Star Shoe Factory

One of the great ironies of the Lafayette Square neighborhood is that while it was born in the mid Nineteenth Century as one of the wealthiest sections of the city, it has spent much of its history as a low-income area, peppered with factories and many of its grandest homes carved up into boarding houses.



The boarding houses are gone, but many of the factories that appeared in the late Nineteenth Century remain, adding to the fascinating mix of old industrial rehabs, modest row houses and grand, restored Second Empire mansions.