Category: Uncategorized

History research

I’m back to the on again off again neighborhood research. In the past week I have done 2 blocks for 1880 discovering some odd little quirks about the 1400 block of 1st St & North Capitol, Unit blocks of 0 & P Street. Now I won’t have a fuller picture until I do the whole of Truxton Circle (which may be a while) but I found some lines of segregation on the blocks.
The 1400 block (even numbers)of North Capitol was the German-American street.
The 1400 block of 1st Street (odd) was the African American street.
The Unit block of O (odd) was German and Irish on the lower numbered end and Mullatoo (Black) with a few unskilled Irish on the other end.
The Unit block of P (even) from 10 to 64 P Street was mostly German with a few Irish and native whites. Then from 66 to 78 the families are African American.
I’ll be doing one more block this week then I think I’ll take another long extended break again.

What can you get for $400-$600K, pt.3

Last installment of the series of houses in the Shaw & LeDroit Park area.
I looked at 2 Urban Land Company properties. One I had seen before during the ULC tour where we all wound up at the Tobacco Factory (neither was a tobacco warehouse, nor was it ever a factory), was 444 S Street, NW.
Price: $499,500
Bedrooms: 3
Bathrooms: 2.5
Fireplace: 1
Basement: Yes
Parking: Street
The property is two units. You have your upstairs unit, where I gather the homeowner would live, and then the rental unit below. The upstairs is a teeny bit cramped but the normal sort of cramped for old houses like these. Unlike the Rhode Island house, this house looks like furniture is supposed to go into at some point and you can figure out how to get it in the house. The master bedroom has an alcove in it that almost says “put cathode ray tube TV HERE!” Where the bed goes and where the TV goes is very obvious. The kitchen is kind of small but if it weren’t stuffed in the back it would invade into the living space. If any future owner wanted to he/she could knock out the current counter and push it forward to make the kitchen bigger. I really liked the windows of the front upstairs bedroom. They were big enough and low enough to plop my butt down and peer through the windows at the Post Office. S Street is active, but not as active as New Jersey or Rhode Island, so there is enough street traffic to make for decent people watching from these windows.
Downstairs is the rental unit. The rental unit is a big kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom. No living room. My question was where do you put a couch? Bedroom? The unit about the size of some efficiencies I’ve seen, but the lack of a space that seems to say “living room” bugged me. Oh, well. We’ll leave that problem for future renters.
1811 4th Street, NW was the other property.
Price: $479,900
Bedrooms: 3
Bathrooms: 1.5
Fireplace: 1
Basement: yes
Parking: Off Street
Unlike the other houses, this one has a lived in look as the current occupant apparently is still there. If I heard the agent right, they are trying to sell the house so the owner can move into another Urban Land property. This is a slight fixer upper, as it is obvious work was started in knocking out some walls but stopped. There are a few unfinished things. But maybe that is what is keeping the price lower than the others, that and you can hardly see anything for the owner’s stuff.
It has 3 bedrooms. The 2nd and 3rd are connected and the third can be entered via the kitchen stairs. Otherwise, to get to the 3rd bedroom, one has to go through the 2nd. The basement looks finished and can be used as an office or storage. The house’s main charming bits are the entrance and the rear (see above). Walking up to the house I fell in love, love which quickly evaporated after I got into the unfinished foyer. The rear is quite pleasant and seems like a great place for container gardening.

Oh hell no!

Most of the time stuff happing down at the mall, down in the Federal part of the city has little impact on Shaw. But the ceremonies to celebrate the Great Darth Lord’s continuing rule over the Empire on the 20th will make the roads around the Convention Center close. 11th Street between NY Ave and N, N Street to 6th St, and 6th to Mass Ave closed from Wednesday to Thursday. Will Darth Dubya be in Shaw? Why oh great Darth Lord why?

What can you buy for $400-$600K around here, pt2

448 R Street, NW

Price: $449,000

Bedrooms: 3

Bathrooms: 1.5

Fireplace: 1

Parking: Off Street

Basement: none

I can attest that you can walk from the metro from this house, because if I squint my eyes I can sorta see the Shaw Howard University metro stop down 3 blocks. So there is some truth in advertising.

I’ve seen the on again off again work done on the house and I was slightly disappointed in the results of all that busy work. The floors were un-uniform, but that was due to the first floor being opened up. Nothing a bunch of oriental rugs couldn’t cure. This is one of those cute “character” things about the house. One cool character thing is the wood burning fireplace, where one agent was warming herself. Yeah, oriental rugs, wood burning fireplace, and a coupla bottles of wine, good times.

