Truxton Circle 1940 and snack cakes

Trying to finish up for the DC Humanities Council grant I and the Help drew out the colors for the 1940 map. 1940 looks a lot like 1930, shown here. North Capitol and the Washington Sanitary Improvement houses along Bates and 3rd Streets are the white center to the TC's brown chocolately crust. No so much an Oreo but a Little Debbie snack cake involving chocolate cake and some mystery cream.

So what's the story of the neighborhood? There is no ONE story. There are thousands of stories that melt and crash into one another in the lives of the thousands upon thousands of people who lived here and at some point called it home before moving on to another place to call home.

With the 1940 data, I'd be curious about the 1950 data that won't come out until 2022. In the 30s and 40s the TC gained its character as a black neighborhood (totally ignoring the creamy white filling) as most of the neighborhood real estate is occupied by African American residents or schools. Dunbar had not eaten up the whole block yet. I believe sometime after 1940, maybe in the early 1950s, the WISC breaks up, closes down, something so that the Bates Street area housing is no longer operated by this company that seemed to prefer having more white tenants. That should change the cream filling into chocolate filling, leaving a vanilla swirl on the outside on North Capitol.

FYI: The website TruxtonCircle.org has a glitch. If you go to it you may encounter a website not found error screen. It's there, try it with and without the "www". It's there, waiting for you.

PS- I used to love, love, love Little Debbie's Devil Cakes. Can't eat them any more. The creamy filling grosses me out because as an adult I notice how it leaves a disgusting film on the roof of my mouth.