Posts about Chevy Chase DC

THESE CHANGES WOULD FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE CHEVY CHASE FROM A QUIET, RESIDENTIAL AREA TO A MORE TRANSIENT, BUSINESS-ORIENTED AREA

SPECIFIC AREAS OF CONCERN. We identified four major areas of concern to Chevy Chase. Each is explained below:

1. CHANGE SINGLE FAMILY HOMES INTO BUSINESS AND RENTAL UNITS
   
2. TURN RESIDENTIAL STREETS INTO COMMERCIAL "TRANSIT ZONES"
   
3. NO "TRANSPARENCY" IN DEVELOPING THESE REGULATIONS
   
4. COMPRESSED SCHEDULE FOR FORMAL ADOPTION OF REGULATIONS

The hysteria goes beyond the excessive capitalization. Each of these 4 items, and the preamble, is false.

Very little will change in Chevy Chase

The zoning update will not "fundamentally change" Chevy Chase. Almost all its land is zoned for low-density residential development. OP has made it absolutely clear that "transit zones" will not apply to the low density residential areas at all, even when they are near transit. That means that single-family housing, even if it's just a few hundred feet from a Metro station, won't change.

The zoning update will allow a few limited "corner" stores in residential areas, but these also won't apply to the low-density areas like Chevy Chase. No homes can "change into business" units in the neighborhood.

The Office of Planning has bent over backward to ensure that very little will change in single-family home neighborhoods like this. Some think they should have been more aggressive in removing regulations which so severely limit what a homeowner can do with his or her property, but they chose a more conservative path. That hasn't stopped charges that they are plotting wholesale destruction of neighborhoods.

Furthermore, the zoning update has been going on for over 4 years. OP has had hundreds of public meetings and offered to meet with any organization that wishes it. They return phone calls promptly and very patiently explain complex concepts. It is laughable to suggest that there has been "no transparency" or a "compressed schedule."

OP has posted documents from each phase online. The current draft chapters are available to anyone, even though it's not even a finalized draft for official public comment. If all of this is compressed, what would not be a compressed schedule? What is enough "transparency"?

Flyer's facts are simply wrong

The flyer claims that OP is reducing rear setbacks from 25 to 20 feet, but according to Dan Emerine of the Office of Planning, that is not true at all. The flyer says that side setbacks can decline from 8 to 5 feet without mentioning that anyone building with a 5-foot setback on one side has to leave 10 feet on the opposite side, for lots at the minimum allowed width.

Houses in single-family neighborhoods like Chevy Chase are constrained more by the lot occupancy, which limits the percentage of land a house can cover, than the side setbacks. Those lot occupancy limits aren't changing, meaning that houses can't cover any more footprint. Property owners will just have a very tiny bit more flexibility in where their houses sit on the lot.

It says that "'non-profit and institutional uses,' ... including fraternity houses, 'service organizations' and a variety of non-profits" can locate in residential houses. Emerine said more permissive rules for some institutional uses were part of an early draft shown to the Task Force, but the current plan is to leave the regulations for institutional uses as restrictive or more so than today.

Also, fraternity houses definitely don't qualify under the definition of institutional or service organizations. The misunderstanding stems from an erroneous chart that went out to a few people, Emerine noted. OP corrected the chart, but the fear stuck.

The flyer says,

The "transit" streets would see blocks of houses replaced "as a matter of right" by commercial activity or more dense residences (think multi-family). These changes could occur not only on Military, for example, but on any street within 500 feet of it. Streets like Chevy Chase Parkway, Nevada Ave, 32nd Steret, 27th Street, etc.—a two block swath outward from the transit street.

Actually, no. This sounds like something that came out of a game of "telephone" where people tried to explain the zoning update to one another. One person noted that there will be transit streets; another mentioned some sort of 500-foot radius around the streets; and the author concludes that any residential property within 500 feet can suddenly house large apartment buildings.

It can't. A transit line could affect commercial areas or multi-family residential areas within 500 feet, but not single-family residential areas. Some people in DC think it should, but OP doesn't agree.

The rewrite will indeed make some changes to the code, though in places like Chevy Chase they are very minor. Accessory dwellings like garage apartments will become legal. A building 40 feet tall, as zoning allows today, could hold 4 ten-foot stories instead of just 3 taller stories.

Residents should indeed learn about and understand the changes in the zoning update, and make up their own minds. But they should form conclusions based on the truth, not distortions that prey on people's fears.

Alarmism doesn't help solve real problems

People in Chevy Chase have real concerns that nobody should dismiss. Many dislike teardowns and "McMansions" replacing historic homes. But the changes in the zoning update will have little effect. Would anyone replace a building only to move it laterally by a few feet? How many property owners who don't want to tear down and rebuild their entire house today, suddenly would once they can rent out a garage apartment? Very, very few, if any.