The kitchen is small and acceptable. There really isn’t a lot of counterspace, but there is the obligatory silver fridge, sleek looking stove, and dishwasher. But after having done my own tiny kitchen and squeezing more space out of it, I see what could have been. But what could have been may have added something to the price.

The bedrooms are small. The first one I saw was one of those bedrooms that would work out better as an office, or a baby’s room or a guest room where you don’t want the guests to stick around. You could fit a twin bed in it, but really it is very small. The second bedroom on one end of the house was bigger, but not big. As you can see in the photos there is some exposed brick. Actually there is a lot of exposed brick and it looks wonderful. As I remember on the first floor there was some shiny coating on the brick. Anyway, one of those cool character things.

Back to the bedrooms….

The master bedroom was as wide as the house with lots of light rushing in.

In all the bedrooms the closets small. As in the width of the door plus about 1/2 a foot. Not good if you have someone with a lot of clothes, shoes, ya know closet stuff. But them again, maybe that’s what the small bedroom might be for.

Okay, is the house worth $450K? Well considering what the prices are, yeah, why not. As I said, oriental rugs, fire in the fireplace and a whole lotta wine and you can call it home.

Bates St Meeting 1/10/05

Please excuse my notes as my PDA decided to go on a tizzy and so I stopped taking notes after the umpteenth reboot. Also I don’t have the agenda around so not everyone is being named properly.

First, female representative from Councilman Orange’s office spoke. Orange is pro-baseball. Apparently, baseball will be great for the city, according to Orange. Also Orange is behind making Emancipation Day a holiday. Orange is for youth employment. Orange is on powerful committees. All hail the Orange!

Our dear ever so off topic neighbor (G-d bless him) Vance suggested bringing respect back to the penny to the female representative. Jim Berry, instructed our dear neighbor to write his concerns on a citizen form and he’ll look at it. The representative then departed.

Next was Sgt. Mitchell from the 5th District. There were two shooting incidents. The night of the meeting, some cars were shot up and damaged and Sgt. Mitchell did not have any information for the group on that. The other shooting incident occurred 1/6/05 where a black female sitting in a vehicle was shot several times. The police need witnesses and if you know something that will help explain why she was in the area or anything about the shooting please call (202)727-9099.

There were other things mentioned and emotionally expressed related to the shootings.

Jim and others questioned Sgt. Mitchell about the police van that just sits in the neighborhood. What is it supposed to do again? According to neighbors, nothin’. According to Sgt. Mitchell it is supposed to act as a ministation. Oh, ok.

Somewhere in all this was mentioned writing letters to judges who, in this city, are easy on crime. The US Attorney’s office has court reports listed for the 5th District so you can write the Judge before sentencing, I guess.

Lastly, on cops, if you see a police person asleep in his/her squad car, call 202-727-4495.

This is the point when my PDA died.

There was something about North Capitol Main Streets. If there was more to the meeting I don’t remember.

Anyway Jim wanted a social period in the meeting, and I wound up chatting with my neighbors from down the street.

What can you buy for $400-$600K around here, pt1

The neighborhood hasn’t completely gentrified. I’ll know that we have finished gentrifying when I can get Pizza Hut and at 1 Sushi restaurant to deliver to my house. So with that in mind I ask, what can you buy for nearly 1/2 a million around here?

435 Rhode Island Avenue.

Price: $640,000

Bedrooms: 3

Bathrooms: 3

Fireplace: 1

Basement: none

Parking: Off-Street

Some of y’all know I already hated this house without even walking into it. Well there was an open house. I walked in. I still hate it. Someone else at the open wondered why would you build this when you were able to start from scratch?

The inside was odd. Very odd. First floor was fine, with a fire place and this little warm room off to the side with a low light fixture. Was that supposed to be a dining room? There looked like there was barely enough room for a table.



The master bedroom had two floors to it. There was the floor that lead out to the deck over the carport. The there was this other level that I couldn’t figure out what it was for or what it did (see above photo). According to the Realtor’s description it is a “skylit sitting room”. And on that upper level there was this storage space, that was not tall enough to be a closet. It was just odd.

The house is advertised as being custom built. What does this mean? Well it is not like other houses, other houses might make sense. It just didn’t seem clear who the house was built for. Some corners seemed tight. I overheard someone ask, how on ear are you supposed to get furniture up the stairs and where would one sit the bed? Imagining where furniture would go without blocking a door or a closet was difficult.



The upper deck we noticed some shoddy workmanship, fixed with paint and caulk. My companions also noticed that the floodlights seemed to be at an incorrect height.

