Housing – Truxton Is In Shaw

Memory Lane: Sursum Corda and Church Housing

Because Destructo (my 8 year old son) is who he is, we were heading to the Kaiser Urgent Care Center near Union Station. They had a 2 hour wait as opposed to the 5 hour wait at the Largo UCC. This had us driving from Rhode Island and up 1st, past what was the Sursum Corda Apartments.

Taken May 16, 2007. First and M St NW. View of Sursum Corda Apts.

In my previous post about churches and housing, I mentioned Immaculate Conception Apartments, now 1330. In the 1970s it seems all the cool churches were doing low income housing. Sursum Corda, based on my quick glance of a June 25, 1972 Washington Post article was the product of St. Aloysius, its school Gonzaga High School, and other Catholic groups who like Immaculate, created an organization to create the housing.

I had to giggle when reading, “Mrs. Brown said crime has gone down markedly since the early days of the project.” When I arrived in the Shaw neighborhood, Sursum Corda was famously crime ridden.

But it was also painful reading the hope in 1972 that the apartment complex would be a new start for residents, providing a better life than what was offered in city public housing. Good intentions do not produce the results desired. Fast forward fifty years and what do you have? Apartment buildings completely divorced from the faith based communities that created them, struggling with crime. Or complexes that are no longer 100% low-income housing, but more market rate with a few subsidized units.

WSIC Foreclosure story- James C. Gordon of 131 Bates Street NW

See the original post WSIC-1950 Sell Off- 131 Bates Street NW to see the house history of the location. I noticed something when I looked at some of the people who were foreclosed upon with the WSIC houses. Some of them were old and they died and there was no point of keeping up with the mortgage payments for a property with limited value. Other times, people had other homes and let the WSIC go.

This is very short. James C. Gordon does not appear as a Black man in the 1950 census. So the genealogy route came up blank.

Neither is he in the DC Recorder of Deeds beyond the house on Bates Street.

But he does show up in the newspapers for driving poorly and hitting an electrical pole. According to the April 14, 1952 issue of the Washington Evening Star, he and his wife Sophia* were driving from Culpepper, VA and Mr. Gordon started dozing off. When he awoke, he saw a traffic light, hit the breaks and swerved into a pole. He was thrown from the car and a live wire landed very close to him. He was sent to Arlington Hospital and later booked for reckless driving.

Later in 1952 Florie’s name was taken off the property. I suspect the accident may have strained the marriage. The November deed, where Florie’s signature can be seen, also has Colonial Mortgage Corp officer Abraham Levin as the notary.

*That was the name given and the address was 131 Bates Street. So either she went by another name (more likely) or he got a new wife or Florie was a family member.

Memory Lane: 300 Block of R St NW and a tale to secure your property

Yellow_townhouses — 300 Block of R St NW, December 28, 2015

I’m just now noticing in the above photo that there is someone standing on a ledge in the center yellow townhouse in the row of the three yellow townhouses.

This reminds me of a story. I ‘think’ it involves one of the townhouses… I’m not sure anymore.

So this row was renovated and sat empty for a long while. I vaguely remember the owners wanted something complicated, which is why they sat for a while. And because they were sitting empty, ready for potential buyers who had no interest the utilities were still on. A White guy broke in and enjoyed heat and lights and (somehow) cable for a good long while. Somewhere around several months to a little less than a year. I mention the race because, I suspect his race made it easy to explain his presence there.

So, here’s the moral. Have a security system to keep out squatters.

First Time DC Government Uses Truxton Circle

Okay firsts are tricky. They are very hard to prove. So with that said, I am going to write that in this advertisement from 1989, this was the first time the District of Columbia government called Truxton Circle, Truxton Circle.

For a mere $80,000 62 Bates St NW was being sold by DHCD. For a paltry $250.00, they offered 22 Hanover St NW.

Advert for houses for sale in 1989 for houses sold by the District Government from $250 to $80,000

Is it the very first time the DC government called Truxton Circle by the name we know it as now? Possibly. This is just the first bit of evidence I located to prove the point.

Affordable Housing of the Past is Illegal

I was listening to an audiobook and was annoyed with one of the prescriptions that authors are forced to tack on to their books. Housing was a background issue. It would have made more sense if the prescription was unionizing, not touting zoning for more multifamily housing, a topic explored at the 11 hour.

What annoyed me was, after working on the history of this neighborhood, that a historical solution that worked was ignored. Boarding houses and taking in boarders. Many people in Truxton Circle, homeowners and renters, had boarders.

Men and women in boarding house room — 1943 DC Boarding House

However, this very low rung in the housing is almost illegal. Like mobile homes (another affordable housing product illegal in many municipalities), the laws on the books make such a thing impossible to run legally. There are illegal boarding houses in DC. We find out about them when someone dies in a fire.

We’d prefer someone to live in a tent in a park, then have a house with all sorts of people coming in and out, where people live for cheap. I’m not going to romanticize boarding houses either. Poorly run ones were a nuisance. But, they were a roof over a person’s head. Four solid walls (maybe thin walls) where they could call home.

Back when I was in elementary school and at an age where we made friends easily, I had a ‘friend’ who lived in a boarding house near the school. Her family, mother, father and maybe a sibling, all lived in a room in the back of this 2 story frame house that no longer exists. I remember the room being poorly lit & junky. This was a working class Black neighborhood, and if you couldn’t afford to rent a whole house or get into the public housing, well you were pretty bad off.

