The info that I thought was Census stuff, isn’t Census stuff, it is actually Commissioners of the District of Columbia stuff. Once upon a time DC had a board of Commissioners and off the top of my head I think they were appointed by Congress. Anyway those Commissioners put out some lovely annual reports which have a good deal of info. Sadly, that info seems to be on scratched microfilm in the GovDocs section of my place’s library. The photocoping fees for it is a strong disincentive for me to make copies and I should shop around. I hear the Library of Congress and the University of Maryland are more affordable.
So why would you, with your mild interest in the past have an interest in some old annual reports? Well besides knowing they counted only 11 Chinese women in all of the District in 1897, 4 of them living on Sq. 425 (currently being occupied by the Convention Center), the reports break down the blocks or squares with some interesting information. Their census was enumerated by the police in some instances, and I can’t determine who did the other sections of the report. There is a break down between “White” and “Colored”, colored I’m gathering would include the Chinese, Indians, African Americans, and other non-Europeans, by square. Some go further by locating the handful of Chinese (327 men, 11 women), one Japanese guy, and enough Indians to count on your fingers (3 men, 2 women) in the District in 1897. Gives you a sense of how cosmopolitian the city was, uhm? [
Tag: neighborhood history
Ebay alert: Hopkin’s Map of Shaw
FYI over on Ebay there is a reproduction of the 1887 Hopkin’s map for the area south of Q, west of New Jersey and east of 9th up for sale for $90. You could also get a repro from the Library of Congress and maybe the National Archives, if you happen to know what map you want (I suggest going down into the basement of the Madison building @ the LC/ Archives II-College Park to find out and make sure), so don’t go overboard with the bidding.
…..and an original 1887 Hopkin’s map currently going for $156.00. It has a little bit of the TC, and a good amount of what looks to be Kevin Chappel’s ANC area.
Before there was the Shaw School Urban Renewal Area there was NW pt 2
So I have sworn I’ve seen this storefront church window before, I just can’t remember where. Driving me nuts now.
Anyway, where did I leave off? 1957. Italians.
Next is your favorite and mine, Shiloh Baptist church at 9th & P, then led by Rev. Earl L. Harrison who lived at 1743 Webster St NW, which I believe is in the Crestwood neighborhood. It had a membership of 7200 people, 1,200-1,500 attending worship services any given Sunday, with 3% living in the urban renewal area and 95% elsewhere in DC. There are no stats regarding occupational makeup. In 1957 they had a scouting program made up of participants from the church and the surrounding community, and a Baptist Training Union. It was founded in 1863 at 17th and L Streets and moved to its current location in 1924.
Bible Way Church of Out Lord Jesus Christ is not in Shaw but I find it very interesting. It is one the other side of NY Ave at 1130 New Jersey Ave NW. Their pastor, Rev. Smallwood E. Williams lived at 1328 Montello Ave NE. They had a total membership of 2000 people, and the average attendance exceeded the membership with 2200 (3,200 for all three services), it seems they had a lot of visitors and I gather a lot of non-tithers. Thirty percent lived in the renewal area and 69% scattered throughout the rest of rest of DC. This was a working class church, and that’s why I find it so interesting as 90% of the working people attending were ‘unskilled manual’, with 2% professional, 3% white collar, and another 3% skilled manual labor. They had no mortgage and seemed to have owned a good chunk of land down there.
Last in my review is a church that was a storefront that is now a steeple church and that is Mt. Sinai Baptist Church at 1615 3rd St NW, then led then by Rev. Charles Hayes of 47 M St. NW. It had a membership of 225 people with an average worship service attendance of 125. A insignificant number of members, two percent, lived in the renewal area, 96% were in the rest of DC. Occupationally it was 55% unskilled manual, 40% white collar, and 2% professional. They had a mortgage of $2K. Listed under “Future Expansion Program” they desired to build a new church on the present site. If it became necessary to move (because of the renewal) they wanted to stay in this central area so it would be accessible to all members.
SUMMARY
Shaw had a lot of churches then, has a lot of churches now. There were Italians running around the TC on Sunday. And Marie doesn’t like to spend a lot of time typing.
Before there was the Shaw School Urban Renewal Area there was NW
This should be at the DC Archives over on Naylor Court, NW because this comes from the DC RLA. And the ‘this’ is a church survey for a previous urban renewal idea of doing a nice big chunk in NW. The best I can tell of what happened with the NW Urban Renewal Area is that it shrank to the NoMa area, and at some point the Shaw School Urban Renewal came to be. Seriously, I’m fuzzy when it comes to all the various urban renewal programs that RLA, with the federal government (NCPC), churned out. There were several, a downtown, possibly a NE, Adams-Morgan, the famous SW, this NW one and Shaw.