It was a rabbit warren of rooms upstairs. Not everything was on the same level. Now I mentioned the master bedroom having two levels. Well even from the hallway one had to go up just a few more stairs to get to the master bedroom.

When it is an older house it is understandable when things are odd. You had to take what fate and chance gave to you and work with it. With a newer home you don’t have that excuse. Yes, the lot was oddly shaped. But even so, what went on with the upper floors just didn’t make any sense to me.. When the house was being built, I and my neighbor would pass it and I mentioned that I thought it was horrid. My neighbor figured someone was building it for himself. Yes, the house would make sense if someone built it to suite their own little quirks. But to sell? Something must have happened because the only thing I can say is that is it all very odd.

Well we also popped by a few other houses, but I don’t want to make this post too long.

The State of the In Shaw Blog

Well I’ve been reflecting.

Nora Bombay started me blogging back in March of 2003. However In Shaw existed in 2001 before the blogging. Then I discovered that the blogging tools helped keep the announcement page current. If you look at some of my earlier posts, it is a mix of commentary and announcements. Then I separated the two. I figured I should be opinionated somewhere else.

Thank you to all of you who have read this blog and enjoyed it. I really intended the audience to be about 5 people. ‘Cause really, who wants to hear me bitch about crack heads and what’s going on in the alley? Yet in time I discovered (and the comments part brings it home) there are more than 5 people reading this blog. Through In Shaw I have met other bloggers, like Nathan, Jimbo, John and other neighbors and that’s been neat.

I am a bit conflicted about the extra eyeballs the blog gets. I do like meeting neighbors and finding common ground. But I have been a little bit more self-conscious. I have toned down a bit as one never knows who is reading, and changed names to protect the innocent and non-crack smoking. And recently, around mid 2004 I started blogging almost every day. Will I keep up my current pace of blogging in 2005? I don’t know. Will I continue to complain about crackheads? Well if they stay in the neighborhood, yes. And, given my mood swings, prepare for a string of compost & garden related posts as well. Don’t care for the compost stories? Too bad.

In 2005 I hope to write more about small houses, like mine, businesses in Truxton Circle, the history in Truxton Circle (related to my work), gardening and maybe more open houses so I can see what the heck you get for your $300-$500K. I have accepted the skyrocketing housing prices, so fewer “real estate agents on crack” posts.

Lastly, since I have been blogging a new site has come up recently and will fill your need for news on this side of Shaw, TruxtonCirlce.Org. Started by neighbors Scott & Matt, it looks like what I wanted In Shaw to be initially. It is a neighborhood site about the Bates Street area, and hopefully with a fair number of neighbors chipping in with a story here and there it will serve the needs of Truxton Circle (eastern Shaw) residents.

The alley & a debate

Last week I raked up some of the fall leaves that settled on my end of the alley. I am wondering if alley cleaning man has forsaken my end of the alley because the opposite end is noticably cleaner. Fine, not like he was getting paid. Anyway, as I raked away my neighbors’ de facto compost heaps I noticed that the concrete from the house under rehabilitation’s patio settled in a little heap in the middle of our semi-brand new alley. This refuse concrete created a little dam hindering water flow.

When they first laid down the concrete and had the refuse and rocks in the alley I took a shovel and threw the fresh concrete and rocks back on to their side and out of the alley. I was angry because of the mess they left and because of allowing the potential for a small lake to settle behind my yard.

So I finding another pile of rocks and concrete, but now too late to remove it, I became angry again. Here we finally get the alley repaired and then this. Can’t. Have. Nothin good. N** keep screwing stuff up. [insert Chris Rock’s routine “Who you calling Racist?“]

So I am debating. My neighbor noticed that the house the leave -your-crap – in -the -alley contractors are working on doesn’t have permits displayed. I wonder, when and if I should call them in. The reason why I haven’t reported them already is because of pure laziness and forgetfulness with a pinch of wanting to wait till they have doors installed.

So when should I report them to DCRA?

Oh Christmas Tree, o Christmas tree

…why are you still here after trash pick up?

Well hopefully today DPW, the folks who brought you the snazzy calendars, will pick up the evergreens on the sidewalk.

This is from the DC.GOV site:

Holiday Tree Collection – January 3-7, 2005

Residents who receive DC trash collection service are encouraged to put holiday trees—without ornaments—in curbside tree boxes by January 2, 2005. Trees will be picked up during a special one-week collection from January 3–7. Residents who wish to keep their trees longer should put them out at their normal point of trash collection (curbside or alley) after January 7. DPW trucks will then collect the trees with the regular trash, as space in trucks permit, over the following weeks.

If not, then I can take my time clipping pine needles for my compost bin to up the acid in it.