The author, like Jane Jacobs, assumed a type of housing would make it affordable. Jacobs believed older housing was affordable. I’m in my youngest house, built in 1940, cheap is the last word I’d use to describe it. And likewise, there are multi-unit houses, houses carved up into condos, that are out of the price range for most. Even if DC allowed people to live in converted Home Depot sheds on land they rented or owned, the prices will find a way to jack up.

Okay. Rant over.

Sometimes smaller is better

I’m going through my old drafts. Some I rewrite, such as this one. Some I delete. And some I rewrite, still think they’re crap and delete them. This was written October 8, 2008.

Sometimes.
I’ve just finished reading an article regarding the upsides of raising a family in a 1,200 sf house over that of a McMansion. The author writes:

Looking back on 18 years of living small, I see that our snug house has prevented us from easily avoiding one another by retreating into our own spaces. We’ve been able to eavesdrop on our kids as they played with friends and look over their shoulders as they did homework on the dining room table. It’s been good for our health too, forcing all of us, especially our sons, to spend more time out-of-doors. There simply isn’t room to get too rowdy inside, so often they have headed outside to a neighborhood park that’s conveniently located just across the street.I hope we’ve given our sons the message that wealth doesn’t come from our material possessions, but instead from the diversity of experiences we have and the richness of our community.

The author also mentions that with a smaller house she could pay off the mortgage quicker, heat it for less and have a better commute. I already have the great commute. It is my great luck to work for an agency whose DC metro branches are all along the Green Line. My current commute is a 30-45 minute walk, or 20 minutes by metro, and that is priceless. The house is small and there isn’t much to heat or cool, and I tend to be happy lounging in 1/6th of the space. And there is the possibility of actually paying off the mortgages in the next 15 years, but I owe that more to when I bought the house as opposed to the size of the house.

The article was in the conservative online magazine Culture 11 “Living Small”

That DC Redlining Map

People in academia tend to like to tell research adventure stories. The problem with archives and libraries and other places digitizing everything is taking the romance out of these tales. No need to get a grant, rent a crappy motel room during the middle of summer, nah. Tippy-tip tap, an email here, a subscription to a certain website and there’s your document. Of course, not everything has been digitized. And because of that, a person could still have a research adventure.

My research adventure takes place at the National Archives in College Park, MD. Those who know me are probably rolling their eyes, but bear with me. So my goal was to find the lost redlining map of Washington DC. I can call it lost, ’cause it was a b!tch to find. For one, the Mapping Inequality site showing off redlining maps doesn’t have Washington, DC. The DC Policy Center and Mapping Segregation had a map on their sites that approximated or was very similar to a DC version of the redlining map.

The DC Policy Center just said it came from the National Archives. Ok. NARA has a bunch of stuff and it’s catalog can be a PITA when you’re trying to actually find something. Clicking source just brought a person to the Mapping Segregation site. Digging into the resources there would send you back to the DC Policy Center and round and round I went. I eventually found the citation at the end of https://mappingsegregationdc.org/download/residential-sub-areas-for-website-rev.pdf. It narrowed it down to the record group (RG) and the box, but not the entry. More poking around and it was entry A1-6.

I got the box. I was in the research room scanning area. I was at a desk next to a dear friend who is a professional researcher showing me the ropes and I managed to scrounge up an SD card for the camera. But the monitor was acting funny. And the SD card was ‘corrupt’. I managed to fit just 2 images on the card before giving up. And below was what I was able to capture.

Source: Map 11. Housing Market Analysis Washington DC. Records Relating to Housing Market Analyses, 1940–1942. National Archives, College Park, MD RG 31, entry A1 6, (NAID 122213881)

A description of the letter based residential sub-areas.

Edited 11/6/2025 to update URL

Perpetual Building Association Ads

Just for fun I looked up the Perpetual Building Association on Youtube. Perpetual was a lender for several Truxton Circle African American home owners.

Here are three radio jingles from the early 1970s.

Television ad?

WSIC- Square 552- Odd side of 200 blk Bates- A visual

This concludes the visual look at the Washington Sanitary Improvement Company (WSIC), properties on Square 552. According to the 1933-1934 General Assessment WSIC owned lots 33-35, 49-94, 98-100, 104-150, 811, and 816-820. The 200 even block of Bates St NW were lots 80-94.

Whereas there were fewer dual entrance properties on the even side of the 200 block of Bates, the odd side had preserved more of them into the early 2000s.

Although it no longer had a second entrance, you can see evidence that there was a door under the window of 225 Bates Street NW.

A ‘positive’ of neighborhood disinvestment is that sometimes it works as a preservative. If structures manage not to get torn down, there is little incentive to modernize or gussy up the exterior. When gentrification hits, as it has, there is an incentive to add a third story or change the whole structure. I am thankful for the 2004 photos. It was the start of the 2nd wave of Shaw gentrification, but well before the million dollar houses started showing up. We can still see what the WSIC built and what managed to survive after 100 years.

I’m going to take a little break from WSIC. Just a little.

Rando Alley In Shaw- Glick Alley

This is from 1916 and shows Glick Alley which is in Shaw. It was on Square 442, which is between 6th and 7th, R & S Streets and Rhode Island Avenue NW.

Glick Alley, as far as I can tell, no longer exists.No inside plumbing for these Glick Alley homes. As I remember it, the lack of plumbing made something a slum dwelling.