As far as I can tell this church no longer exists. Well in Washington DC. Not anymore.
The reason why I’m typing this up is because someone. I can’t say who. Annoyingly has a lot of personal chaff included in federal records. Some of that chaff, provides glimpses of a life partially lived at Rhode Island and North Capitol streets. The person in question was white, college educated, married and is currently very dead. He was the head, for a number of years of a Federal agency. He resided in various parts of Alexandria during the 40s and 50s. And he went to church in Edgewood? Eckington?
His church home was the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Atonement. I can tell because of other chaff and detritus left behind, such as church programs, pledge statement, and Lutheran publications.
What does this stuff, which personally we should really throw out our own light and gas bills at least 5 years after they’ve been paid, tell me about a ELCotA parishioner? Apparently you didn’t have to live near the church. You could just drive in from Alexandria, worship in DC and I guess go to the office. Because seriously, how does this stuff wind up in your working files?
Anyway, commuting church goers aren’t new and we still deal with them to this day. I just hope none are not the head of a government agency and have a habit of stuffing church crap in their office files.
Day: May 20, 2010
Scraps of DC History- RLA
If I ever, ever, which looks like not at all on my current path, write a history of urban renewal from the neighborhood perspective in Washington, DC I will have to include the District of Columbia Redevelopment Agency (RLA). According to the US Government Organization Manual the RLA was:
Created by act of Aug 2, 1946 (60 Stat. 790), to provide for replanning, rebuilding, and rehabilitation of slum and blighted areas in the District of Columbia. The District of Columbia Self-Government and Governmental Reorganization Act of Dec 24, 1973 (87 Stat. 774), established the agency as an instrumentality of the District of Columbia government, effective July 1, 1974
A post war agency to deal with slums turned into something that helped with the destruction of SW. Which who knows, may have needed destroying in parts, but not to the extent it did with the SW Urban renewal in the 50s and 60s.