The neighborhood has changed a lot over the years. The houses are obviously original, and it was a fairly posh neighborhood when built between 1890-1920. It was actually one of the earliest racially integrated neighborhoods in DC. It fell on hard times by the 1960s, and was devastated by the 1968 MLK riots. That's when a lot of former small businesses left and were replaced by things like the corner store. It took from '68 to around 1998 for the neighborhood to start reviving. I moved in in 2002, and it was still "transitional" when I got there. It's still getting better, and it has a ways to go yet. There are ghetto fringes still, and little corner markets like this that make half their profits from liquor sales and the rest from short-dated canned goods at 25% markup over what the grocery store eight blocks away charges.