Back in the day, before the trendy Northeast Washington, D.C., neighborhood NoMa was a thing, it was a post-industrial area in the shadow of Union Station. James Curtis, founder and managing partner of real estate firm The Bristol Group, says there only were three “landmarks” to speak of in the 1990s: a McDonalds, a Greyhound station and a methadone clinic.

http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/new-neighborhood-name-gentrification