You are invited to read this WAMU-FM 88.5 story on DC’s crack cocaine epidemic.
Hanover Place NW is mentioned.
Click on the link to read the entire article:
Crack’s Rapid Rise Brought Chaos To D.C.
By: Jacob Fenston
January 27, 2014
…
Before “crack cocaine” had entered the nation’s lexicon, D.C. was already struggling with drugs.
For three decades, since the 1950s, white and middle class residents had been fleeing Washington, leaving behind pockets of deep poverty. But now, those suburbanites were coming back — to buy powder cocaine.
“This place was the epicenter,” says Tony Lewis, Jr., standing outside his house on Hanover Place NW, a narrow, dead-end street on the edge of what’s now D.C.’s booming NoMa neighborhood.
“The way the block is set up, you can see the cops coming, you know what I mean, you can’t sneak in here. I think that’s what made the block so successful, the way it’s positioned,” he says.
When Lewis was a toddler, Hanover Place was the spot to buy cocaine — newspapers called it the city’s cocaine supermarket. “When I was little, I can’t remember being able to see to the corner, it was just that many people, all the time,” he says.
The cars would line up, sometimes backing up traffic on nearby North Capitol Street, with drug buyers honking, like commuters stuck in rush-hour traffic.
Bates Area Civic Association 