A Black business renaissance is blooming on Mount Vernon’s Read Street

Many people are familiar with Mt. Vernon’s major landmarks — Mount Vernon Place, the Washington Monument, the Peabody. Some residents know it for the 20th-century gay and arts revivals that nicknamed it Baltimore’s Greenwich Village. But fewer know Read Street and its 19th-century Black history. Read Street has become a vibrant community of Black-owned residences, buildings, and businesses with at least five Black-owned stores opening in the just two years since pandemic lockdowns abated. Many of them take in each other’s mail, clean each other’s garbage, collaborate on events and, just generally, look out for one another.