Neighborhood names can tell a multitude of stories.
Some, like Adams Morgan, were dubbed in the middle of contentious school desegregation battles. Others, like DuPont Circle, take after heroic Civil War generals who stand as imposing statues in the middle of the neighborhood.
Or some just come from really thick Irish accounts.
That’s the source of the name “Swampoodle,” a now-former neighborhood right around Union Station. The area was home to drastic crime, copious drinking — and lots and lots of Irish immigrants.
Swampoodle was an area most didn’t really want to live in, so Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine were able to afford housing in the area. But the dingy edge-of-town street blocks flooded frequently, particularly towards the end of block around the neighborhood church. All the residents would gripe about the swampy neighborhood and its puddles through their thick Irish accents.
Passerbys heard the whining about the perpetually wet “Swampoodles,” and a neighborhood name was born.
Outside of rainy accumulation, Swampoodle was known most for crime in the neighborhood. On a particularly chaotic evening on January 21, 1895, a plasterer and two painters wandered into Crawley’s Oyster House, feasted until 3 a.m. and then refused to pay.
Local resident George Hurdle happened to be in there, and happened to have a great respect for law and order, a rarity in Swampoodle. The three men attacked Hurdle — but chose to do so at the wrong time, as two policemen had just entered the establishment. They arrested all participants in the brawl, with the dine-and-dashers being brought to court.
Hurdle probably isn’t the most famous Poodler though — Baseball Hall of Famer Connie Mack’s first cup of coffee in the bigs came in the neighborhood. Swampoodle Grounds, a ballpark based in the neighborhood, hosted the first edition of the Washington Nationals baseball team, for which Mack was the catcher.
But just like how the Nationals left the District for many years, Swampoodle is no longer a part of D.C.
The culprit? The same thing that takes so many other people and things out of D.C. each and every day: Union Station.
The construction of the station and the railway around it caused half the neighborhood to be destroyed. Ten blocks of housing were slashed away, driving a rail right into the heart of the District’s most Irish and swampy area.
There’s not much left of Swampoodle today. An Irish parish, St. Aloysius Gonzaga Church, had survived the rest of its surrounding neighborhood by well over a century, but shut down in 2012 as the area’s shrinking Jesuit population drained the church’s support base. All that’s left of the neighborhood is Gonzaga College High School, which opened its doors in 1821 and is the oldest high school in the District. Most of the area has instead morphed into either the rails of Union Station or the hip NoMa neighborhood. But just because near every puddle from Swampoodle has dried up doesn’t mean people have forgotten about it.
In 2017, the D.C. Council was looking for a name for a new dog park in NoMa. After hundreds of nominations were sent in, Swampoodle won in dominant fashion.
Though the park isn’t filled with the same oyster houses and crime that characterized the original Swampoodle, it is full of greenery and grassy areas directly exposed to the sky — so when it rains, you can be sure the park yet again becomes a Swampoodle.
You can visit Swampoodle today with one of our guides on our Off Menu Food Tour.
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