There are a lot of these houses. I’m just going to publish these in big batches.
The Washington Sanitary Improvement Company (WSIC) was a late 19th century charitable capitalism experiment that ended in the 1950s. This blog started looking at the homes that were supposed to be sold to African American home buyers, after decades of mainly renting to white tenants.
Looking at WSIC properties they tend to have a pattern where the properties were sold to a three business partners, Nathaniel J. Taube, Nathan Levin and James B. Evans as the Colonial Investment Co. for $3 million dollars. Those partners sold to African American buyers. There was usually a foreclosure. Then the property wound up in the hands of George Basiliko and or the DC Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA). Then there was the odd lucky ones who managed to avoid that fate.
Let’s look at the post WSIC history of 200 Q St NW:
- December 1950 (recorded 1/18/51) Evans, Levin and Taube sold one-half of 200 Q St NW to Joseph and Mary E. Bailey.
- December 1950 (recorded 1/18/1951) the Baileys borrowed $3,375 from Colonial Investment Co. favorite trustees Abraham H. Levin and Robert G. Weightman.
- December 1950 (recorded 1/18/51) Evans, Levin and Taube sold the other one-half of 200 Q St NW to James R. and Thelma L. Fields.
- December 1950 the Fields borrowed $3,375 from trustees Abraham H. Levin and Robert G. Weightman.
- January 1952 the Fields sold their half to the Consolidated Engineering Distributing Company.
- February 1952 the Consolidated Engineering Distributing Company sold the property to Mattie N. Jackson. The paperwork doesn’t seem to acknowledge it is only half of the property.
- 2/25/1952 Mattie N. Jackson borrowed $1475 from trustees J. George Gately and James J. Goreman Jr. at 5% interest.
- February 1959 the Bailey’s lost their property to foreclosure and via auction, it was returned to Evans, Taube and new partner Harry A. Badt.
- June 1959, as part of a larger package, Evans, Taube, Badt (and their wives) and Levin’s survivors sell their interest in 200 Q St NW to Sophia and George Basiliko.
- May 1970 Mattie N. Jackson sold her half to George Basiliko.
Basiliko did not wind up selling the house to RLA. Instead he sold it to the Bates Street Ventures Partnership in 1978. But then the Bates Street Ventures Partnership sold/transferred it back to Basiliko after the Board for the Condemnation of Insanitary Buildings condemned the building then uncondemned it. In 1984 Basiliko sold it to Florida Exclusive Properties…. this is not Florida, nor in the 1980s were any of these exclusive. There are a mess of mechanics liens after that so I will end it here.