Posts by John Muller

The Washington City Paper has chronicled many incidents over the years at this rather infamous corner, tucked behind Adams Morgan's main commercial strip. A Maryland teen was recently killed at the Woodley Park Metro station after a fight ensued from an earlier robbery that took place in this immediate area.

More than 5 years ago, the Metropolitan Police Department installed a closed-circuit TV camera here. Whether that is responsible for scattering activity elsewhere, or just changes in the neighborhood, the corner is now quiet. The Euclid market has been demolished, and the shell of the coming condos is yet another subtle sign of change and transition in the neighborhood.

Some of the earliest sites were for the Wood family of Anacostia, the Deans of Deanwood, and the Bells of the present-day Benning Road area. These family plots date back to the years immediately after the Civil War.

In the years leading up to the Civil War, subdivisions were planned and developed beyond the city's historic core, transforming what had once been bucolic and pastoral land. In the early summer of 1852, Washington's City Council passed an ordinance that prohibited any new burial grounds within the Boundary Street (today Florida Avenue) limits of L'Enfant's plan, according to Steven J. Richardson's article "The Burial Grounds of Black Washington: 1880—1919" in the Records of the Columbia Historical Society.

Existing cemeteries east of the river

Of the more than 250 public and private cemeteries documents show have interred Washingtonians for over 2 centuries, 22 remain, according to the DC Historic Preservation Office. More than a half dozen are found east of the river: Woodlawn Cemetery on Benning Road, a clustering of Jewish Cemeteries in Congress Heights, and the Saint Elizabeths Hospital Civil War Cemetery, on a hillside slope on the West campus that can be seen from I-295.

Seeing its first patient in 1855, during the Civil War, the United States Government Hospital for the Insane swelled with patients. "Many of the battlefield victims received at St. Elizabeths Hospital were dead on arrival, and others, too seriously wounded to be saved, died in the hospital," Sluby writes in Bury me deep: Burial places past and present in and nearby Washington, D.C. "These deaths necessitated the establishment of a hospital burying area for these causalities."

In more than 20 rows of head stones rest the remains of nearly 300 Civil War dead, both Confederate and Union, black and white soldiers alongside local civilians. According to a historic marker, "When the foliage of the local forest subsides in winter, the cemetery is visible from a considerable distance since the white headstones are placed in the form of a cross."

Old Jewish cemeteries

The presence of Jewish burials in southeast Washington dates back to the 1860s, when the first internments interments were made off Hamilton Road, now Alabama Avenue SE. More than 150 years later, the Washington Hebrew Congregation and Adas Israel Congregation maintain their cemeteries adjacent to the Congress Heights Metro station and Malcolm X Elementary School on the 1400 block of Alabama Avenue SE.

Tucked behind Adas Israel and Washingtin Hebrew are two additional Jewish graveyards on 15th Place SE, bordering the Henson Ridge development. Ohey Sholom Talmud Torah Cemetery purchased its land in 1895, according to the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington. Its neighbor cemetery, Elesavetgrad, which sold plots to fraternal organizations, is named for a town in Russia.

In recent months, the caretaker's house at the Washington Hebrew Memorial Park has been refurbished and a new visitor's center has been built. The cemeteries are open on Jewish holidays and to the public by appointment.

Woodlawn Cemetery

Off the 4600 block of Benning Road NE rests Blanche K. Bruce, the first black American to serve a full-term in the United States Senate, pioneering lawyer at Howard Law School and United States Congressman from Virginia, John Mercer Langston, a chronicler of black authors and history for nearly a half-century at the library of Congress, Daniel A. P. Murray, and leading physicians, educators, and pastors of 19th and early 20th century Washington.

According to an independent study by the DC Department of Environmental Services, there were 35,895 internments interments at Woodlawn from 1895 through June 17, 1971. Woodlawn received its last burial in 2000. In recent years the Woodlawn Perpetual Care Association, led by Tyrone General, has advocated that the city transform the 22.5-acre cemetery into a living history park to "honor our ancestors."

