What is Ivy City?
[[File:Alexander Crummell School.jpg|thumb|right|Alexander Crummell School is on the National Register of Historic Places]] '''Ivy City''' is a small neighborhood in [[Washington DC (northeast)|Northeast]] [[Washington, D.C.]] It is dominated by [[Warehouse|warehouses]] and the '''Ivy City Yard,''' a [[railroad]] [[coach yard]] and maintenance facility for [[Amtrak]]. The area has undergone some renewal. But Ivy City still remains among the poorest parts of the city. ==Geography== Ivy City is bounded by [[New York Avenue (Washington, D.C.)|New York Avenue]] to the northwest, West Virginia Avenue to the east, and Mt. Olivet Road to the south. The neighborhood is surrounded on all sides by significant landmarks: [[Gallaudet University]] (across Mt. Olivet Rd.), Mt. Olivet Cemetery (across West Virginia Ave.), and Amtrak's Ivy City yard (across New York Ave.). Politically, Ivy City is in Ward 5. ==History== In 1831, the [[Baltimore and Ohio Railroad]] had a plan approved to build its [[Washington Branch of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road|Washington Branch]]. [[Passenger train]] service between [[Baltimore]] and Washington began in 1835.<ref>{{Cite book | title = The Great Road: The Building of the Baltimore and Ohio, the Nation's First Railroad, 1828-1853 | last = Dilts | first = James D. | author-link = | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=JjrCWPwvHzIC | location = Palo Alto, CA | publisher = Stanford University Press | year = 1996 | volume = | edition = |page = 157 | isbn = 978-0804726290}}</ref> As part of the construction, the railroad company built its last [[roundhouse]] (the current Amtrak yard) one mile outside the city limit. The railroad then worked with land [[speculators]] to develop the land next to the roundhouse as ''Ivy City''. Ivy City became an early Washington [[suburb]]. It housed railroad employees. Ivy City became part of the city of Washington with the passage of the [[Organic Act of 1878]], which extended the city to occupy all of the District of Columbia. Over the years,