Buildings – Page 14 – Truxton Is In Shaw

Church Survey 1957: Corinthian Baptist Church now Ebenezer Baptist

Okay, let’s get back to the boring church surveys….well they can be exciting when you take them in as a whole looking at the changes of the neighborhood. They also chip away at an idea that some churches have been here since the dawn of time. Just as there is this myth that certain people have been in the neighborhood since a vague forever. People move around. We are aware of it, but sometimes we don’t apply this knowledge. Churches, they also move around, let’s take the church at 44 Q Street NW in Truxton Circle.

According to the survey, this was previously the chapel for St. Agnes, a Roman Catholic church I believe. I think there was a graveyard where Eckington is, that was associated with St. Agnes. At some point in time, maybe 1949, the Catholics moved on and the Baptists moved in.

Corinthian Baptist Church is a church constantly on the move. According to the survey they were founded in 1919 at 4th and New York Ave. From 1920-23 they moved south to 4th and K. Then in 1923 they moved north to 4th and Q, possibly where the Fourth Street Seventh Day Adventists sit, but I’d have to research that further. Then in 1932, they moved a block over to where Mt. Sinai sits at 1615 3rd St NW. I gather they moved to 44 Q St NW in 1949. When the survey was done, they were already thinking about moving to 5th and I St NW, and they did. I found a Facebook page with some great 80s photos of church members at the 502 I Street NW location in Chinatown. Currently, the Chinese Community Church is in that location. As of April 14, 2019, Corinthian Baptist Church (the same one I think, not 100% sure) is in Lanham, MD. I don’t know when Ebenezer Baptist replaced the itchy-footed Corinthian Baptists, but that is the church that currently sits on that spot.

For the time Corinthian Baptist was in Truxton Circle, it drew a number of congregants from the community. They estimated about 33.5% of their members lived in the Northwest Urban Renewal Area (parts later to become the Shaw School Urban Renewal Area), and 66% lived in other parts of the city. I will dare to say this was a middle class, white collar African-American church, as they claimed a large percentage (no numbers given) were government workers. Also, 4-5% of the roughly 800 members were professionals.

CS 1 Corinthian Batpist Church by on Scribd

Church Survey 1957: Luther Place Lutheran Church

Back in the aughts, I was looking for an Episcopal Church (St. A &A) but I had the address all wrong. I knew it was somewhere near or along Massachusetts Avenue but I was lost. I was running out of time, and so I saw Luther Place and thought ‘Episcopal/ Lutheran…. close enough’, and joined them for service.

Looking at the 1957 Church Survey for Luther Place, the congregational makeup is fairly similar to the small crowd of people I encountered when I wandered in sometime between 2000-08, mostly white. It was a very small group and it was so long ago. The 1957 crowd mostly (67%) lived in other parts of the city and good quarter living in the ‘burbs. I’m sensing a trend of 1957 Shaw churches being commuter churches.

CS 31 Luther Place Memorial by on Scribd

UPDATE: Added Luther Place to the title.

Church Survey 1957: St. Luke’s Episcopal Church

I went to St. Luke’s once or twice when I was church shopping. Although it doesn’t say so on the 1957 Church Survey for the Northwest Urban Renewal area, the ethnic makeup was primarily African American. Maybe it was a little more mixed in 1957, but circa 2001-2002, for the visit(s) I made, it was an African American congregation.

CS-62-St Luke Protestant Ep… by on Scribd

Regarding the number of parishioners who lived in the urban renewal area, the survey says that a number used to live in the area but in a period of 10-15 years many began moving out. Actually, they don’t give any numbers. How many people lived in the urban renewal area….. “a few.” How many in the rest of DC? A “large majority.” How many out in the burbs? Well, there we get something numerical, “few (8 families).” They had parking for 44 cars, so let’s call it a commuter church.

Let’s also call it a retiree church. Though professionals (17%) and white collar workers (29%) had significant numbers, I couldn’t help but notice the 22% of the congregants being retirees. So far it doesn’t look like the other churches I’ve featured had so many retirees.

Church Survey 1957: Mt. Sinai Baptist Church

So back in 1957 Mt. Sinai was a “storefront” church, so its listing was in the rear of the survey. Now it isn’t a storefront, especially when one thinks of a commercial property. Now it, or the newest part, looks obviously like a church. A church that believes in stairs. I have no idea when the older section was built, which also has a classic church look. Maybe the survey was mistaken.