At a recent meeting of the Federation of Citizens' Associations to discuss the issue, several people asked whether the zoning code would allow certain types of changes to properties—but the current code already allows those changes.

McMansions are legal under current zoning. Anyone can tear down their home in Chevy Chase; the neighborhood overwhelmingly rejected a historic district that would have prevented that.

Chevy Chase residents worried about certain types of building should advocate for zoning changes which actually address their concerns rather than just taking a knee-jerk position of opposing the zoning update. OP has added some restrictions in the zoning code: Geoff Hatchard and I pushed for limits on locating parking in front of commercial buildings, and OP even agreed to accelerate that provision.

Unfortunately, instead of trying to work with OP to use zoning to solve the neighborhood's problems, a number of people have decided to simply oppose the entire endeavor and refuse to speak with OP staff to separate truth from fiction. Residents of Chevy Chase should look for real information, not agitprop.

The E6 carries an average of 373 riders per day, according to WMATA, and eliminating the route would save an estimated $385,000. To replace the Knollwood portion of the E6, Metro would extend the M4 along Western Avenue to Oregon Avenue. Most residents testified in support of the E6, and a small number spoke about changing or eliminating the N8. No one spoke in support of the N8 as is, and no one spoke on the proposed K1 or V8 changes.

Cheh, Bowser, and others testified that the E6 serves upper Connecticut Avenue and Friendship Heights, both important commercial and medical destinations for seniors. They argued that cutting the E6 would hurt local businesses and burden seniors trying to reach doctors' offices.

Knollwood employees also use the E6. One resident said the M4 begins too late in the morning for staff members to arrive on time. The M4 terminates at Tenleytown and residents connecting to Friendship Heights would have to transfer to the 30s, take the Red Line one stop, or walk down Wisconsin Avenue. Although they are close, the extra commute time and walk to Friendship Heights would unfairly burden seniors and disabled riders. Several residents said shifting ridership to the M4 would create significant overcrowding and slower service.

One Barnaby Woods resident said the neighborhood is wealthy and many residents have cars. If Metro were to eliminate the E6, he would simply drive instead. The E6 is the only transit connection for many Chevy Chase residents, and some said eliminating the service would effectively isolate this section of Upper Northwest.

Metro's budget gap is $66 million. Cutting the E6 would only save $385,000, a tiny portion of this gap. Certainly, if this argument were made for every cut, it could cumulatively fail to close the gap. But because this route provides direct transit access for seniors, it is not a wise choice. Cheh indicated at the end of her testimony that the Committee on Transportation and Public Works may have found additional funds to save the E6.

The committee report does identify sources of revenue to help fund the District's WMATA subsidy, and perhaps some of this money could continue to fund the E6. Metro is considering asking the three jurisdictions for more funding.

Some residents also spoke about the N8. The N8 runs eastbound on Yuma Street from 49th Sreet to Tenley Circle. Metro estimates an average daily ridership of only 300. Eliminating service on this route would save an estimated $516,000.

Yuma Street residents are concerned that the street is too steep and with low ridership, N8 drivers often speed down Yuma, making it dangerous for children and other pedestrians. One Yuma Street resident joked that more people had spoken to save the E6 route than ride the N8.

An American University student did speak in support of the N8, saying it helps students living in Glover Park travel to AU. She supported moving the N8 off Yuma to create a more direct connection to AU, but said the route should stay.

No one spoke on the K1 or V8 routes.

In addition to public testimony on the proposed service changes, Metro officials gave a short presentation on the FY12 budget and took questions from the audience. Residents asked about customer service and problems with the weekly bus pass.

Several residents said they have had negative encounters with bus drivers and station managers, including problems using the 7-day bus pass. WMATA CFO Carol Kissal said the agency had fixed the bus pass issue and apologized for poor bus driver service. Kissal said customers will be able to load their SmarTrip cards online this summer.

Few at the meeting spoke about extending weekend rail headways, though one man commented that stopping weekend rail service at midnight would be a mistake. A representative from Amalgamated Transit Union 689, which represents Metro employees, said the union opposes service cuts because it will hurt bus and rail operators.

The WMATA panel included General Manager and CEO Richard Sarles, WMATA board members Tom Downs and Mort Downey, and Barbara Richardson, Assistant General Manager of Customer Service, Communications and Marketing at Metro. The agency held two hearings each in the District, Maryland, and Virginia. The entire docket, including all proposed bus and rail service changes, is available here.

Here's a video about bike boulevards from New York:

The bicycle boulevards would go on certain streets which travel through residential areas but stretch long distances. This not only gives cyclists a safe and comfortable through route but also discourages motor vehicles from using the streets for long trips, instead pushing them to use the major arterial routes and making the resident streets quieter and safer.

Several other roads would get "sharrows," which also promote sharing space between bikes and cars but don't give priority to bicycles.