Lost cemeteries

More than one third of the cemeteries in the 1909 Boyd's City Directory of Washington, DC are east of the Anacostia River. Recorded, but no longer surviving, are the Macedonia Cemetery in Hillsdale, Good Hope Cemetery on Hamilton Road, Jones Chapel Cemetery on Benning Road, and Payne's Cemetery on Benning Road, on ground where the Fletcher Johnson Education Complex stands today.

Along with Woodlawn, Payne's Cemetery buried predominantly black Washingtonians. Reports of the Health Commissioner to the District's Board of Commissioners in the 1880s indicate the first activity at Payne's Cemetery. Official records confirm that from 1880 to 1930 there were 10,951 internments at Payne's Cemetery. Of that number, only 29 were white. In the 1960s the remains of the buried at Payne's were transferred to the National Harmony Memorial Park in Prince George's County.

The Historic Preservation Office has just released a brochure, Gone But Not Forgotten: Cemeteries in the Nation's Capital, that explores the history of burials in Washington, from Native Americans through the Colonial era and early development of the new Federal City, and into the Romantic age of highly-designed garden cemeteries. The brochure is available at the Washingtoniana Division of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library or online.

Views from the campuses of Cardozo High School in Northwest and McKinley Technology High School in Northeast cannot compare to those from Saint Elizabeths' West Campus. The panorama of the sunset from atop Cedar Hill, with the Capitol and the Washington Monument in the foreground, is surreal.

Despite the current stigma of many east of the river neighborhoods, Anacostia, Barry Farm, Buena Vista (Spanish for "good view"), Bellevue (French for "beautiful view") Fairlawn, Fort Stanton, and Hillsdale have a romantic naturalism that has been recognized in literature and paintings since the early 19th century.

Last week, Congressman Issa (R-CA) and Congresswoman Norton (D-DC) announced a study to re-examine the 1910 law which limits the height of buildings in Washington. There are strong, well-reasoned arguments to both maintain and revise the law. In that study, the National Capital Planning Commission is very concerned about preserving views of the monumental core from across the city.

In March 1873, 12 years before the Washington Monument was finally finished, Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science waxed poetic about the sight lines:

"A stranger visiting the national capital should begin by leaving it. He should cross the Anacostia River at the Navy-yard, climb the heights behind the village of Uniontown, be careful to find exactly the right path, and seat himself on the parapet of old Fort Stanton.

His feeling of fatigue will be overcome by one of astonishment that the scene should contain so much that is beautiful in nature, so much that is exceedingly novel if not very good in art, and so much that has the deepest historical interest. From the blue hills of Prince George's county in Maryland winds the Anacostia, whose waters at his feet float all but the very largest vessels of our navy, while but six miles above they float nothing larger than a Bladensburg goose. To the left flows the Potomac, a mile wide. Between the rivers lies Washington.

A vast amphitheatre, its green or gray walls cloven only by the two rivers, appears to surround the city. 'Amphitheatre' is the word, for within the great circle, proportioned to it in size and magnificence, dwarfing all other objects, stands the veritable arena where our public gladiators and wild beasts hold their combats. This of course is the Capitol, whose white dome rises like a blossoming lily from the dark expanse below.

In form and feeling the symbols of federal Washington yield aesthetic and therapeutic influence on the east side of town. Across the other side of the deep divide of the river is where the political influence is felt and permeates daily life. East of the river you can feel the literal sense of geographic disengagement and detachment from official Washington. There's a sense of pride in this disconnection. Life still moves slowly here. The historic development of the community personifies this truth.

In 1855 the United States Government Hospital for the Insane, later renamed Saint Elizabeths, saw its first patient. The palatial landscape situated high on a bluff overlooked the Washington Navy Yard and the first efforts to erect the modern cast iron Capitol Dome, that now defines the city skyline. For the first inmates and staff, alike, the scene was as palliative then as it is today.