Mt Sinai Baptist by on Scribd

So Mt. Sinai Baptist at 1615 3rd Street NW was a commuter church. It still is a commuter church. Almost all of the congregants, 96% to be exact, lived outside of the Northwest Urban Renewal Area. Despite being a commuter church, it has been an asset to the Truxton Circle community. It is the location where the Bates Area Civic Association meets as well as the location of other community meetings. The church has been very open to working with community members.

The congregation’s workforce make-up was a mix, 40% white collar and 55% unskilled manual.

I should write more, but I’m getting sleepy, so I’m going to bed.

1957 Church Survey: Mt. Gilead Baptist Church

Okay, let’s do a Shaw Church for this series of churches in the 1957 Church Survey. A survey that has never been done since, because a later “survey” done in the 1970s or 80s was very uninformative compared to this one. My last church was Metropolitan AME, and before that Eckington Presbyterian, so I figured I bring the posts back to the part of the Northwest Urban Renewal Area that later became Shaw.

Mt. Gilead still stands at 1625 13th St NW. According to their history website, their church building was bought at auction from Trinity Baptist Church in 1932. The church (people) itself was a mission group of about 75 people who started this church. As far as I can tell from their site, it is still an African American church.

CS 7 Mt Gilead Baptist by Mm Inshaw on Scribd

As you can probably see from the document, there isn’t much of a description there. It has publically available information about the building, and isn’t as informative as the previous excerpts.

1957 Church Survey: Metropolitan AME

Okay, not in Shaw, and I was thinking of another Metropolitan church, probably Baptist that used to be on R Street. Well since it’s in the 1957 Church Survey, may as well get this posting over with. I’m using the DC government’s PropertyQuest site to located existing churches and the 2004 photographs I don’t want to take.

Okay so Metropolitan AME is in the Downtown area is sandwiched, as you can see from the photo, between two office buildings. In 1957 the lot value was $74,448, now it’s $17,137,180.

CS 53 Metropolitan AME by on Scribd

Metropolitan in 1957 was a fairly large African American church with about 1200 members, of which only 450 showed up on any given Sunday. A huge chunk of the membership were professionals, white collar workers, and skilled labor. In the survey, they didn’t give any numbers for the geographic disbursement of their membership, but said a number lived in the Northwest Urban Renewal Area.

1957 Church Survey: Eckington Presbyterian

Yeah, this one isn’t in Shaw but it is Truxton Circle adjacent.

Old Truxton Traffic Circle — Image of the old Truxton Traffic Circle. Undated.

Eckington Presbyterian was an all white church that disbanded in the mid 1960s rather than integrate. It’s listed address of North Capitol and Florida Avenues don’t really help with figuring out where exactly the church sat. Thankfully the survey says it sat on Square 3516 on lots 116, 117 & 800. Unfortunately, those lots seem to no longer exist, so I’m going to say it is where the NY Pizza place stands. That’s my best guess.

In the survey it does not mention the racial make up but from other sources, it was a white church. It was also mainly white collar families who lived elsewhere in DC. Only 4% of the 290 members lived in the urban renewal area.

CS 58 Eckington Presbyterian by on Scribd

1957 Church Survey: Lincoln Memorial Congregational Temple

So I’m going to go into the well that is the October 1957 Northwest Urban Renewal Area Church Survey to look at churches that may or may not still exist in Shaw.

Lincoln Memorial Congregational is one of those churches that fit into the may and may not exist limbo because the church is no longer functioning and held its last service in 2018. In the September 30, 2018 Washington Post article regarding the church’s shuttering, about a dozen parishioners would show up on any given Sunday. The stated reason for the reduced numbers was the demographic changes in the neighborhood and problems with parking. When you look at what was going on with the church in 1957, neighborhood demographics didn’t matter as much as the parking.

CS-39-Lincoln Memorial Cong… by on Scribd

The Northwest Urban Renewal Area was bigger than the boundaries of Shaw, and encompassed most of Shaw, and only a quarter of the 725 members lived in the urban renewal area. According to the 1957 survey, a majority lived in other parts of DC. A notation says those congregants outside of the urban renewal area lived in upper Northwest, Kenilworth and Brookland. Half of the working parishioners were white collar workers, I’ll guess members of the Black middle class who probably had cars and drove/ car-pooled to church. Those other parts of DC are too far to walk to church in one’s Sunday best.

Voting with your feet or #SaveShawMS

DC schools aren’t of much interest to folks without kids. They are of interest to people who like their neighbors who have kids. Because if the neighborhood schools suck and if they don’t get into the charter they want, then there is a strong possibility that family is moving. I have seen it with my own eyes.