For a number of intersections, DDOT is proposing curb extensions, or bulb-outs. Some, where there is a high volume of pedestrians, would be paved, adding space for pedestrians to wait and also shortening the crossing distance.

In other places, they would be "green curb extensions," where most of the added space is filled with plantings and designed to capture and hold stormwater that runs off from the surrounding street.

Curb extensions would go along River Road at 45th/Fessenden (paved) and 44th (green), on Davenport at Reno Road and Connecticut Avenue (both green) and 36th (paved), and at a lot of corners in Tenleytown.

At some places where three roads come together, small side roads serve as slip lanes encouraging fast turns and speeding. The study recommends closing a small section adjacent to main streets at 36th Street between Connecticut Avenue and Fessenden Street, and Brandywine Street between 42nd and River Road.

The former road space would either become a basic grass area or get additional stormwater facilities, like rain gardens, to capture and store rainwater and runoff.

From Albemarle to Brandywine Streets just east of the Tenleytown Metro station, between the Whole Foods and Wilson High School, is a pair of parallel roads, 40th Street and Fort Drive. They are only a median's width apart and serve essentially as two directions of one street with a median in between. The report calls the intersection between these and Albemarle Street "awkward, confusing, and obstruct[ing] some views."

It suggests reversing the direction, so cars travel clockwise instead of counterclockwise, and replacing parallel parking adjacent to the median with angled parking, almost doubling the amount of parking. A break in the median for U-turns, currently adjacent to Albemarle, would be moved to the center of the block, lining up with the Whole Foods while also adding crosswalks there.

42nd Street and Warren Street meet in a large, gently curving triangular intersection which also encourages speeding. The plan suggests a pair of small neighborhood traffic circles, essentially small islands in the middle of the intersection which drivers have to travel around more slowly instead of zooming through the large intersection.

These items are far from all the suggestions for improving safety and mobility in Upper Northwest. Part 2 will look at Ward and Chevy Chase Circles, other ideas that didn't make it into the report, and when all of this might actually become a reality.

Mr. Archer uses 1980 as a benchmark. But a 1979 Hoya student newspaper article reported that only 3,058 students were offered on-campus housing in 1980, or 58 percent of Georgetown's 5,293 undergraduates. Today, the University houses 84 percent of its undergraduates. In 1980, 2,235 students lived off-campus. Last semester 1,077 students lived off-campus, not including those studying abroad.*

Mr. Archer might still be right that something fundamentally changed in the 1980s. However, I think he misses the true cause. In 1986, the drinking age in D.C. rose from 18 to 21. As a result, the University implemented a harsher alcohol policy in 1987 that made drinking a punishable offense. The University also ordered the closure of the University Center Pub in Healy basement.

Students responded by moving their parties off-campus. The University instituted additional restrictions in 2007, introducing a one-keg limit and requiring that parties be registered beforehand. There aren't more students actually living off-campus now, but they might be louder.

Regardless of the cause, the 1990s were a highly contentious period. In 1996, neighbors were so bothered by the "student ghetto" that they tried to displace students by proposing a zoning overlay that would prevent more than three unrelated people from renting group homes together. The Zoning Commission rejected the proposal in 1998, ruling that it was discriminatory against students.

In response to the overlay, over 1,000 Georgetown students registered to vote in D.C. to elect two undergraduates to the Advisory Neighborhood Commission. Then-ANC Commissioner Westy Byrd distributed flyers warning students of the consequences of registering and was subsequently charged with voter intimidation (though the US Attorney's Office declined to prosecute).

Once the two students were elected, the losing ANC commissioners launched a lawsuit against them that dragged on until 2002. When I wrote a feature story about this time period, several people stressed to me how much better town-gown relations are now.

But opposition to the 2000 Campus Plan was just as fierce. Some of the points in the
Burleith Citizen Association's response letter could be used verbatim as arguments today. ("In fact, the University already has facilities on campus not presently used for undergraduate student housing that would be suitable for that purpose now or in the near future.")

At the time, the Board of Zoning and Adjustment sided with the neighborhood, refusing the University's request to increase its enrollment cap and requiring the University to publicly disclose information about student misconduct complaints. The University appealed, and in 2003, the DC Court of Appeals overturned the decision, declaring it was not the BZA's purview to rule on the University's disciplinary code.

The Southwest Quad also opened in fall 2003, bringing 780 students onto campus. There is a September 2003 newspaper hanging in our student newspaper office with the headline, "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood: Have Georgetown's persistent town-gown battles finally come to an end?" The short answer: absolutely not.

It helps the neighbors' cause to pretend town-gown relations are worse than they've ever been, which is why some neighbors have been using this tactic for decades. The reality is, history is only repeating itself. In 1997, Mayor Marion Barry celebrated with the Georgetown ANC over their success in keeping a Papa John's from opening in the neighborhood. In 2010, Mayor Adrian Fenty held a press conference at the shuttering of our beloved Philly Pizza.

