Recently in Shaw History Category

I'm gonna pull something out of the pile. Something, that doesn't require scanning. Something short enough that I can transcribe without straining my wrists. This is from the National Capital Housing Authority (or Agency) regarding Sq. 361, and this can be found somewhere in a box at the National Archives.

August 16, 1935

9 1/2 STREET N.W.

DESCRIPTION: There are eleven alley dwellings in 9 1/2 Street, Ten of these houses have four rooms each; one has six rooms. The six room house is located on the rear of the street lot, the alley house number is 1907. There are no modern improvements, yet the interiors of most of the houses are neat and clean. The general repair of all properties is bad.

RENT: There is a rent range from $10.75 to $15.25 for the four room houses; the six room house rents for $15.50; per room, the rent range is from $2.69 to $3.75.

LENGTH OF TENANCY: Tenants have occupied these houses ranging from a few months to thirty years continuous occupation.

ECONOMIC STATUS: There are only four families, of the 14 families occupying the 11 dwellings, on the relief rolls-- all of the others claim private employment.

NUMBER OF FAMILIES AND INDIVIDUALS: Altogether there are fourteen families living in the alley. In houses numbered 1907-09-11 there are two families each, the balance contain one family each. Fifty people live in 46 rooms, ranging from 1 person in 1921 to 8 persons in 1915.

The National Archives social media side has this Citizen Archivist Dashboard thing where normal people all over the nation, and the world can help the Archives tag, transcribe and upload things. I was thinking this would be a good opportunity for someone, who might want something to do over the academic winter break to bring some Shaw history out of the Archives and on to the web.

What I am thinking of particularly is something out at College Park, MD, because that's where they keep the photographs called Photographs of Low Rent Housing and Housing in Inhabited Alleys in the District of Columbia. There be some photos of Shaw area alleys there. They are arranged by name of alley, but it is good to know the square the alley was on as well. Square numbers have not changed.

Sadly, the citizen archivist thing is limited to images, if they ever open it up to PDFs there is a whole world of reports relating to urban renewal and the whole "slum" thing that Ray M of sunshine likes to wax on about.

I want to thank RayM for allowing me to use this image of a sign reflecting another time and another era. He put this up on the Shaw listserv. Say what you will about the listserv, and some of the listserv's more active posters, but Ray does actually bring information to the table (like the above photo), even if it is not packaged in a way that some more sensitive readers would like. 

With the work I've done with the National Capital Planning Commission files, I don't remember seeing this shape. But then again, I kind of ignored whatever was planned for NE DC in the 60s. I can definately make out the Shaw part of the Model Cities. As part of President Johnson's War on Poverty, the plan was big enough, but well other stuff happened (riots, Nixon, the 70s). According to the Shaw listserv chatter, initially the urban planners wanted to level the area as seen in map above, and make it "modern" (1970s idea of modern, ick). This would have given it an East Berlin look and feel. Thankfully, a lot of activism saved the area from being overwhelmed with a lot of large multi-family buildings with subsized rents.Those type of buildings do nothing for encouraging home ownership.

Anyway, I always find it interesting to look back at the people of the past (which one day we will be), and their grand sweeping plans and then find out why it flopped, failed, fizzled or fell a short.

 

Side note- Columbia Heights has been deemed a desirable neighborhood and is not, I repeat is not, an underserved neighborhood in need of any government funds, according to Senator Tom Coburn. (HT: Curbed)

Friday night, the day before I was to give the presentation about the TC neighborhood, I tested it out on two neigbors, one who gave a lot of good constructive criticism. The attached PDF (Segregation in Truxton Circle 1880-1930.pdf) of the power point presentation does not reflect that feedback. That version is stuck on one of the world's slowest computers and a random CD somewhere under a pile.

Saturday I met Dr. Karl Byrand of the Geography department of the University of Wisconsin, Sheboygan, who was the last presenter of our three person panel. I was the second presenter. His presentation was "The Spatial and Occupational Advantages of Shaw's Mulatto Population in Turn-of-the-Century, Washington, DC". Which brings up some parts of his University of Maryland- College Park PhD dissertation about parts of Shaw from 1880-1920 regarding alley dwellers. When I was doing research on the Truxton part of Shaw and looking through many dissertations regarding race, DC neighborhoods, and urban migration, I came across his paper. When I first spotted it, I thought various four letter words, because from the title I was under the impression he had already done what I half-way did. Once I read it, I saw that he was looking at one particular aspect, and particular blocks, not the same thing I was doing. So it was great to talk with him and meet him, as our topics are so similar.

Right now, I'm going to take a break from the project. I will probably find some interesting tidbits as I finally get around to cleaning my house, and share them. I'll probably get back to it and spend time cleaning up the data after the whole holiday season, say mid January.

First let me get this thing out of the way:

Cultural Tourism is launching a new Heritage Trail called "Lift Every Voice: Georgia Ave/Pleasant Plains Heritage Trail". The 'lift every voice' part refers to the Negro National Anthem. Anyway there will be a launching this Saturday (10/15/11) at 11AM at 2041 Georgia Avenue NW in front of Howard University. You can see more information here. Yet the reason why I'm mentioning it is the first marker is down in Shaw, at 7th and T, near the Wells Fargo (formerly Wachovia) bank. So if you want to take a walk, you can start at the bank.