Back in the 00s, as soon as a couple found out they were pregnant a moving van followed. There were a few who stuck around, a hardy bunch who sent their children to charter schools, but there were many others who left. I can think of a few couples who left before their kid was born, those who left before their kid formed complex sentences, and those whose luck ran out (or figured it would) when the 2nd or 3rd kid didn’t get into their sibling’s charter. These families voted with their feet.

Last night I attended one of many meetings that has occurred and will occur about middle school options for Shaw families. The “elephant in the room” as one parent described it was the currently empty Shaw Junior High School at 925 Rhode Island Ave NW. The meeting organizers focused on the Cardozo Feeder Pattern, see elementary schools in Shaw (Seaton, Garrison, Cleveland, etc) feed into Cardozo Middle School which is the same site as Cardozo High School. The percentage of kids who actually move on to Cardozo from Shaw elementary schools is crazy low. Like 12% low when the city average is 40-some odd percent. Parents are obviously voting with their feet and saying ‘Hell no’ to Cardozo.

At one point in the meeting we broke out into discussion groups. Upon hearing this the Help rolled his eyes and was glad he stayed home. One of the questions for the group was how could parents commit to placing their kids to the Cardozo feeder program. Short answer- yeah that’s not happening. We came up with improving programing, separating the middle school population from the high school population and making the high school better. However earlier in the meeting a woman mentioned that they’ve been talking with the Cardozo principal for 6 years about programing, and she asked can we just say the Cardozo solution is a failure?

My impression of the meeting was that it was local government theatre. These meetings allow the Mayor, the decider, to check off a box to say she let the community be heard. My spidey sense tells me she’s just going to ignore neighborhood parents’ wishes. Parents’ choices will be playing the DC school lottery for a better DCPS school or a charter or voting with their feet out to the ‘burbs.

Links-
#SaveShawMS Twitter- https://twitter.com/saveshawms
Shaw Middle Site is Best for Shaw Elementary Schools-http://21csfweb.org/blog/?p=312
Seaton Elementary School- https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/99

Cardozo Education Campus- https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/20

Affordable Chapman Stables?

Screen Capture of http://opendata.dc.gov/ data set of Affordable Housing

I started searching because the Open Data DC.gov site has a map so you can find affordable housing projects in the District. So I went to the side and drilled down to Truxton Circle.

So I saw Chapman Stables was in there and there are supposed to be 11 affordable unit of the 100 plus units. Six units are at 31%-50% AMI and 5 units at 61%-80% AMI.

But then I wondered. Wait. Condos have condo fees. These fees can start off reasonable and then if something happens creep or jump up. Then I wondered what do these affordable units look like? Are they segregated from the other units, like some apartment buildings?

So I went a looking at the DC property sales database to look at what sold below the $300K advertized basement price. This is public information, but I’m not going to use names or unit numbers. I found 5 units, they are not all on the same level, and they are not all studios. The first was sold on October 9th for $237,400 is a corner two bedroom unit. I noticed several of these affordable units share a wall with some common space things, like stairwells. Three units were sold for $114,600 in 2018. Two of those are one bedrooms and one is a studio. The one bedrooms share a wall with a common space thing and the studio is well, a studio. And lastly a one bedroom unit sold for $214,300.00 on October 16, 2018, and it only shares walls with other units.

The monthly condo fee for a one bedroom is $362. The fee for a typical studio is less than $300, and for a two bedroom in the $600 range. Remember kids, the condo fee is in addition to the mortgage and real estate taxes. I don’t know if the buyers of the affordable units get to pay a reduced fee or must pay the same rate as the market rate buyers, because everyone must contribute to the maintenance, trash, and all that other good stuff.

Also, let’s look at the categories of 31% to 50% AMI and 61% to 80% AMI. This is more about the buyer of the unit than the unit. Six units are for 31-50% AMI. According to the Department of Housing and Community Development’s chart that’s an income ceiling of $41,000 for a single person and $46,900 for a household of two. On the off chance the two bedroom was available for this category, a household of four’s limit is $58,600. There is nothing for the 51-60% AMI group. Five units were set aside for the 61-80% AMI group and the ceilings are $65,650, $75,000, $84,400 and $93,750 for households of one, two, three and four persons.

There is another condo in Truxton that is not yet completed, which has just 2 affordable units for 61-80% AMI, and that is Compass’ Five Points Flats. I have no clue as to what the condo fees for this thing will be.

It is easy for me to imagine single teachers, non-profit workers, civil servants, or savvy retirees, being able to fit into these income categories AND keep up with the HOA/condo fees. What I cannot see is how people who are in those AMI groups find out the availability and price of these units. As I see with Chapman Stables, they did manage to find those units.