Random Alley History Notes

Last week I wandered over to College Park, to visit the National Archives’s Still Picture Records Section. They have a series 302-DC called “Photographs of Low Rent Housing and Housing in Inhabited Alleys in the District of Columbia, complied 1934-1941, documenting the period 1916-1941.” No. I have no examples of the pictures because I do not have a copy card for that location and I didn’t want to go down and spend the money to get a copy card I’d never use again and wind up losing.
But I took notes. There apparently was another Naylor that wasn’t the Naylor Court we know. It was Naylor’s Alley on Sq. 515, which is over in Mt. Vernon Triangle as far as I can tell. There are some great pictures there, including a few snaps of a “Woman Evangelist,” a black woman in the middle of the alley wearing a coat.
Over on Sq. 512 which is between N, O, 5, 4, and NJ, was Kings Court where there are several pages of photographs.
For some odd reason I have a note about a picture of a toilet on Langston Terrace, which I think is somewhere in SW or SE.
Something I really should have gotten a copy of is a photograph from 1916 of the Mulumba House at 621 Rhode Island Avenue NW.

2 thoughts on “Random Alley History Notes”

  1. how interesting! sq 0515 is where City Vista is. Up until a couple years ago, that woman evangelist or another incarnation of indeterminate sex was still there, across the st. The street preacher would scream about jesus & damnation into a megaphone for a few hours every sunday in the little park by the Safeway entrance.

  2. haha Si. i called the noise police on that screaming preacher too many times!

    rr446

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