Mayor Anthony Williams and Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton unveiled the design for the new District of Columbia postage stamp at a press conference at the Lincoln Theatre on July 31st

A stamp of its own
Postal Service recognizes D.C. as a hometown

(Published August 11, 2003)

By ERIN HENK
Staff Writer

When the U.S. Postal Service issued its 50-state commemorative stamp collection last year, the District’s feisty delegate to Congress set out to make sure that D.C. residents would not be slighted through omission.

"It seemed only right that the District had its own stamp," Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said as she expressed her satisfaction with the unique diamond-shaped design that was selected for what she calls the District’s first "hometown stamp." The original 100 square mile tract designated as the District of Columbia was shaped like a diamond.

"We think this stamp will become a little piece of D.C.’s history," she said.

The stamp, designed by Greg Berger, features engineer and architect Charles L’Enfant’s 1791 city plan, a view of the National Mall, cherry blossoms in full springtime bloom and the traditional rowhouses of D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood. The stamp, like the city, is divided into four quadrants.

"This stamp celebrates the District of Columbia," Washington Postmaster Delores J. Kilette said July 31 during the unveiling of the new design at Lincoln Theatre.

Norton noted that the new design differs from the postal service’s previous D.C. stamp, which was issued for the bicentennial and featured only national monuments in the District. She stressed the importance of the landmarks as being essential for drawing tourists to the city, but also the need for adequate representation of the city’s neighborhoods.

The monuments and cherry blossoms, depicted on the new stamp, help lure people here, but "that’s not what the District is about," she said. Norton described the depiction of rowhouses in Shaw as her favorite part of the stamp, noting that the neighborhood was designated as a D.C. historic district.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams, who attended the unveiling, also emphasized the significance of the Shaw rowhouse depiction. He described the houses as being "symbolic of all that’s good with the rich tradition of our city."

Williams called the L’Enfant plan’s inclusion on the stamp a depiction of the hurdles that D.C. still has to overcome.

"It [the L’Enfant plan] represents a vision not yet realized," he said, referring to the District’s lack of full voting representation in Congress.

Norton emphasized this point as well.

"The more you get the District of Columbia treated as other American cities are treated, the less [people] see us as an appendage of the U.S. Congress," she said.

The postal service plans to make 72 million of the new Washington, D.C., commemorative stamps available this fall. The stamp’s first day of issue is scheduled to be issued Sept. 22 in the District. The stamps will go on sale in the District first, sometime in late September, before being sold nationwide.