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 215 Bates St NW:
- December 1950 (recorded Jan 18, 1951) Evans, Levin and Taube sold the whole of 215 Bates NW to Sina E. Davis and Ernest F. Whitfield.
- December 1950 (recorded Jan 18, 1951) Davis and Whitfield borrowed $5,050 from Colonial Investment Co. favorite trustees Abraham H. Levin and Robert G. Weightman.
- October 1955 Davis and Whitfield lost the home due to foreclosure. Evans, Levin and Taube regained ownership of the property via an auction.
- March 1959 new Colonial Investment Co. partner Harry A. Badt, Evans, Taube, the Nathan Levin survivors and their spouses, sold the house to Sophia and George Basiliko.
- July 1970 Sophia and George Basiliko, as part of a larger property package (doc #1970011877), sold 215 Bates to the DC Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA).
- August 1979 the DC RLA sold/transferred the property to the Bates Street Associates Inc.
This sort of follows the pattern. It differs in that the whole house was sold as opposed splitting it in halves, as most of these houses were two flat properties. There was the foreclosure, then the sale to the Basilikos, the sale to DC RLA and then the transfer to the Bates Street Associates.