Posts about Deanwood

Richard King, the director of this year's event, said he wants to educate the students and the public about the many cost-saving opportunities presented by clean-energy products. "This event demonstrates to the public that renewable energy is possible, and all that you might pay up front evens out on the back end," he said.

He also pointed out that the capital costs of these sustainable features are dropping. "What you normally pay on average now, more than likely isn't what you're going to pay in five, 10, 20 years," King said.

"One of our key successes with the project is our relationship with D.C. government. We are very happy and exited to have support across the board; not only from our partner, the Department of Housing and Community Development, but agencies like DDOT, DDOE, and DCRA. All across the board people have come together, because of our project, and sat at the same table when they normally would not have that conversation," said Heather Zanoni, student and media contact for the Parsons Team.

In July ground was broken for the project to be placed in Deanwood. Administrative personnel from Parsons, Milano, Stevens Habitat for Humanity of DC, and Deanwood ANC commissioner Sylvia Brown participated.

For team member Amanda Waal, "bringing Deanwood and Habitat for Humanity into the discussions surrounding the Solar Decathlon has been very important to us."

Zanoni hopes to see DC government use the home as a model in establishing new policies with building codes for future homes around the District. The team is excited about moving the energy efficient home across town because even transporting the home will be sustainable. Not much energy will be used to transport it.

Zanoni added the Empowerhouse a is passive house, a very well-insulated, virtually air-tight building primarily heated by passive solar gain and internal gains from people, electrical equipment, etc. The more bodies in the building, the warmer the home gets. Energy losses are minimized and any remaining heat demand is provided by an extremely small source.

The home has won first place in the DOE's affordability category with a final cost of $229,890.26, and is currently in 4th place overall. Event attendee and local conservationist Gregory Simms said that knowing the home won in that category should inspire more Washingtonians to strongly consider Empowerhouse as a real model for the future. "Passive homes hold the country's highest energy standards and cuts heating and energy usage of any building by leaps and bounds. The Parsons team has shown that an energy efficient home can be affordable," he said.

A passive house is a comprehensive system. "Passive" describes well this system's underlying receptivity and retention capacity. Working with natural resources, free solar energy is captured and applied efficiently, instead of relying predominantly on 'active' systems to bring a building to 'zero' energy. High performance triple-glazed windows, super-insulation, an airtight building shell, limitation of thermal bridging and balanced energy recovery ventilation make possible extraordinary reductions in energy use and carbon emission.

When the Deanwood home is completed, it will actually be a duplex. A second family is still needed for the other unit. "We haven't found the second family yet, so if anyone thinks they might be the qualifications please reach out to us," she said. "People should come out to Deanwood. There are great green areas there, and history, along with beautiful homes along Pennsylvania Avenue SE."

The Decathlon continues through Sunday. If you haven't had a chance to visit, you might want to stop by West Potomac Park this weekend.

Mike DeBonis recently highlighted an even bigger failure: Upshur Park, where the grass actually caught on fire. DPR opened the park to great fanfare earlier this year, but then again didn't water the new trees and grass.

DPR followed up with DeBonis to tout Walter Pierce Park, which looks green and verdant. However, DeBonis noted, that might be because it isn't open yet.

DPR is also putting in irrigation at several of its playing fields. But this highlights what many parks advocates say is the issue: a focus on the recreational facilities, like pools, indoor rec centers, and athletic fields, over parks. Ironically, says a former DC government employee, under Mayor Williams the department was renamed to put parks first. Apparently the semantic change didn't translate to policy.

There's been a lot of upheaval at DPR in recent years. Mayor Fenty had 4 separate directors for the agency, one of whom Council refused to confirm amid controversies over contracts that were allegedly improperly routed through DPR. The Williams administration saw similar turnover rates in the job.

Perhaps the biggest cause of problems is funding. Over the last 5 budget cycles, DPR's budget was cut by 47%. It's hard to keep up maintenance of a growing set of parks and rec centers in that climate.