Ascending Howard Road SE, in the Hillsdale neighborhood, the Washington Monument, illuminated at night, is the sentry keeping a vigilant eye over the "southside". Over on Morris Road SE is Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church, known to the go-go community as the Panorama Room. The name is purposeful, from here the entire city unfolds before your eyes, revealing itself. In the award-winning independent movie, "Slam," actor Saul Williams ponders his existence and future as a low-level drug dealer from this sweeping indigenous veranda.

Down in historic Anacostia, the Statue of Freedom, crowning the Capitol Dome, has watched over folks of this inner-city suburban village with village folk watching right back for nearly 150 years. Whether on foot, peddle, bus, or car, formerly on horseback, carriage, and streetcar, glimpses of the Capitol often flash in and out of the periphery between buildings, alleys, and fences.

As feasibility studies and further analysis of the city's height limit moves forward, we hope the character of these vistas are protected and not ignored in favor of political calculus and economic expediency.

An innovation of the early 19th century, the band saw could cut both wood and metal. Its original design is little altered today, albeit with current materials. More than one hundred variations of the modern band saw sell today at Home Depot from companies such as DeWalt, Steel City, and Rockwell.

The former Wilson Courts, 523-525 Mellon Street SE, a 4-story multi-family apartment complex with a faint art deco touch outside the building's two respective front entrances, was sold in September 2008 to Affordable Housing Opportunities Inc. for just under $1.5 million, according to tax records. (The value of the building's inventory of antiques is unavailable.)

A year later a firestorm broke out within Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8C when a local non-profit introduced plans to develop transitional housing units. Many old-time residents joined neophyte arrivals in opposing the plans, arguing the neighborhood was over-burdened with similar facilities and a further concentration of social service agencies would do more harm than good.

Now, a couple years later all seems to be forgotten as the building has remained uninhabited. Per the permit posted by the DC Office of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs since February, after demolition of interior walls, there are plans to convert the building's existing 20 units to 43.

However, before redevelopment happens an untold number of relics from late 19th and early 20th centuries remain in the basement, according to the demolition crew's foreman.

Together with the 6-man crew, William and I speculate what the band saw might be worth—not just for scrap parts, but to collectors of antiquarian tools. The foreman thinks it could bring a couple hundred dollars. Weschler's, the long-time downtown auction house, could probably help with an estimate, I suggest.

An engraving around the arc of the base will surely provide clues of its provenance for an appraiser specializing in 19th century tools. (Comparable antique band saws on Ebay list for $250 to $500, often selling for more.)

Through preservation groups and local media work, I have toured the campuses of Saint Elizabeths a handful of times over the past 3 years. What little I have seen of the abandoned halls, rooms, basketball courts, and book cases show most of the remnants of the past are gone, cleared out over the years by former employees and recent contractors.

While the cemetery is visited by millions of tourists every year, it is the solemn destination for thousands upon thousands of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, family members, friends, and brothers-in-arms and sisters-in-arms who will never see their loved one again or hear their voice. It is without question our nation's most hallowed ground.

On May 30, 1871 Frederick Douglass gave a short address, "The Unknown Loyal Dead" at Arlington National Cemetery. An excerpt:

Those unknown heroes whose whitened bones have been piously gathered here, and whose green graves we now strew with sweet and beautiful flowers, choice emblems alike of pure hearts and brave spirits, reached in their glorious career that last highest point of nobleness beyond which human power cannot go. They died for their country.

On this Veterans Day we remember the living and the deceased men and women who have honorably worn the uniform of their country.

Never above you. Never below you. Always beside you.

If you are in Rock Creek Park or Fort Reno and feel a gust of wind from out of nowhere, it's just Julian letting you know he's always got your back, front, and both sides.

This summer stabilization work finally began in earnest at the Big K site, owned by the Department of Community and Housing Development (DHCD) since the summer of 2010. Rotted, sagging, the front porch of 2234 MLK has been cleared away. Fresh 2x4 boards rest on the old red brick foundation in its place.

Two ladders relax against the home originally built by local business owner James Beall in the 1880s. A man is on top of the porch's overhanging roof, which has been reinforced. Each stroke of red paint he applies subtly regenerates the home, forging the old and new spirits of the city's first suburb. With its new cherry sheen, there's a newfound expectation the home will be restored, one of more than 500 structures extant within the Anacostia Historic District.