In 1979, Citizens Association of Georgetown Vice President Thomas Parrott told the Hoya he opposed the 1980 Campus Plan because it would extend campus boundaries to include Nevils Hall. In 2011, CAG President Jennifer Altemus reminisced about her time as an undergraduate living in Nevils—while opposing the construction of University housing literally across the street.

Within historical context, it does not seem we are reaching a tipping point. Town-gown relations have ebbed and flowed for years. So we're finalizing the ten-year plan and residents say students are taking over the neighborhood? We're right on schedule.

"Multi-use" buildings are not the answer

Mr. Archer erroneously believes students are unhappy with the Southwest Quad and similar proposals because they are not "multi-use." Take it from a student: we couldn't care less.

Adding 800 beds on-campus would require building additional dorm-style accommodations, with double and triple rooms, common rooms and common bathrooms. Dorms are vastly inferior to off-campus options, which include kitchens, living rooms, single rooms, washing machines, dishwashers and all the furnishings of independent living.

We don't care if the dining hall is an elevator-ride away or a 10-minute walk. We want our own kitchens. We want area for entertaining. We want independence. We want apartments.

Mr. Archer's specific recommendations don't work for students. Considering Darnall's square-shaped floor plan, extending over Epicurean could only be marginally useful. But to any student, the proposal to expand Darnall would just be a sick joke.

Darnall is commonly considered the worst freshman dorm. Every floor houses about 50 people in 173-square-foot doubles. The beds are so close together that roommates can reach out and touch hands. For freshmen, this is fine. I myself survived Darnall Floor 1. But no upperclassmen would live there willingly. At New Student Orientation, ifsomeone says he was assigned to live in Darnall, the appropriate response is, "Oh... I'm so sorry."

The University actually provides townhouses and several nice apartment complexes: Village A, Village B, Nevils and Henle. But apartment complexes are more expensive than dorms, and they are not as space-efficient. In 1979 the Hoya reported that building Village A cost about $58,000 per unit—$169,180 in today's money. It's also harder to
build apartment complexes in the tiny slivers of space the architectural firm suggested.

Likewise, the University is already using the parking lot at the end of library walk to reroute the GUTS buses, as the neighbors have demanded. If the University could add apartments on top of O'Donovan Dining Hall or the new athletic facility, maybe it would attract some interested upperclassmen. But the architects did suggest adding on to Village C, so they likely already considered adding on to other buildings as well.

Considering that expensive apartment-style accommodations are the only options that will keep students on campus, when University officials insist there is no room to build on the traditional campus, they're not being wily. They're being realistic.

Going forward

The campus plan is a balance of sometimes competing interests: the University's desire to expand its offerings and bring in revenue, the neighbors' desire to preserve Georgetown's historic character and family-friendly atmosphere, and the students' desire for access to quality, affordable housing and state-of-the-art University facilities. This
balance requires compromise.

One seemingly obvious solution has since been taken off the table. I would like to see a reconsideration of the 1789 Block proposal, which could have housed 250 students in apartment-style accommodations. Neighbors considered this space "off-campus," even though it is University-owned and wedged between existing classroom buildings and University housing. After their ceaseless complaints, the University relented and struck the project from the plan.

In regards to noise, Mr. Archer says, "27% of student group homes have had run-ins with the police in the past year." Honestly, I'm surprised it' s not more. Neighbors urge each other to call the Metropolitan Police Department about noise before even talking to their student neighbors or calling the Student Neighborhood Assistance Program.

Admittedly, parties get out of control, and destructive behavior should not be tolerated. But calling the MPD about noise complaints takes resources away from real emergencies, like the too-frequent robberies, muggings and sexual assaults.

Neighbors are also quick to blame students for houses in disrepair. I have some Burleith horror stories of my own, as CAG likes to use as evidence for their cause. When I
subletted a room this summer, we had to exterminate bedbugs and pantry moths. The landlord left us to pay for the damages.

Students don't want to live in filth. But it's a seller's market. We don't have the resources or bargaining power to advocate for ourselves, and it's not a summer subletter's job to take on beautification projects. More of the condemnation needs to be directed at landlords who take advantage of students and fail to maintain their property.

Most importantly, neighbors should direct their frustrations at specific problem houses rather than write off students as a group. Responding to a student question at the Campus Plan meeting last Thursday, Ms. Altemus said, "We welcome students into the neighborhood if they obey the laws." If only she meant it.

Ms. Altemus and Mr. Archer do not decry our behavior—they decry our very presence. But under DC Code, it is illegal to discriminate against people based on their "matriculation status," which is why the Zoning Commission struck down the overlay preventing more than three unrelated people from living together. As a group, we have as much of a right to live here as anyone else.

