What makes D3 — D3?

This has been written by our Guest Writer April Halberstadt of the Naglee Park Neighborhood with an addendum by Irene Smith.

There is District 3 and then there are the suburbs, the other nine Council districts. We are not like any of the other Districts.

District 3 is the Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe, a colonial outpost of Spain.

We are as old and as significant as many communities on the East Coast.

In 1850 San Jose became America’s first civil settlement, located on the edge of the frontier.

D3 was home to the first major Conservatory of Music ( later known as the King Conservatory) and America’s earliest music appreciation group on the West Coast, the Handel & Haydn Society, founded in Boston in 1815.

District 3 is our urban core.

D3 has two rivers and three highways, including El Camino Real.

D3 is a transportation hub, adjacent to an international airport and home to Diridon Station, a rail line dating to 1864.

D3 has the Federal Courthouse, the County courthouses and the Jail.

D3 has the County Admin building and the San Jose City Hall.

D3 is home to the SJ Police Department and the County Sheriff’s Department.

D3 has the Army reserve.

D3 has all three of San Jose’s National Historic Districts and many other smaller historic areas such as Japantown.

D3 has a substantial portion of the historic landmarks in the City.

D3 has the Cathedral, the church for the Roman Catholic Bishop of San Jose.

D3 has a major university, one of California’s oldest schools.

D3 has the first satellite Patent Office in the USA.

D3 has several of San Jose’s major entertainment venues.

D3 has a Downtown with major hotels and businesses.

I could go on but I think you get my point.

Things happen here all the time.

D3 is not like anyplace else.

Here are a few other considerations — Irene Smith

It’s the people, the languages, the food, and our indomitable spirit that sets up apart but brings us together. We are engulfed in a glorious potpourri of diversity and inclusion. Multigenerational houses with basements that sometime flood. Neighborhoods with turn of the century charm and lots of elbow grease. We see it all in D3.

Heinlein Park is one of our best D3 stories. A German immigrant gave land to Chinese immigrants to grow crops and create a Chinatown. This attracted Japanese immigrants who felt welcomed and they established credit from the Chinese. And this resulted in Japantown as it is now. And the community request to name the park in 2020, ended with “In closing, may we quote an old proverb that comes from another notable group of persecuted immigrants, the Irish: “It is within the shelter of each other that the people live.”

D3 has one of the three, historic Japantowns in the entire USA.

We have bilingual churches: Holy Cross Church, Our Lady of La Vang Parish, Five Wounds Portuguese National Parish, Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph, and San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin.

D3 has the Tech Museum of Innovation, The Children’s Discovery Museum, the Quilt Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, SJSU Beethoven Center, and the Institute of Contemporary Art. No other districts have multiple museums.

D3 has Opera San Jose, the San Jose Ballet, The San Jose Symphony, Hammer Theater, San Jose Improve, San Jose Center for the Performing Arts, The Stage, Civic Center, and City Lights Theater Company.

D3 has Music in the Park, Bark in the Park, the Jazz Festival, Levitt Pavillion concerts and the San Jose Convention Center.

D3 has the Little Italy, Italian American Heritage Foundation and library, SJSU & SJ City Martin Luther King Library, African American Cultural Center and the Mexican Heritage Plaza.

D3 has the oldest continual family run deli in the nation, Chiramonte’s on N. 13th St.

D3 history boasts of the Italian American truck farmers and Japanese American berry growers at the farmers market and the legendary Bini’s cafe, that lasted until the early 1980's.

Downtown D3 has the highest concentration of business headquarters in the city.

D3 has Lincoln Law School & San Jose State University.

D3 has every form of housing and the largest number of unhoused in San Jose and the County. D3 has: sororities and fraternities, group homes, rehab living centers, permanent supportive housing, home-key hotels, single family homes, large and small apartment buildings, dorms, women's shelters, Salvation Army congregate housing, naturally occurring affordable housing, YWCA housing, Section-8 housing, tiny homes, and the first safe sleeping site for the unhoused at Watson Park. No other district has such a wide diversity of housing styles.

We are joyously diverse in our history and how we live in productive harmony.