Anyway, the little numbered circles in the shown map here of the NW urban renewal area are of the various steeple and storefront churches in 1957. I’m not going to list them all as there are several pages and I don’t want to. But there are a few churches I want to highlight.
Steeple:
#3 Greater New Bethel; #4 Metropolitan; #10 Redeemer Italian Baptist; #13- Shiloh Baptist and #14 Bible Way Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Storefront Church:
#17 Mt. Sinai Baptist
The survey is basic, with name and address of pastor, ethnic make up, staff, and a few things about the membership I found interesting.
Greater New Bethel, then at 1739 9th St, had a membership of 700, with an average attendance of 350, parking for 25 cars, and 80% of the working members held white collar jobs. None of the members lived in the NW urban renewal area but all lived in DC.
Metropolitan Baptist at 1225 R St had a membership of 3,260, average attendance at the worship service was 1500. Of the working membership 25% were white collar, 30% unskilled manual, 15% skilled and 10% in business. Geographically 40% lived in the urban renewal area, 57% in the rest of DC and 3% in VA. In 1957 it had no mortgage.
Redeemer Italian Baptist, or ‘ok I guess there was a strong eye-talian presence here’. It was at 1200 Kirby St and composed of white Italians. None of them lived in the urban renewal area, 40% were in the rest of DC and 60 % in MD & VA. The membership 125 with 60 showing up for worship services. A majority, 55% were skilled manual laborers, 30% white collar, and 10% in business.
Okay, I’m tired of typing, I’ll pick this up again later.
House history in the most unlikely places
Okay the disclaimers:
Disclaimer #1- There are people out there who do house history for a living, I’m not one of them. If you’re doing research on your house, I’m not the best resource, so please don’t expect much if you ask a question.
Disclaimer #2- There are some reflections I make regarding archival theory that I just have zero interest in explaining to the layperson. In the end this is a personal blog, so if you find some things disturbing, express it elsewhere.
/end disclaimers
Doing random search for my house and my neighbors’ houses, just to get a sense of the neighborhood, see if anyone else is blogging or what have you, I came across something quite interesting. It seems that a notable person, not exactly in your middle school history book notable, but notable enough to have a place accept her papers, owned my house. Quickly, I need to state that Dr. Euphemia Lofton Haynes, the 1st Black woman to receive a Phd in Mathematics never ever lived in my house. Never. Ever. She might have looked at it from time to time. My house, as well as several other Shaw, Bloomingdale, and general DC houses were in her investment portfolio, which are included in her personal papers, which wound up at Catholic University, which decided at some point to put up the finding aid on the web, which made it possible for me to stumble upon.
Now as someone who has processed personal papers for a university, I wondered if this would be the kind of stuff I’d keep. Because the items that I was looking at fall outside of the topic that makes Dr. Lofton-Haynes’s papers valuable to the institution holding them, makes the accessioning archivist in me wonder. However, areas of income, income production and other aspects that allow the subject to engage in activities because of the freedom that extra money can bring, thus making these off topic files valuable. Yet, this would be the last place I’d even think of looking to find out about my house and neighborhood.
Just glancing over her real estate holdings, and almost all the files about particular houses have sales contracts showing the price she bought and later sold the property for, she did pretty well. Some files have correspondence and bills/invoices about repairs and improvement, which may not reflect all the money she poured into a place, but if those were the big major repairs, she made a decent buck on the sale. She bought a cluster of four houses Truxton Circle for $22,000 in 1945, and sold three of them individually for $8,000 in 1949; $9,500 and $12,000 in 1950. The sales contract also mention how much the houses are to be or were renting for, and the 1940s rents hovered between $40 and $45 dollars a month.
Besides sales contracts, there are title insurance papers, bills, loan receipts, correspondence about repairs, and very mundane things. Of course one property did have a notice from the DC Board of Condemnation of Insanitary Buildings informing Dr. Haynes-Lofton that her property had saggy floors, defective plumbing and electrical, broken door parts and ill fitting windows. Was the good Professor a slum lord? Don’t know, some of the houses she sold the buyers had intended to live in them, so she couldn’t have been that bad. She did upgrade some of the houses, installing gas in the kitchens, replacing roofs, and making repairs.