Finally, DC Students Speak and other involved students are making good-faith efforts to engage residents about the campus plan. About 30 students showed up to last Thursday's meeting, and 784 people have signed a petition in support of the plan. My newspaper, the Georgetown Voice, has been attending these meetings from the very beginning. We want a stake in this community. Writing us off as a "student ghetto" doesn't even give us the chance.

Historic preservation professionals and regulatory authorities often find it difficult to explain to preservation advocates and the public why seemingly stunning buildings do not meet legally established criteria for designating something "historic."

More often, historic preservation debates revolve around the opposite, when preservationists want to designate ordinary, or in some cases "ugly," buildings as historic. Two well-known local examples of this include the ubiquitous vernacular farmhouses in Montgomery County's Upper Patuxent Planning Area and Washington's Third Church of Christ, Scientist.

The house fits into the former category. No important events occurred at the property. The house was a private residence throughout its active lifespan (1927-2006). There is no evidence that the property was the site of any meeting, creative act, or other event significant in local, regional, or national history. And the person who built it was an interesting but historically unremarkable individual.

In retrospect, perhaps the most historically significant event associated with the property was the 2007 effort to have it designated historic.

Albert Schulteis

Albert Schulteis (1865-1929) was born in Wisconsin and moved as an infant when his parents relocated to Washington after the Civil War in 1866. He entered the workforce in his mid-teens, c. 1880-1881, as his unemployed father, Herman Schulteis (1818-1889) sunk deeper and deeper into debt.

Washington city directories published in the 1880s ad 1890s identify the young Schulteis as a clerk. By 1900 the US census identified him as a "flour merchant." Various accounts of Albert Schulteis's life suggest that he began working in the 1880s for the newly chartered (1879) Bakers' Co-operative Association, an entity formed by Washington bakers to buy and sell flour at competitive prices.

No records were identified that could have shed additional light on the bakers' organization Schulteis entered. Its earliest officers mainly were German bakers and it likely was one of many contemporaneous trade organizations bounded by ethnicity, language, and craft.

"The speaking was interspersed with songs by the bakers, many of whom are Germans," wrote The Washington Post in an article on the group's 1906 banquet.^[1] Unlike trade unions established to protect the interests of labor, the Bakers' Co-operative Association was founded by firm owners. Studies of nineteenth century immigrant communities in American cities have shown that Germans clustered in such trades as baking, apparel, brewing, tanning, and meat.^[2]

German bakers in butchers found a safe and viable economic haven in these trades because of the durability of ethnic foodways in immigrant communities. "German immigrants with their fondness for meats and sweets prepared in familiar ways, offered these craftworkers [bakers and butchers] some economic viability," wrote historian Nora Faires on nineteenth century Germans in America.^[3]

The Bakers' Co-operative was a collaborative effort by bakers to reduce transaction costs—the costs of raw materials and the costs of selling products—by creating a network. This network of tradesmen who were competitors in the marketplace likely afforded young Albert Schulteis with an early lesson in the values of strategic alliance building. His role in the organization is unclear until the first decade of the twentieth century.

Evidence from city directories and other sources suggest that Schulteis was able to accumulate sufficient business skills and capital to establish his own flour dealing firm by the early 1890s. One strategic alliance that may have contributed to his jump from clerical worker to entrepreneur may have been his 1888 marriage to Anne Isabel Oyster, the daughter of Washington dairy merchant George M. Oyster. The 1888 marriage corresponds to the time when Schulteis moved out of the family's I Street home and his identification as a "general wholesale and retail flour dealer."^[4]

Sometime during the 1890s Schulteis became an officer (trustee) of the Bakers' Co-operative Association and by 1907 he had purchased the organization's assets at the expiration of its charter. He continued the family's membership in the Catholic Church and joined two Washington Catholic social groups: The Knights of Columbus and the Carroll Institute.

Schulteis also was a member of the German fraternal organization, the Saengerbund. The lessons he learned in strategic networking from his early years in the Bakers' Co-operative Association were deployed well as Schulteis joined a wide array of civic and business organizations. By 1907 he was on the board of directors of the Business Men's Association, the Oriental Building Association, and the St. Joseph Hall Association. He also was an early member of such groups as the Washington Chamber of Commerce and was a staunch advocate for Washington suffrage and civic improvements. He was, by all accounts—as the 1907 newspaper sketch asserted—"identified with many business and fraternal bodies."^[5]

Though Schulteis served on many boards and held elected offices in many organizations locally and nationally, he does not appear to have been individually distinctive. The many newspaper accounts covering the activities of the organizations identify Schulteis as one of many individuals to whom particular actions were attributed.

Schulteis died in October, 1929 after being ill and "confined to his home" for two years, essentially much (if not all) of the time he lived in the house. From all evidence recovered it appears that once Schulteis died and his estate was settled he was quickly forgotten. Both the Washington Post and Evening Star published obituaries and reported on his funeral.

