Day: December 23, 2024

WSIC-1950 Sell Off- 62 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.

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.photo of property

Let’s see what happens with 62 Bates St NW:

  • December 1950 (recorded Jan 18, 1951) Evans, Levin and Taube sold one-half of 62 Bates NW to Elease V. and William A. Canty.
  • December 1950 (recorded Jan 18, 1951) the Cantys borrowed $3,025 from Colonial Investment Co. favorite trustees Abraham H. Levin and Robert G. Weightman.
  • December 1950 (recorded Jan 18, 1951) Evans, Levin, and Taube sold the other half of 62 Bates St NW to Malinda and Thye W. Cook.
  • Dec 1950 Cooks borrowed $3,025 from trustees Abraham H. Levin and Robert G. Weightman.
  • December 1952 the Cantys sold their half to Kathleen M. Fuller.
  • September 1954 the Cantys, and Ms. Fuller, lost their home to foreclosure and through an auction Evans, Levin and Taube regained ownership.
  • September 1954 the Cooks sold the property back to Colonial Investment Co.’s partners Evans, Levin and Taube.
  • March 1959 the Cooks were released from their mortgage.
  • March 1959 the Colonial Investment Co partners and the Levin survivors, in a larger property package, sold their interest in the property to Sophia and George Basiliko.

    62 Bates St 1968
  • 1970, no document located but list of docs hint that Basiliko sold the property to the DC Redevelopment Agency.
  • June 1980 DC RLA entered into a contract (doc # 8000020221) with BSA (Bates Street Associates) and transferred a large number of properties to the venture (doc # 8000020294, signatories on p.5) Bates Street Associates (BSA).

So we have a house fitting the pattern, a foreclosure, sale to George Basiliko, who then sold it to DC RLA who then sold/transferred it to BSA.