I know it has been a good long while since I’ve put out the church surveys, so here’s a quick refresher. So the city and other authorities conducted a survey of churches in the Northwest Urban Renewal Area, which was a precursor to the Shaw School Urban Renewal Area, which is just now known as Shaw. The thing is there was never a survey like this one ever conducted again. The survey included steeple churches, storefront churches and even little house churches. And the churches that did bother to answer most of the survey questions provide a wealth of demographic information.
Today’s church is National City Christian Church at Thomas and 14th Streets NW. It’s just outside the Shaw boundaries.
CS 61 National City Christian by Mm Inshaw
Looking at their survey response, in 1957 they were a large white middle class church with about 2000 members. Now looking at their website, they appear to be more multicultural as they have a 11AM Sunday worship service in Spanish.
It’s hard to say if they were a commuter church in 1957. About 40% lived in the suburbs of Maryland and Virginia, but half of the congregants lived somewhere in DC. Just not in the survey area, that was 10%. That makes sense as they were Downtown, and not a lot of people lived Downtown. Not did many of their congregants live in Shaw. But Dupont and the West End are sorta in walking distance.