As 2234 MLK is finally getting the structural reinforcement it has needed for decades, the wood frame home next door is just a memory. More than thirty years of neglect by the Kushner family, proprietors of the Big K Liquor Store (originally built in 1906 by grocer James Conway) did the home in. By the time the city bought the lot the house's fate was sealed. 2228 MLK, formerly 442 Nichols Avenue; was demolished this summer.

It had most recently been a known squatter's hotel, location to cut drugs, and a place for women of the night to bring their Johns. It is presently just another vacant lot in Historic Anacostia owned by the city.

Future of the Big K site depends on 2226 MLK

Even with an extended deadline, DHCD director Michael Kelly said at a community meeting last month, his agency only received two development proposals in response to the Big K site's Solicitation for Offers. Two is better than one, which is better than zero, which is the likelihood any private development will move forward without Big K's portfolio including the corner parcel of MLK and Mount View Place, historically a used-car dealership.

If you're in the market to buy or sell, Dale "Bubba" Richardson of Astro Motors at 2226 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue is your man. Richardson followed his older brother to Washington from North Carolina. The elder Richardson first opened Astro Motors on a lot farther down MLK in the 1980s, and it has since become a neighborhood fixture.

Within the confines of Richardson's small office, a game of checkers is usually going on. Meanwhile, Richardson, or his long-time assistant salesman Floyd Claybrook, is outside washing a new car or negotiating a deal with both new and familiar faces. Long-time Anacostians and friends of Richardson faithfully gather on Friday evenings for cook-outs on the charcoal-powered grille.

The city has approached the landlord of Astro Motors to sell his lot, but no deal has materialized, Richardson says. Although the Gray administration has continued policies started by Mayor Fenty to crack down on used car lots, Astro Motors is still in Anacostia, as it was nearly 30 years ago. Carriages were built and sold on the 400 block of Nichols Avenue more than a century ago. Maybe nothing does change but the weather.

Cross-town, commercial and residential development seemingly happens overnight but across the river, life still moves slowly enough that you can see the 19th century fade away before your own eyes.

"Our public lands are so valuable, and we're concerned the city is not going to deliver the affordability that it's achieved in the past," says Cheryl Cort, Policy Director for the Coalition for Smarter Growth. "We urge the Mayor and the Housing Task Force to recommit to leveraging city-owned land to create a substantial amount of affordable housing, including at deeply affordable levels."

According to Cort, the study's "main finding is that while the previous administrations were able to produce significant amounts of affordable housing down to deeply affordable levels in city-land redevelopment projects, we aren't seeing the same level of commitment from the new administration."

Major developments like CityVista at 5th and K St, NW and around the Columbia Heights Metro station have integrated significant amounts of very affordable housing into larger, mixed use developments, says Cort.

"DC has had some successful accomplishments when it comes to city-owned lands transformed in to vibrant mixed use, mixed income developments. However, without keeping specific and ambitious affordable housing requirements in future deals, we are likely to see less and less affordability in these valuable city land projects," said Jenny Reed, Policy Director of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, in a statement.

Ideal sites for producing affordable housing are the McMillan Sand Filtration site (25 acres), Walter Reed's Georgia Avenue Campus (67 acres), Saint Elizabeths East Campus (183 acres), and even Poplar Point (110 acres) which is seemingly stuck in place. To maximize the housing potential of public lands adjacent to Metrorail stations and Metrobus routes, the city must override some desires to build a "one or two-story library or other public facility with a surface parking lot," the report says. Instead, a "robust mix of compatible uses" and full use of the building envelope should be a guiding design principle.

The report highlights the development of the Hine School site at Eastern Market, which will provide substantial amounts of affordable housing units, including some at 30 percent of Area Median Income (AMI). However, recent solicitations by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development's land disposition office indicate that housing set asides for people with 30 percent of AMI in larger projects, are no longer in place as they have been in the past.

