I’m trying to bring some order to my history collection. Somethings I’m holding on to because I wanted to share them with others, like this letter. But knowing that it is the responsibility of the Federal Government to keep the blasted thing, then there is no real reason for me to hold on to it, and I may as well chuck the copy I have.
I also updated my DC Maps on Flickr, so there are some 1887 parts of the Truxton Circle ‘hood.
Anyway, I’m guess the letter is difficult to read from my blog page. It is from the April 7, 1966 Open session of the NCPC on the topic of the Shaw School Urban Renewal Area’s boundaries. My fav part of the letter reads “WHEREAS, it appears that conditions of slum, blight, and deterioration exist in this area which are detrimental to health, safety, and welfare of the inhabitants and occupants of the area of the District of Columbia….”
Tag: neighborhood history
Urban Renewal: So what were you thinking?
I’ve been meaning to getting around to talking about a lovely record group at the National Archives. If you go to their OPAC called ARC and throw in the phrase “National Capitol Planning Commission” you will find a slew of series that pertain to the history and development of the District of Columbia. Records Relating to Urban Renewal (ARC ID# 784266) do contain a lot of info about Shaw and other areas that got ‘renewed’ in the middle of the 20th Century. Another series I want to focus on in this post are the Transcripts of Proceedings and Minutes of Meetings, 01/1924 – 12/02/1999 (ARC ID# 1571319).
At the 1962 September Open Session Meeting of the Commission (9/13/1962), when speaking about the Northeast No. 1 Urban Renewal Project, Brig. General F.J. Clarke made the statement:
Urban Renewal, as presently thought of, may be separated into 2 principal categories: First, being those actions which are concerned with preventing future slums, namely improved planning, improved codes, etc.; and, 2nd, the elimination of existing slum or blighted areas.
In this category of eliminating existing slums, the primary purpose of urban renewal is the elimination of slum or blighted areas by various means: acquisition and demolition of structures; the rehabilitation of existing structures; installation of public facilities, and other measures.
Secondarily in purpose but not in importance is the prevention of the recurrence of slum and blighted conditions again in the redeveloped or renewed area.
There’s more, but I don’t feel like transcribing it right now. It points a bit to the thinking of the ‘why’. It’s getting to the what, that makes things interesting.
People over things
This comes out of some email correspondence I had this week about an inquiry about a Shaw house’s history. Sometimes you can find the date of when something was built, sometimes not. The date on my lovely domicile is based on tax records, one year it’s taxed as land, next year land and an improvement, no permit, and zilch about a builder. However, my interest in structures, my own particularly, is based on maintenance and bases for complaints when it comes to maintenance and the inadequacies of the building.
I have a greater interest in flesh and blood than bricks and mortar. People do things, they go to work, they have families, they have relationships, they have a story, and the place where they live is absolutely uninteresting without them.
And the people I’m most interested in are the ones who lived around here. This is to differentiate from the landlords who most likely, didn’t. I’m picking up from some of you a thinking that the focus should be on the property owner. Maybe in other parts of the country, maybe the place where you came from, people built and bought homes to live in. Maybe they made their little plot, a family home, where at least one generation would remember it fondly as the place they grew up and a place to return. Not the case here. The owners were landlords, their family homes were elsewhere. In the case of the woman who once owned my house, it was just another investment, something that could be bought and sold and rented out for income.
From the 1880 to 1930 census stuff I’ve seen, there were a lot of renters in the neighborhood. And I’ve noticed these people moved around. I was trying to find out who was the earliest family to live at a certain TC house on the 1500 blk of 1st Street. I found the family living there a few years after the date the house was built, and when I went back through the city directory (arranged by name) to see if the house existed a previous year (and it would be confirmed by that family being there in those previous years), that family lived further up 1st in Eckington.
The fun question then becomes, why move around? Why stay in a place for only a few years only to move 1/4 mile somewhere else? Why can’t you stay in one spot? The building just sits there, and doesn’t generate a lot of questions for me. The building is the backdrop, the scenery, the stage, but the play is nothing without the performers.
I’ve rambled enough, but sometime later I want to return to the idea of what it means to be an area with a very restless renter population.
Old Landmark Gives Way to Modern Rowhouses
From the Washington Post:
Another old landmark is to disappear soon through the change of ownership of the square bounded by R, Third and Fourth streets, and Florida avenue northwest, and long known as the Glorious property. The land has been occupied as a garden, and by a greenhouse, and a residence, which will be removed to make way for a block of twenty-seven two story dwellings, to be erected by Harry Wardman, who will put them upon the market, Each dwelling will consist of two flats of five rooms and a bath, and be strictly up to date in all features. They will be of press brick.
Work on the structures will begin about October 1, They are intended to be ready for occupancy April 1. Mr. Wardman has just completed, at New Jersey avenue and R street northwest, five two story flat dwellings of the same character as those described above. All these were sold, before being finished. At Thirteenth street and Whitney avenue, Mr. Wardman is erecting five three-story modern press brick and stone front dwellings to be finished November 1. These are to be provided with hot-water heating appliances, and all other conveniences. Another …
-Washington Post, September 21, 1902 p. 16
[sarcasm]
There you go another developer taking over green space throwing up a bunch of cookie-cutter townhouses (of the same character) on the edges of the city and out in the suburban parts of the District*. So in seven months time he’s supposed to tear down a landmark, and quickly construct 27 whole townhouses in move in condition?
And Modern?! Phooey, what’s wrong with the lovely and modest Federalist style that is the charming character of the city. Wardman wants to build these huge monstrosities that dwarf the humble classic styled houses. Modern, well I don’t care for this modernism, not one bit. And two flats? Obviously, these are meant for greedy investors as what appears on the outside to be a single home is nothing but a mini-apartment complex or flop house.
But let us return to what we will lose in all of this, flowers, beautiful locally grown flowers. It is sad that none of the Glorious children have chosen to take up their father’s passion to continue the family business, but I guess this is all what people call progress. [/sarcasm]
*Near the turn of the century, a lot of what was above Florida Avenue (then Boundary Avenue) was farmland and he sub-urban part of the District.
Fun with the Census: Not really the Census, but close
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? [
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.