After those articles, Schulteis's name never again appeared in Washington daily newspapers except in the classified death notice published in 1946 after his widow, Annie, died.^[6] Schulteis left no enduring legacy in Washington, DC and he rapidly became a minor footnote in the District's business and social history.

The building, its neighborhood. and its racial restrictions

Although located within a Washington subdivision that originated with the ambitious land development program by the Chevy Chase Land Company, the house did not appear to be individually significant. Its associations and setting were more significant than the building itself.

Furthermore, the large lot on which the house and garage were located represents the consolidation of the original two lots (7 and 8 in Square 1863) that Schulteis bought in 1921 plus properties acquired by his son, Herman A. Schulteis, in 1924 and 1929.

Albert Schulteis never owned all of the five contiguous lots that now comprise 3637 Patterson Street NW. There is no evidence to suggest that he ever intended to create a singular large parcel at the location where he built the house. His son, Herman, was the sole purchaser of the adjacent lots and there is no indication in Albert Schulteis's 1928 will that the original two lots should be expanded. In fact, the timing of the 1929 purchase by Herman A. Schulteis of the lot to the east, Lot 6, in June 1929 strongly suggests that he was acting in anticipation of his father's death (which occurred four months after he bought the property).

There were two buildings at 3637 Patterson Street NW: a 2.5-story house and a garage. The property's main architectural element, the 1926-1927 Schulteis house had undergone significant alterations to its original fabric. These alterations, including the removal of a projecting bay and balustrade over the porte cochere, removal of the pedimented and tile-clad front porch roof, and the wholesale removal of original windows and doors by the property's current owner diminished the property's integrity of materials. Porches, windows, and doors are character defining features and their loss significantly diminished property's integrity.

The property where in 1926 Albert Schulteis began building his house started its transformation from farmland in rural Washington County to twentieth century automobile suburb in 1888. The property that now comprises 3637 Patterson Street NW was first laid out in a subdivision plat filed with the District of Columbia's surveyor's office in December 1918. Filed by the Chevy Chase Land Company, Fulton R. Gordon, William L. Miller, and Harold E. Doyle, the plat illustrates lots north of the original Chevy Chase D.C. subdivision and includes the area north of Livingston Street and south of Rittenhouse Street and Connecticut Avenue to just east of Nevada Street. Once part of the Charles R. Belt farm, the property was one of several tracts acquired in 1888 by Jackson H. Ralston from Martha Parsons and subsequently incorporated into the Chevy Chase Land Company's holdings. Maps published in the years just after the turn of the twentieth century illustrates a 94-acre tract in the former 96-acre Belt holdings.

The 1918 subdivision plat was filed two days before the Chevy Chase Land Chase Land Company settled a 1915 $250 thousand loan debt with the Fidelity Trust Company of Washington, D.C., for which they used the land as security on the note held by the Union Trust Company of Washington. Square 1863 was one of ten squares platted. Originally Square 1863 included thirty-one lots: twenty-eight rectangular house lots, one irregular lot on Connecticut Avenue where the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church was planned, and two irregular lots abutting an alley in the east side of the square. The lots all had fifteen-foot setbacks ("building restriction line") from the roads. The rectangular house lots facing Patterson and Quesada streets fronted forty feet on the street and were 139 feet deep.

Albert Schulteis built his house in lots 7 and 8 on property first sold by the Chevy Chase Land Company in August 1921 to retired Washington dentist A. Thomas Utz. Three weeks later Utz sold the lots to Albert Schulteis, who did not undertake any improvements for five years. The deed conveying the property from the Chevy Chase Land Company to Utz contained the company's standard restrictive covenants governing land use, building setbacks, and minimum house costs allowable. The covenants read:

1. All houses upon the premises hereby conveyed shall be built and used for residence purposes exclusively, except stables, carriage-houses, sheds, or other outbuildings, for use in connection with such residence, and no trade, business, manufacture or sales or nuisance of any kind shall be carried on or permitted upon said premises.


2. That no structure shall be erected within fifteen (15) feet of the front of street line of said premises, except such as are allowed under the Building Regulations of the District of Columbia; and no stable shall be erected except on the rear of said premises.


3. That no Apartment House or Apartment Houses shall be erected thereon.


4. That no dwelling house shall be erected on said premises at a cost less than thirty-five hundred (3500) dollars.

When Utz sold the property to Schulteis, the deed simply noted that it was "subject to covenants of record."

In August 1926 Schulteis filed an application for a building permit. He proposed to construct a 2½-story brick and hollow tile house and brick garage. The proposed house was to be thirty-nine feet wide by thirty-eight feet deep with a pitched roof and face south onto Patterson Street. A concrete driveway was proposed east of the house, leading from Patterson Street to the garage which was located in the rear of the property. Although Schulteis's application did not name an architect, it did identify Henry N. Brawner Jr. as the proposed home's "designer."

