Semi-stolen from my other blog….
Well this lovely fourth of July was not as alcohol soaked as I may have let on. In fact the only drink I had was communion wine and one pina colada. But this weekend shall be fondly remembered as the research weekend.
The MLK Library’s Washintonia collection was useless to me. Mainly cause it was closed. I mean I looked at their website and they only mentioned being closed on the 4th, not the 3rd or the 5th, as their sign clearly said on the door. So not to be deterred I wandered over to the Historical Society at Mt. Vernon Sq. Well I swear their Real Estate maps from 1887 are in much better shape than 
and at MLK. Sadly the Historical Society’s library is not the best when it comes to reproducing what you found.
I was able to look at these great maps of the neighborhood and see how old some of these places are. My papers when I bought my crumbly pair of bricks and board said the house was built in 1900. Not so. It sits on the 1887 map. But that’s not all. In the 1940s and 1950s a guy (if I took better notes I’d have the name) went around DC taking pictures of different neighborhoods. Well I thought my neighborhood was sooooo uninteresting he wouldn’t have wasted film in my hood. Well he did and I found a picture of my street as well as the neighborhing areas. Woo hoo!