Farewell Citizen Atlas

I got a warning months ago but didn’t really understand it. Citizen Atlas is gone. Sort of.

For years I have been using https://propertyquest.dc.gov/ to find information about houses in Truxton Circle and sometimes other parts of DC. I have used photos from Property Quest, which leaned on Citizen Atlas for photos for churches and other places.

But now that’s gone.

It makes sense in some ways. These photos are old enough to buy themselves a strong drink. So I hope they are with an archive or something. That is something I’ll have to look up later because this summer is personally busy for me.

Most places use Google Street View. Real estate websites use it along with the government. Those are the most up-to-date images of a property….. unless the owner or former owner has blocked it.

The photos aren’t completely gone. Not knowing when the photos will disappear, I copied all the ones used for the blog and the URLs (for now) work. Unfortunately, I THOUGHT, I had copied all the photos for Truxton Circle. But alas, no. I only did it for one block.

So I will eventually update the URLs on the blog to a page in the InShaw universe where I am hosting the images I have used. Yes, they are over 20 years old, but as far as I’m concerned they are government created and free to use.

 

A suitable pop up- 1721 4th St NW

There is a lot of background with this house, but I want this to be a more visual post.

1721-1719 4th St NW. Taken 2008

This was a house that didn’t have a lot of interior space. I don’t think it had a basement. It did not have a 3rd floor.

1721 4th St NW. Taken in 2012.

Now it has a 3rd floor. Notice the difference in the rooftop. The pop up is very subtle. It is currently two condo units.

Memory Lane: Alpine Strawberries in the backyard

Corner of patio garden. Taken May 2006.

One of the things I miss about my Truxton Circle home* is my patio garden. I loved being able to pop out of the kitchen backdoor and grab a few herbs for cooking. I did grow other things, like alpine strawberries.

You will never find alpine strawberries in your local store or farmers market. These things are too fragile to survive transport. But they are supertasty.

They grow in not so sunny yards such as my backyard patio.

Now some of these plants made it to the Maryland abode and with a larger yard with sun, these things flourished. In DC I was able to get a few tasty fruits and was happy. Now with a few more plants because they like the sun (who knew?), I can snack on them when putting around in the garden. I can get a decent handful in one outing, depending on if anything has gotten to them.

What do they taste like? Strawberries. A mushier strawberry.

They do not have runners. They grow in clumps. They have survived several harsh DC/MD winters. The squirrels (and deer) don’t seem to be too interested in them. Slugs like them.

They do grow from seed, but it can be challenging. If you have room or just want the greenery, I recommend them.

*I moved to the suburbs of PG County in 2021 during the pandemic.

Boundaries of Shaw, Washington, DC

Everyso often people argue about the boundaries of the Shaw neighborhood. Here’s a map from 1971 from the National Capital Planning Commission. It also shows the 14th St Urban Renewal Area, but little matter.

map of Shaw and CH

Memory Lane: Guys on the corner

Taken May 13, 2016

I do not miss the old guys who sold heroin on the corner of 4th & Q. I do not miss calling 911 or 311 depending on the ever changing policy and not getting great results.

But they weren’t all that bad. One winter, Jimmy and the crew joined in with the snow shoveling.

They were better than the young men who sold drugs on my or other nearby corners. Young men attract more violence. With the old guys, I didn’t worry as much about drive bys and stray bullets. Slow moving men can’t fight turf battles.

I did worry when younger men started hanging out there.

Before the old men. It used to be the spot where screamy teenagers would hang out and….. scream.

319 R Street NW

I was going through some of photos and decided to post.

Townhouse
319 R St NW, Washington, DC

Above is what 319 R St NW looks like now.

Developers Plan B

Then there was the alternative reality of what it was supposed to look like.

319 R St NW, 20001
319 R St NW. Taken March 7, 2018

And lastly, 319 R St NW back when the Korean church owned it for mission work.

