WSIC-1950 Sell Off- 206 Bates Street NW

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.photo of property

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 were the odd lucky ones who managed to avoid that fate.

Let’s see what happens with 206 Bates St NW:

  • January 1951 Evans, Levin and Taube sold the whole of 206 Bates Street NW to Sylvester Butler and Bettie H. Garner.
  • January 1951 Butler and Garner borrowed $5,050 from Colonial Investment Co. favorite trustees Abraham H. Levin and Robert G. Weightman.
  • August 1952 Butler and Garner transferred the property to Edith E. Matthews, who transferred half of the property to Bettie Garner and the other half to Sylvester Butler.
  • August 1953 Miss Garner borrowed $2,320.72 from Levin and Weightman.
  • August 1953 Mr. Butler borrowed $2,320.72 from Levin and Weightman.
  • February 1953 Butler and Garner were released from their 1951 mortgage.
  • August 1953, Butler lost his half of the house to foreclosure. Through an auction the property returned to Evans, Levin and Taube.
  • June 1959, new partner Harry A. Badt, Nathan Levin’s survivors, Evans, Taube and their spouses sold the foreclosed half to Sophia and George Basiliko.
  • February 1963, Bettie H. Garner was released from her mortgage.
  • March 1972 the Basilikos sell the property to the DC Redevelopment Land Agency.

I’m stopping here because the documents onward are confusing. I cannot find out what happened to Ms. Garner and her half, it just gets lost. But as part of the usual story, we have a foreclosure, a sale to the Basilikos and the DC Redevelopment Agency.