacent

CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Railroad classes, Class I freight railroad company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Operating about 21,000 route miles () of trac ...

, MARC, and

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train tracks.

History

Most of Riggs Park's residents were

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and

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

until the 1960s when most of them began leaving the city to settle in the suburbs. Riggs Park's combination of affordable housing and convenience/proximity to

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, attracted many

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

residents to move in.Taylor, Ronald. "Riggs Park: Largely Untouched by War: Area Little Touched by War". ''Washington Post''. August 19, 1973. p. B1. Riggs Park was home to two synagogues in the 1950s, including a

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

synagogue named Shaare Tefila Congregation. Shaare Tefila was relocated to

White Oak ''Quercus'' subgenus ''Quercus'' is one of the two subgenera into which the genus ''Quercus'' was divided in a 2017 classification (the other being subgenus ''Cerris''). It contains about 190 species divided among five sections. It may be calle ...

in 1965. In 2011, Shaare Tefila was relocated again to Olney, where many young members now live. During the height of the Jewish community, Riggs Park was known as the "Little Tel Aviv" of Washington, D.C., and was home to a large population of young Jewish couples and their families. The Jewish community grew quickly in the 1950s because many Jews who had served in the military were eligible to purchase a home under the

G.I. Bill The G.I. Bill, formally the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was a law that provided a range of benefits for some of the returning World War II veterans (commonly referred to as G.I. (military), G.I.s). The original G.I. Bill expired in ...

. As African-Americans began to move to Riggs Park in the 1960s, the majority of Jews in the neighborhood sold their homes and moved to suburban Maryland. By the early 1980s, Riggs Park was home to a large middle-class black population. In 2001, Chevron told residents of Riggs Park that gasoline had spilled just across the Maryland state line 12 years prior and that the fuel had seeped under 169 residents' houses, an elementary school, and a church. Residents filed a lawsuit in United States District Court. Chevron said it had complied with laws by informing the state of Maryland about the leak after its discovery and that it was pumping the gas out of the ground and removing the contaminated dirt. In 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency announced plans to clean up leaked gasoline, to be paid for by Chevron. In 2009, the District of Columbia released environmental test results, and perchloroethylene and methyl tert-butyl ether were detected in shallow groundwater samples. Gasoline was detected in soil samples. Chevron settled a lawsuit with the District of Columbia Department of the Environment in 2011. Chevron agreed to pay for the installation of Vapor Mitigation Systems into 43 homes in Riggs Park.

References

{{Neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. African-American history of Washington, D.C. African-American middle class Historic Jewish communities in the United States Jews and Judaism in Washington, D.C. Neighborhoods in Northeast (Washington, D.C.)