319 R St NW, Taken July 9, 2016.

Links to my previous posts about 319 R St NW:

319 R St- Off Market sad-face
I provided the gun but I didn’t shoot him: Historic Landmarking of Sq. 519
319 R St NW- There can be a way forward with a turret
319 R St NW- The Turret is Plan B
319 R St NW- Not hoping for the best, but the less ugly with a turret
319 R Street NW- a sign
319 R St NW
319 R Street the plan
Well we need more of this kind of missionary work

Memory Lane: Beans and Demographics

I’m changing my Flickr account from paid to free and to do that I had to delete over 2000 images. Some of the images were transferred to this blog. The exercise did have me going down memory lane.

In 2017 two artists, Brian Bakke & Ira Tattleman, and myself had an exhibit in Truxton Circle called the Triangle Known as Truxton Circle. One of my exhibits showed the demographic changes to Truxton Circle from 1880-2010.

The drawings were of the filling out of the neighborhood. The top map was 1880. The following were 1900-1940.

On the maps, I took house by house information and colored white households with yellow; Black households with brown; government in blue with who they served filled in; and commercial properties in red.

The boxes of beans were to show the decline of the population. It was at its highest in 1940. The boxes had black beans for African Americans; Navy beans for Whites; and pinto for everyone else. The TC became a majority Afo-American neighborhood in 1930. You can see a lot of black beans in the 1950 box, along with speckles of navy beans. When WSIC sold off their rentals, those White renters left by the time the 1960 census rolled around.

As you can see the number of beans keeps decreasing year after year. And it isn’t until 1980 when the neighborhood starts seeing some racial diversity again.

First Time DC Government Uses Truxton Circle

Okay firsts are tricky. They are very hard to prove. So with that said, I am going to write that in this advertisement from 1989, this was the first time the District of Columbia government called Truxton Circle, Truxton Circle.

For a mere $80,000 62 Bates St NW was being sold by DHCD. For a paltry $250.00, they offered 22 Hanover St NW.

Advert for houses for sale in 1989 for houses sold by the District Government from $250 to $80,000

Is it the very first time the DC government called Truxton Circle by the name we know it as now? Possibly. This is just the first bit of evidence I located to prove the point.

Redeux-WSIC-1950 Sell Off- 137 Bates Street NW

This is an update of a previous post.

The Washington Sanitary Improvement Company (WSIC) was a late 19th century charitable capitalism experiment that ended in the 1950s. This blog started looking at the homes that were supposed to be sold to African American home buyers, after decades of mainly renting to white tenants.

Looking at WSIC properties they tend to have a pattern where the properties were sold to a three business partners, Nathaniel J. Taube, Nathan Levin and James B. Evans as the Colonial Investment Co. for $3 million dollars. Those partners sold to African American buyers. There was usually a foreclosure. Then the property wound up in the hands of George Basiliko and or the DC Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA). Then there were the odd lucky ones who managed to avoid that fate.

photo of property

Let’s see 137 Bates’ property history:

  • January 1951 Evans, Levin and Taube sold the whole of 137 Bates St NW to two couples, George A. and his wife Gladys L. Watson, along with Clayton and wife Lizzie M. Williams.
  • January 1951 the Watsons and the Williams borrowed $5,050 from the Colonial Inv. Co’s preferred lenders, trustees Abraham H. Levin and Robert G. Weightman.
  • February 1963 the Watsons and the Williams were released from their mortgage.
  • August 1963, through an intermediaries Barbara and Robert Drake, the Watsons and the Williams placed the property solely in the Williams’ name.
  • March 1964 the Williams borrowed $5,000 from Republic Savings & Loan, later the Home Federal Savings & Loan Association.
  • June 1981 Mrs. Williams borrowed $20,000 from what appears to be the DC Department of Housing & Community Development.
  • November 1981 the Williams were released from their 1964 mortgage.
  • May 2018 the estate of Lizzie Mae Williams, being that she died July 13, 1997 and Clayton died July 25, 1971, sold by the Estate of Diane Alexander, which was represented by Alisia Alexander sold 137 Bates to Leben Holdings LLC for $805,500.

For information about the Watsons and the Williams, see the earlier post. But this transaction seemed to work for everyone. There were no foreclosures and the property stayed in the hands of one of the families (I could not find a connection between the Watsons & Williams).