What I found most interesting was a non-Shaw property that involved her in a legal case with the federal government. One file labeled “Rental property, 1523 M st., lawsuit, speak easy, legal document, 1931” has letters and legal docs about a place she leased/rented that the Feds busted as a speak easy. She, through her lawyer, stated that she knew nothing about the activities of what was going on there. Considering the number of holdings she had all over the city and her professional activities in DC education, it is completely possible she did not know that she had a gin joint in her investment portfolio.
Sample of Shaw, 1880-1920
G-d Bless doctoral dissertations, gives people something to do, something to write and sometimes, it is of interest to people outside of academia.
The dissertation that may be of interest to y’all is “Changing Race, Changing Place: Racial, occupational, and residential patterns in Shaw, Washington, DC, 1880-1920” by Karl John Byrand, Doctor of Philosophy, Univ of Maryland, Department of Geography. Byrand does what I’m planning/ trying to do, but on a smaller scale. I didn’t photocopy all the pages (’cause that would violate copyright and I didn’t have enough cash to copy all I needed anyway), but he looks at the 1300 block of T, 1200 blk of 13th and the 900 blk of R, and if he looked at other blocks I don’t know. What I do know is that it was a small sample and he was mainly interested in alleys, and alley dwellers.
The abstract of this reads as such:
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, increasing black migration from the South changed the social structure of border cities such as Washington, DC. Prior to 1880, many of the District’s black residents were confined to mini-ghettos within alleys; however, around the turn of the century, specific sections of the city underwent the process of racial concentration, forming large, predominantly black enclaves. Shaw, a neighborhood in northwest Washington, DC, was one of these areas.
The summary of this paper, just in case you never make it over to Hornbake Library, where this sits is:
The study area’s overall population had grown by 18.5 percent since 1910, as compared to the 32.2 percent increase by 24 percent, as compared to the District’s 16 percent growth between 1910 and 1920….. The data show increasing residential clustering based on skin tone, and perhaps ethnicity, over the previous periods with whites clustering together even more than previously, with more packing onto fewer blocks, perhaps in reaction to the other blocks becoming black/ mulatto dominated. Moreover, the rate of address sharing by white household heads had progressively increased from 12.7 percent in 1880 to 41.2 percent; now, a greater proportion of whites shared single residences than did blacks or mulattoes…. By 1920, Shaw had become the black business, entertainment, and residential community in Washington, DC. It would remain a lively center for black activity until after the Second World War, when many of Shaw’s middle-class black residents would seek housing further from the city’s core. After that, businesses and other services in the neighborhood would decline.
1889 B/W
I’m finally getting to figuring out where am I with the census research. But it is going to take second place to getting around to writing an article for work. Anyway, cleaning out some of the files I found something I labeled “‘State Censuses’ District of Columbia'” and the title page reads “Index to the EXECUTIVE DOCUMENTS of the House of Representatives for the …” 2nd session of the 15th congress, 1888-’89.
On page 206-207 lists the different blocks and their White/Colored make-up. Just doing the Northern TC and NJ Ave TC Adjacent portions, this is how it breaks down:
Block White Colored
507 157/ 111
508 81/ 0
509 216/ 41
509E 103/ 253
510 306/ 337
511 323/ 173
512 232/ 711
519 11/ 2
520 23/ 124
521 43/ 155
550 98/ 22
551 218(248)/ 417
553 129/ 488
553W 51/ 93
614 47/ 1
615 105/ 104
616 171/ 239
Slummy history: 1944
In my occasion search to find the earliest time the neighborhood was started to be called by it’s school border’s name, Shaw, I find stuff. So in the March 11, 1944 issue of the Washington Post, an article titled “Alley Dwellers in Slum Areas Sordid, Senate Group Hears.” It begins, “sordid conditions in the slum area in the heart of Washington– streets on which it was decent women feared for their safety and ‘real men’ avoided to escape prostitutes…” The Thomas C.R. Gray the then president of the East Central Civic Association, which claimed its borders as 3rd St NE, FL Ave, 7th St NW, and Mass Ave, testified to the deplorable housing conditions of alley houses with no heat, no indoor plumbing, no bathtubs, no electricity, and infested with vermin.
Along with poor housing, there was crime. Prostitutes on Pierce St, in Glicks Alley & on Fenton Ct, and some sort of dangerous condition (not really stated clearly in the article) along the east side of 7th St between L & O Sts.
