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 were the odd lucky ones who managed to avoid that fate.
Let’s see what happens with 214 Q St NW:
- December 1950 (recorded Jan 18, 1951) Evans, Levin and Taube sold the whole of 214 Q NW to Ms Sarah Cathey.
- December 1950 (recorded Jan 18, 1951) Cathey borrowed $6,250 from Colonial Investment Co. favorite trustees Abraham H. Levin and Robert G. Weightman.
- July 1955, the widowed Mrs. Cathey borrowed $4,500 at 6% APR from trustees Spencer E. Fitzgerald and Frank Paroni.
- August 1962 Cathey was released from her Levin & Weightman loan.
- January 1968 Elizabeth H. Pinkney, Cathey’s daughter and sole heir, borrowed $2,595 from trustees HF Brown III and Peter M. Lampris to pay R & W Construction Co.
- January 1972 document #1972001370, we’re informed that Sarah Cathey died July 28, 1957 and Elizabeth Pinkney became Mrs. Elizabeth Hughes. Mrs. Hughes and her husband Joseph Hughes sold the home to the DC Redevelopment Land Agency for $11,400.
I’ll stop there with DC RLA. This was a good one. A widow was able to purchase a whole house, not half a house like other WSIC homes. There was no foreclosure, especially after obtaining a loan outside of the Colonial Investment bubble.
I was able to find a little something about Ms. Cathey looking at Ancestry. In the 1954 DC city directory she was a maid living at 214 Q St NW, proving she was a homeowner. In the 1940 census she was renting a unit at 1610 1st St NW living with her daughter, then Elizabeth Hall, and three grandchildren. She was a Black widow from South Carolina, working as a maid for an office building. Elizabeth was also listed as a Black widow and was not employed. For the 1930 census the family lived at 34 E St NW. It was just Ms. Cathey, working as a domestic, her married daughter and her newborn grandson.
Via the 1930 census I was able to find her in the 1950 census, which was interesting. The family lived at 60 Q St NW Apt #2. Cathey was still working as a maid at 60 years old, but for an insurance company. Her 39 year old daughter had a job as a telephone operator for an apartment building. Her 22 year old grandson, William F., worked as a file clerk for the IRS. Her two other grandchildren were school aged. Also in the house hold was William’s wife who worked as a typist for the Navy Dept and Cathey’s 56 year old widowed brother Henry Thompson, who did not have a job.