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.
Let’s see what happens with 16 Bates St NW:
- December 1950 (recorded Jan 18, 1951) Evans, Levin and Taube sold the whole of 16 Bates NW to Wilhelmina and William U. Scott.
- December 1950 (recorded Jan 18, 1951) the Scotts borrowed $5,750 from Colonial Investment Co. favorite trustees Abraham H. Levin and Robert G. Weightman.
- August 1962 the Scotts were released from their mortgage owning their home free and clear.
- October 1975 received a loan for $4,250 from the DC Department of Housing and Community Development.
Well. This one was very different. The Scotts bought the whole house, paid it off and owned it for most of their lives. Wilhelmina died in 2008, but a few years before she passed there was a Power of Attorney signed over to her nephew. So it turned out well.
The Scotts were hard to pin down. I discovered Wilhelmina’s maiden name, Pitt. She and William must have married after 1940. In the 1940 census she was living with her mother and siblings, who were named in her obituary, in Cecil, MD working as a parlor maid. There were two or more William U. Scotts. I did find a valveman William “A” Scott with a wife named Wilhelmina in the 1933 DC city directory. However, there were several William Scotts throughout the world married to women named Wilhelmina.