Now for some more history, well the project. Data clean up is a pain in the butt and I'm not going to have it cleaned up nice enough in time for the Historical Studies Conference being held at the MLK library. But I will have the mapped out data, which I gave a sneak peak of last month. I'm presenting November 5th at 1:30pm, where it's seems I'm stuck with my preliminary title "A Demographic Neighborhood: 1880-1930" and not the one that has emerged "Patterns of Segregation in Truxton Circle 1880-1930: Using census and map data to discover the character of a neighborhood." Maybe the new title was too long. I dunno. All I know I will be showing off my maps and talkin' bout the hood for 20 minutes.

I have enough data to map out where people lived. The other things, the data isn't complete and there are addresses I have to eliminate from the database because they are on the wrong side of NJ or NY Avenues. Also the data starts to present more questions than I can really answer. Like a simple one like, if people of different races are living next door to each other with no distinct pattern of this is the white block and this is the black block, is it segregated or intergrated? But more common the question I have is where the heck is this alley?

I'll do more to clean up the data so when the 1940 census comes out, I'll be ready and have something to present next year.

With all the talk about the Lincoln and it's eventual demise due to poor management I figured I should wander by the Howard and see how it's doing, after stopping by the Dunbar to get a few dollars. The Dunbar long ago was a theater, and now is a bank. Most old theaters find new life as a CVS, but as there is already a CVS a block away, and this is far too big to be a CVS, selling lotion, diabetes strips and condoms may not be in this building's future.
Hopefully the operators of the Howard will make it a profitable venue. Profitable as in ticket sales to individuals and groups, location rentals to wedding parties and corporate shin-digs, and whatever actually brings in the cash these days. Not trying to keep it afloat by begging the local and federal government to keep it around because 60. 70 years ago some famous people stopped by there while making real money for paying audiences.

I had the Help take a look at my census maps from 1880 to 1930 showing the racial make up of the blocks. 1890 is missing because that census got burned up in a fire long ago. He asked if I could try to piece the data together with city directories and I gave him the evil eye.

Anyway he compared them and said 1880 and 1910 the neighborhood looked pretty white, 1900 and 1920 it looks diverse and 1930 it is very black. It will be interesting to see what the 1940 census brings, but I guess the neighborhood becomes even more African American thus adding to the current narrative that this is an historically African American neighborhood. Which in 1930 it predominately was, no doubt.

However, I like the diverse neighborhood narrative. I have no illusions of thinking that people, black and white and the odd Chinese guy, lived in harmony. They may have, they may not have. Yet, I think looking at our neighborhood history with a focus on its racial diversity may be more helpful to those of us living in the present, with its diversity.

Well I'm getting close to the end. Just a lot of data clean up. Anyway wanted to give a preview of the study of the Truxton Circle area. Below are three hand drawn and colored maps. The one on the left is 1880, the next 1900, and 1910 on the right. These are rough drafts. Brown represents African Americans, Yellow/Orange are Whites, and if you can see it, Green is for Asians. Red is for businesses and the Homeopathic Hospital and blue is for government own property. The Twinning School is red with a yellow center as it was a school for white children.

 

I left blank squares 551 and 614 for 1910. I'll fill that out later. Also I discovered colored pencils would be better than markers and thus there is a big black X on the 1880 square 615, where I made an error. The empty spaces mean there is no census data for that property, or there was a business there, or it was a huge track of land, like George Glorius' property where he had his green house.

I also need to draw in alleys. That's what those brown splotches in the middle of a block are, people living in the alleys.

Anyway give me your thoughts. 

Past-

The people at the Charles Sumner School Archives are awesome! I got a nice quick answer from them about a school that used to exist in the TC, the William J. Twining School that used to be where the current Dunbar School sits now, but smaller. It kept showing up on maps of the neighborhood, and I was trying to figure out if it was a black school or a white school. Anyway it was built in 1883, and was a white school up until 1925. In the 30s it was combined with the Morse School, then later Bundy. Then in 1947 Armstrong began using come of the building space. In 1949 it stopped being an elementary school, students were transfered to Scott Montgomery, and the building annexed to Armstrong High School. In 1955 it became a warehouse. No date of when it was torn down.

The Future-

A new business that specializes in desserts, particularly cookies is coming to North Capitol Street. Or is already there.

The Present-

I've been having tons of fun with the webcam overlooking the O Street Market. The nighttime images particularly made me smile. Then I got interested in watching the cars in the parking lot and along O Street at the bottom of the camera, appear and disappear. There is a yellow cab that got there at 4:50AM and is still there. Too bad camera #1 isn't up, I wonder what it captures.

Yesterday the Help and I dined at Beau Thai, outside. I had my back turned to avoid looking at the pop ups on New Jersey Avenue. I rather see the peeling paint on top of the Africare building (formerly the Morse School) than those things. There are 3.

There are two on the 1700 block of New Jersey about two houses apart. The one on the left looks like it might fit into the neighborhood a bit better than the one on the right, which look awfully pedestrian. Also the one on the left has been empty for like, forever. It was a DC government owned property that just languished, all borded up for years and years. It is good that it is getting fixed and may even fit with the pseudo-turret. The one on the right. Eh, it could be worse.

Then over on the 1600 block of New Jersey we have the Blackbox of Doom. Doom I say. DOOOM.