Brawner was a dairy executive and it appears that he designed and built functional buildings for use in his business. The former Schulteis house appeared to contain many architectural stylistic elements used in Brawner's own house at 3516 Rittenhouse Street, a building designed by Washington architect John Albert Hunter. Brawner liberally drew from Hunter's architectural vocabulary and aesthetics in adapting the various elements to the Albert Schulteis house.

The building permit application was filed after Schulteis had been assured by the District of Columbia's engineering department that construction of a sewer line in Patterson Street NW "between Nevada Avenue and Chevy Chase Parkway" had been ordered as well as an eight-inch water main in Patterson Street. Schulteis's application was filed on 30 August 1926 and a building permit was issued September 17, 1926.

Construction of the house likely began shortly after the permit was issued. Sanborn Map Company fire insurance maps published the following year, in 1927, show the house (minus a front porch) and garage footprints. Presumably the front porch was under construction or not yet begun at the time the map survey was conducted.

Albert Schulteis spent the final two years of his life in the house. When he died in 1929, Brawner and his son, Herman, became trustees of his estate. Although accounting records in Schulteis's probate records indicate the house was valued at $40,000 at his death, this amount appears to have been inflated to correspond to the value of a 1928 loan Schulteis received from Brawner. The 1926 building permit application shows that Schulteis estimated the proposed house's value at $20,000 and the U.S. Census taken in 1930 also show's the house's value at $20,000.

Albert Schulteis's widow, son Herman A., and daughters Mary, Rosa, and Marion continued to live in the Patterson Street house until 1938. Herman Schulteis prior to his father's death had acquired the parcels to the west (Lots 9 and part of 10) and east (Lot 6) of 3637 Patterson Street NW.

After Herman's father's estate was settled, the five contiguous lots were consolidated into a single parcel at the 3637 Patterson Street address. Although the Chevy Chase Land Company had attached its standard restrictive covenants to the deeds conveying these lots to the first owners of the lot to the east of 3637 Patterson (Lot 6), William H. Ritchie and Horace C. Bailey, attached an additional, racial covenant, to the deed conveying the property to Chester Jacobs. This 1921 deed increased the minimum house cost to $7,000 and included the covenant, "No part of said land shall be sold to, occupied by, or used for residence or any other purpose, by negroes or persons of negro blood commonly called colored persons." And, unlike the earlier Chevy Chase Land Company covenants, the term of these new restrictive covenants were made effective for ninety-nine years.

Albert Schulteis's close friend Brawner died in 1937 and the $40 thousand loan remained outstanding, plus an additional $9 thousand dollar loan Brawner had made to Schulteis. To compound the Schulteis family's debt to Brawner, son Herman Schulteis also owed Brawner money: $7,750. Brawner's heirs called in the notes and foreclosed on the 3637 Patterson Street property and Herman A. Schulteis's property in Montgomery County, Maryland. The property was sold to Katherine A. Munter for $20 thousand and Brawner's estate received $18,403.33. The deed from Herman Schulteis and Edgar Brawner, Henry N. Brawner Jr.'s son, preserved the racial restrictive covenant first attached to Lot 6 only by extending it to the entire combined parcel.

The Munters (Katherine and husband, laywer Godfrey L. Munter) owned the property until 1954 when they sold it to Hanna Szgedy-Maszak and Maria de Kornfeld. In 2006 the property was sold to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington (Most Rev. Donald W. Wuerl Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington).

The creation and development of Chevy Chase was facilitated and influenced by two key pieces of federal legislation: The 1888 "Act to Regulate the Subdivision of Land in the District of Columbia" and the 1893 "Act to Provide a Permanent System of Highways in that Part of the District of Columbia Lying Outside of Cities."^[7]

While these acts provided the legal and regulatory controls governing the subdivision of land and expanding the District's transportation infrastructure, each subdivision created in the wake of the wake of the acts represents a singular act influenced by the economic motives of the subdivider. The 1918 subdivision in which the Schulteis house was built is not unified by a single architect or builder. It grew incrementally with large, multiple lot sales like those to Gordon R. Fulton, and with individual lot sales to small-scale speculators like retired dentist A. Thomas Utz, the lot's original owner.

The former Schulteis house did not "possess high artistic or aesthetic values that contribute significantly to the heritage and appearance of the District of Columbia or the nation." The house was an unremarkable vernacular building that incorporated elements of Prairie, Colonial Revival, and Mediterranean Revival architectural styles. The individual architectural elements that marked this property—its fanlight and sidelights framing the main entrance, stone window lintels and sills, bracketed eaves, low roof pitches, shingle-clad dormer and tile-clad roof, basket weave bonded brick frieze, and stretcher bond brick finish—all appeared to be liberally borrowed from dairy executive Henry N. Brawner Jr.'s house in Rittenhouse Street, built some four years before the house at 3637 Patterson Street NW.

