Day: February 7, 2025

WSIC-1950 Sell Off- 38 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. In 1956 Nathan Levin died and Colonial Inv. Co. vice president Harry A. Badt took his place in the foreclosure paperwork. 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 38 Bates St NW:

  • December 1950 (recorded Jan 18, 1951) Evans, Levin and Taube sold one-half of 38 Bates St NW to Jessie E. and Matt J. Broadie.
  • December 1950 (recorded Jan 18, 1951) the Broadies borrowed $1,900 from Colonial Investment Co. favorite trustees Abraham H. Levin and Robert G. Weightman.
  • February 1951 Evans, Levin, and Taube sold the other half of 38 Bates St NW to Henry Cain Jr.
  • Feb 1951 Cain Jr. borrowed $1,900 from trustees Abraham H. Levin and Robert G. Weightman.
  • June 1952 Cain sold his half to Albert Ethelbert Este and Ernestine Mabel Este.
  • September 1961 the Broadies were released from their mortgage.
  • Insert MYSTERIOUS GAP
  • July 1978 there is a contract (doc 7800024140) between the DC Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA) and the Bates Street Associates, Inc. (BSA) There is no corresponding deed located, but the property was transferred to BSA.
  • April 1991 ROXBOROUGH & TILLERSON, CHARTERED, represented by George E. Tillerson III, replaced A. Levin and R. Weightman as the trustees on Cain’s mortgage. And the subsequent document released Cain from his mortgage.

I have no idea what happened after 1961. The Broadies disappear. Cain (also listed as Bain) disappears. The Estes are no where to be found. As far as I can tell there were no foreclosures. But somehow this winds up in the hands of DC RLA and BSA.

Weird.