While earnings for lower-wage workers have remained flat over the past 10 years, housing costs have shot up. According to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, between 2000 and 2010 more than 36,000 rental units, priced at $750 or less a month, have been lost. Compounding rising costs for low-wage workers is the natural expiration of federal Section 8 subsidized housing credits. Started under a program created in 1974, Section 8 contracts for private landlords usually run for 20 to 40 years. Many landlords are now turning their properties into market-rate units.

"If the city no longer asks for deeply affordable units as part of an overall project, we don't expect developers will provide them," Cort says. "As our city's housing market gets more expensive, we need to do more, not less to address the challenges that our lower income residents face. Public land is a unique tool that the city has and can continue to leverage to provide substantial amounts of affordable housing, even at very low income levels."

DC has a shortage of affordable housing, but it has no shortage of public land. The District needs to use this land to guarantee more affordable housing so that we can remain an economically diverse city.

This conference combines lectures, discussions, and tours, giving you an opportunity to immerse yourself in DC history for a couple of days.

Historical Society re-opens November 5

Closed since the summer of 2011, the Historical Society of Washington will reopen its Kiplinger Library on a twice-weekly basis starting November 5th. Mondays will be available for appointments, while on Wednesdays, public hours will resume with a new library director.

The nearly 130-year-old organization has been shuttered since last summer. Under a new agreement reached in January, the society has retained the 2nd floor galleries, the library, and collection storage space of the Mt. Vernon Square Carnegie Library. While Literary Hall, the McKinley Theatre, and L'Enfant Map room have been operative with event rentals, plans for a visitor center attracting foot traffic to activate Mount Vernon Square have yet to be realized.

DC will get its own history museum

No update about DC history is complete without mentioning the recent donation of Albert H. Small's collection of Washingtoniana to George Washington University. GWU plans to make it digitally accessible and put on permanent display as part of a new DC History Museum. It'll open in 2014 in a renovated Max Woodhull House, at 20th & G Streets NW on their Foggy Bottom campus.

With all these events, and the excitement of a future dedicated museum, now seems like no better or easier time to plunge into the study and preservation of all sides, stories, facts, and dimensions of Washington's history. If you learn something interesting, consider contributing it as a guest post to Greater Greater Washington—we're always interested in articles about DC's rich history.

Is there a "Plan" to displace residents?

In 2003, when Williams was mayor, he set a goal of attracting 100,000 new residents over the following decade. A recent survey now shows the District is gaining people at a rate of a thousand a month.

Some in the audience expressed suspicions that this is part of a devious and covert plan to drive members of old Washington communities out of the city. Williams disputed the concept. "The notion that there is a plan may sound good, but it's crazy," he said, and noted that as mayor, he supported programs like the Housing Production Trust Fund to preserve affordable housing.

Offering a reality check of sorts for skeptics, O'Connell added, "Marion Barry is glad to sit down with developers." During Barry's mayoralty, "investments were made that were part of 'the plan'" such as building the Verizon Center downtown and the Reeves Center at 14th & U Streets in the mid-1980s.

"The value of real estate has more of an impact than policy," said O'Connell. "Apartments are being built on 14th Street not because of policy but because it is the best place to build apartments in the country." Williams consented that "the market moves faster than the city." From bike lanes to new neighborhood branch libraries, panelists and audience members agreed that public policy decisions and capital investments made years ago guide current trends.

Neighborhoods need to be involved in shaping growth

Neighborhood revitalization is at its best when residents can work with government to regenerate from within, argued Casarella. She cited the successful restoration of homes in historic Anacostia through the Office of Planning's Historic Homeowner Grant Program as an ideal example of a working partnership between the city and neighborhood residents to direct change instead of just reacting to it.

Commercial and residential development in designated historic neighborhoods passes through Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, which receive "great weight" at the final level of agency review, said Caserella. "You are the most important planner."

"When was the last time that ever mattered?" an audience member called out. "I have to dismiss your cynicism," Casarella said, reflecting the overall belief of the panel that Washington's active neighborhood level associations influence both planning and economic development.