Historic Preservation

The DC Historic Preservation Review Board held a hearing July 27, 2007, to determine if the former Schulteis house met any of the legal criteria for designation as a District of Columbia historic landmark. The neighboring Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church had proposed razing the former Schulteis house and the proposed designation was contentious because it was initiated by a third-party, i.e., a historic preservation advocate, and the property owner—the Catholic Church—opposed the designation.

Historic Preservation Office staff recommended against designation in a report (PDF) submitted to the HPRB. Tim Dennée, the staff reviewer commented that the former Schulteis house was "a very nice residence, perhaps nicer than the average in the area." Dennée noted that the building had been altered and that, "its architecture alone is not enough to justify its being designated, as it is simply not enough of a stand-out in that respect nor a true exemplar or the work of a master."

About Schulteis as a notable historical figure, Dennée wrote,

Although Albert Schulteis may have been prominent for a period in his field and among his social circle, with the perspective of time it is difficult to single him out as especially prominent or important individual among the hundreds of businessmen, civic activists, minor politicians, etc. who have populated the District of Columbia over two centuries.

The HPRB agreed with the staff report and declined to designate the former Schulteis house. A demolition permit was issued and the house was razed.

At the same time that the HPRB was evaluating the Schulteis house as an individual landmark, efforts were underway to establish a Chevy Chase Historic District. Had a historic district been in place or had the former Schulteis house been evaluated as a property that contributed to the historic district (as other architectural historians had recommended), the building might have been spared and there would be one less vacant lot in the District of Columbia.

After years of debate and consultations with District officials, residents within the proposed Chevy Chase Historic District voted in 2008 against creating the district. The preservation advocate who fought to designate the former Schulteis house essentially was asking the HPRB to create a place-holder for the anticipated historic district that never materialized.

"It is a property that would fit comfortably within a historic district that gives it context," I wrote in a Northwest Current opinion piece (PDF). "But alone it is just a brick building with an interesting but unremarkable story." Historic preservation commissions and review boards cannot legally designate properties as place holders for speculative historic districts that may or may not appear down the road.

In his staff report to the HPRB, architectural historian Dennée astutely reported,

There is an outstanding permit application to raze the house. It is regrettable that such a nice house would be proposed for demolition; such a proposal is reflective of the escalating values of the underlying real estate in Washington, an escalation that has rendered many serviceable buildings expendable in the face of other land-use demands. But the Historic Preservation Review Board's consideration of landmark nominations is based upon criteria of historical significance and not upon the immediacy or level of threat to particular resources.

Historic preservation regulatory bodies like the HPRB are required to act according to the law. In the District of Columbia historic preservation law, like federal law and many state and local legislation, there are precise criteria for what may be called "historic." Those criteria often find themselves at odds with preservation advocates and others who have strong attachments to buildings and places. When historic preservation review bodies and historic preservation professionals make decisions that citizen preservation advocates view as inconsistent with their own, rifts emerge in communities whose members share the same goals: preserving the built environment.

In the aftermath of the 2007 historic preservation battle, the Schulteis house acquired another chapter in its story. All too often historic preservation work products like the research presented in this article end up forgotten in regulatory agency files. And, once the dust settles, except for attorneys and historic preservation graduate students, few people read about contested historic preservation designations. Although the Schulteis house is gone, it still has lots to teach Washington residents.

Notes

[1] "Bakers at a Banquet," The Washington Post, 23 January 1906, 11.

[2] Nora Faires, "Ethnicity in Evolution: The German Communities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, 1845-1881" (Ph. D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1981), 251-52; Nora Faires, "Occupational Patterns of German-Americans in Nineteenth-Century Cities," in German Workers in Industrial Chicago, 1850-1910: A Comparative Perspective, ed. Hartmut Keil and John B. Jentz (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1983), 37-51; Stanley Nadel, Little Germany: Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in New York City, 1845-80 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 66-70.

[3] Faires, "Ethnicity in Evolution: The German Communities of Pittsburgh and Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, 1845-1881," 231.

[4] "Albert Schulteis," The Washington Post, 24 February 1907, 34.

[5] "Albert Schulteis," The Washington Post, 24 February 1907, 34.

[6] Annie Isabelle Schulteis death notice, The Washington Post, 24 March 1946.

[7] 25 Stat. 451; 27 Stat. 532; Elizabeth Jo Lampl and Kimberly Prothro Williams, Chevy Chase: A Home Suburb for the Nation's Capital (Crownsville, Md.: Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission and the Maryland Historical Trust Press, 1998); Michael R. Harrison, "The 'Evil of the Misfit Subdivisions': Creating the Permanent System of Highways of the District of Columbia," Washington History 14, no. 1 (2002): 26-55.