Lunchbreak history: The Big Bear
I’m calling this lunchbreak history as this is something I can churn out on my lunchbreak. Anyway, somewhere on the Big Bear site, which has now disappeared (as the right hand column, with the history, was not there when I went there last) was a history of the Big Bear Cafe, which was the Big Bear Market, and that sort of was the history. So that inspired me to wander down to the library in the building and check out the city directories.
1919 was the first year I grabbed. The index by street is available in earlier years, but I can’t remember how early. Anyway, in 1919 at 1700 1st there was a man by the name of Earnest D. Thorne, and he was a grocer.
Second book, was 1930 and the next guy at 1700 1st NW was Oscar Bernard Diskin. He was also a grocer. I looked for a Big Bear Market, but none was listed.
The last book I grabbed because well, lunch is nearly over, was 1967. At 1700 1st Street NW was the Fairway Market Grocers, telephone number DU7-7969. I did see a listing for a Big Bear Market in 1967, listed at 1018 North Capitol owned by Jack Mehlman. Well Big Bear Cafe, sounds way more interesting than Fairway Cafe, so I’m glad it eventually became the Bear. I wonder if Big Bear Market moved to 1st Street or if it is just a coincidence? The directories go up to 1970something. However, lunch over, back to work.
A new day, now get to work
Lot of stuff I wanna cover … It is September and InShaw has entered semi-retirement, or an active retirement. It may be another way of saying I’ll post when I darned well feel like it, and post what moves me to post. So there may be several days when there is nothing, and periods of furious posting.
I’ve also changed the name slightly. So “(now with more gentrification)” has been dropped, in favor of what interests me, history. Gentrification still is in there but isn’t the focus. The mad real estate boom has passed and the gentrification it fueled, has calmed a bit. If that rooming house, crack house, liquor store, vacant building hasn’t been developed yet, it may be a while before it does. Maybe during the next wave of real estate fervor, maybe between now and then, and maybe never. In the meantime, there are other things to look at, like the past.
The past couple of years, the past couple of decades, whenever. I’m going with what a co-worker defined as history, anything that happened in the past. So anything between the Big Bang/Let-there-be-light and last week is up for grabs. But to be more DC focused I’ll start somewhere in the 18th Century.
Today I just want to talk about Sunday’s Washington Post.
Sorta under the title of ‘gentrification’ is Income Soaring in Egghead Capital. Where I see the DC metro area is where the nation’s well off African-American households live. Yet $55,547 is a pitiful amount compared to our Asian ($83,908) and Non-Hispanic White (94,290) colleagues. The data the Post provided kinda proved a belief that I had about the black middle class, they wanna get as far away from “Pookie” as their middle and upper-middle class white colleagues do. The highest median Black incomes $92,492 in Loudoun and $89,096 in Stafford, are far from the District ($34,484 and the highest percentage of population living below the poverty line).
Looking at my own middle class Black family, I and my blind great-aunt are the only ones in the District. The next closest relative tried to escape inner Beltway Prince George’s County because of all that’s going on around, but couldn’t due to a failure to sell the house. If the house did sell, outer-waaay past Upper Marlborough would have been the new address. Then everyone else is in Fairfax Co. and Howard Co. I’ve noticed when the relatives move up in house, they seem to move further out. They express a desire for more space, more amenities (planned communities w/ clubhouse) and less crap.
But back to gentrification…. So if high earning African-Americans are engaging in black flight from the city and inner-ring suburbs, that could mean that they are leaving a residential void. A void filled by poorer Blacks and middle-upper class non-Blacks. Add to that the great big gap in incomes ($91,631-white; $67,137-Asian; $43,484-Hispanic and $34,484-Black), housing prices, and you got a problem. And I wonder, even if District employers provide the higher paying job opportunities, what is there to say that African-Americans who fill those positions will be from the District or will stay in the District? Okay, now I’m rambling, next…
Back from Behind Bars has a graph, that shows Truxton Circle as one of the communities where 5.1 or more (per 1,000 residents) ex-cons return to after being released from the criminal justice system. The other parts of Shaw (except what looks like upper U Street) have a rate of 5 or less per 1,000. The articles goes in on how those released have trouble finding housing and employment, and staying away from the things that led to prison.
And something that has more of a history bent an opinion piece about Dunbar High School in its hey-day. It’s more about integration and colorism than the school itself, but the print version has a nice photograph of the school in 1931. The original school is no longer and it has been replaced by that prison-like building that dominates the TC skyline.