Panelists discussed how parks can be an irreplaceable public good for a neighborhood when an audience member asked the panel to predict the future of development "east of the river which is 15 years behind what has happened on U Street."

"It is very hard to add green space later," O'Connell said, alluding to ongoing development in NoMA where "they missed planning a park." With development projects either in the early stages or waiting to break ground throughout Wards 7 and 8, O'Connell cautioned residents to remain vigilant in maintaining their natural recreation space. "Poplar Point is 110 acres and 70 acres is set aside to be a park. I would be careful to make sure the 70 acres stays," as the project slowly moves toward development.

Whereas previous conversations in the Humanities Council series have been emotionally charged, the evening's conversation featured a more reasoned tone, with mature and insightful analysis. Most people were able to agree on at least a few things: as the city grows in population, neighborhoods will respond differently, but the best response is when residents engage constructively in the process. That gives residents both a sense of ownership over their neighborhood, and a voice in decisions that guide local development.

Library has little recourse against problem patrons

"There was some man outside of the children's section talking loudly about killing children," an unsettled mother with a young child in tow told a library police officer one Sunday earlier this year, as she hastened to make her exit. "There he is," she said, pointing out a diminutive bearded and disheveled man simultaneously making his way out of the building.

While the woman and her child exited the library, the officer quickly stopped and questioned the man. As with incidents of lewd sexual acts, drunkenness, drug use, threats against staff and even occurrences of patrons destroying and defacing books, the library police have but two options: 1) call the Metropolitan Police Department and 2) issue a subsequent ban on that patron from re-entering the library for a certain period of time.

A staff member who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, looking out over a room with no less than a half dozen patrons sleeping, "There is literally nothing we can do. Don't get me wrong, we have people who have been coming here for years. They read, don't bother anyone. Some copy passages out of books. They might use the bathroom to clean up and that's it. Every day is the same. But then we have some people who really need help. This is not where they should be."

Other cities have social workers to help the homeless

DC is not unlike other cities whose downtown libraries serve homeless populations, but unlike other cities, the DC Public Library does nearly nothing to address the constant concerns of staff and patrons. According to administrative sources, the DC Library has a roving case manager on staff but he or she is rarely, if ever, seen at MLK, where there's a large homeless concentration.

The DC Library administration could follow the lead of the San Francisco Public Library system, which has "turned the page" on dealing with the homeless who patronize their main library. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, in late January 2009 the San Francisco system became the first in the country to address its longstanding problems (no different than what goes on at MLK) with homeless patrons by bringing on a full-time psychiatric social worker.

Through an inter-governmental partnership with the San Francisco Department of Public Health, the library hired the social worker to be "on hand five days a week handling complaints from staff and patrons about people's behavior, and calling in security only if things get really ugly."

Along with helping homeless patrons to find other services in the city, including housing and food assistance, job training, substance abuse treatment, mental health counseling, and literacy tutoring, library workers received training in responding to unpleasant behavior.

Not stopping there, the San Francisco system instituted a 12-week "vocational rehabilitation" program for the library's homeless and formerly homeless population. Upon completion, graduates are hired to work in the system. The DC Library already has a similar program in place, Teens of Distinction, which trains city youth to work in low-level administrative support positions, often the teenagers' first job experience.

San Francisco's approach could be easily replicated in DC. Like clockwork vans from the United Planning Organization (UPO) come every evening to return the homeless to their respective shelter. UPO, the city's official Community Action Agency is already well aware of MLK Library's homeless population and their needs. Through a partnership with other city agencies case management and direct services could begin to be tracked and better delivered.

Without an organized city effort local universities, non-profits and church groups regularly perform service outreach projects at the library. For example, on many evenings hot meals and backpacks stuffed with personal hygiene products and new socks are distributed at the corner of 9th & G Street underneath the shelter of the library's Mies Van Der Rohe designed arcade.

While the American Library Association has released information on how to serve homeless patrons, the DC library administration appears uninterested. By not addressing this need, the current library administration enables a culture of dependency among its homeless instead of a culture of self-improvement, and turns away other potential patrons who are intimidated by the homeless presence.