Now, park maintenance is slated to transfer to the new Department of General Services, which could mean it'll get the attention it needs, or it could mean it slips through the cracks entirely.

Perhaps parks slip through the cracks so much because DC has so little actual parkland that's not run by the National Park Service. Maria Barry, the volunteer president of Friends of 16th Street Heights Parks (including Upshur Park, the one that caught on fire), says that many calls to 911 about crime in the park end up routed to the Park Police, even though Upshur and nearby Hamilton Park are not federal and MPD has jurisdiction. Since almost all parkland is federal, dispatchers sometimes erroneously assume that all parkland is.

Tommy Wells now has oversight over DPR on the Council. Will he be able to make any changes? He could fight for more budget, though everyone else has pressing budgetary needs as well. Should he push for any structural reform? Some have suggested creating a separate park division, which could ensure some staff focus on parks, or it could simply rearrange the org chart to no real effect depending on how it's implemented.

When Kwame Brown announced he's open to an income tax increase, he stipulated the money go to maintaining schools, rec centers, and parks. That's a change from earlier promises to use extra money for affordable housing, but could alleviate DPR's woes.

Parks are a significant piece of building a good city for neighborhoods of all types and for all residents. We need to show that DC parks can be great. Failings at DPR aren't an excuse for NPS not to do better, but if DC could make its parks a model for urban parks, it would certainly help set an example for other, federal parks around the city.

Jock's Liquor, located on northeast corner, sells beer, wine, and spirits. Sheriff Carry-Out, on the southeast corner, sells beer and wine.

Despite the existence of these two liquor stores, the Alcohol and Beverage Regulatory Administration (ABRA) in DC is not required to consider their presence. Because they are located in Maryland, they will not be a factor at the April 13 hearing or ABRA's decision whether Uncle Lee's will receive a liquor license. In addition, Maryland residents across Eastern Avenue are not permitted to testify on the impact an additional liquor store will have on their quality of life.

All of this leads to a larger issue: When considering regulatory actions in communities near a jurisdictional border, should local government be required to engage the community outside their jurisdiction?

Using Uncle Lee's as an example, should the impact to Maryland residents be given "great weight" during the liquor license protest hearing? Should ABRA be required to consider existence of liquor license across the street in Maryland? What role, if any, should the Prince George's County government play in the process?

The issues are likely more complex than the above questions suggest, but there is a clear need for some level of inter-jurisdictional coordination. Maryland and DC have their boundaries, but quality of life issues do not.

The Far Northeast Livability Study area encompasses all of north Ward 7, between East Capitol Street, the Anacostia River, and the District line. A unique feature of the study process is an advisory council made of community members which shapes the meeting format, engages neighbors, and gives insight on key points.

This advisory council is especially important because the area has already been the focus of numerous studies in the past. Residents want to see action, not just a study that sits on the shelf.

Fortunately, DDOT Chief Gabe Klein agrees. At the monthly general meeting of the DC Federation of Citizens Associations, Klein pointed out the agency has $3 million invested in the DDOT Livability Program, including "money in the obligation plan to put solutions in place." The funds to implement the Livability Program are also included in the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government's five-year Transportation Improvement Program. Klein pledged to attend the next huddle.

The gathering discussed tools that transportation engineers use to deal with speeding and cut-through traffic, and to integrate biking connections. The toolbox includes simple, low-cost methods like painted medians, high visibility crosswalks, and in-street pedestrian yield signs. At the other end of the spectrum, there are high impact, mid- to high-cost solutions like chicanes, roundabouts, landscaped medians, and raised crosswalks.

Residents discussed these options and weighed the pros and cons of each along problem corridors like Sheriff Road, 49th Street, East Capitol Street, the Minnesota Avenue-Benning Road intersection, and the Nannie Helen Burroughs-Minnesota intersection.

The next steps in the process include a review of the meeting comments in December and a follow-up in January. With a population of nearly 30,000 people, it is critically important for north Ward 7 residents and stakeholders to be on the ball and make sure the "study" gets implemented.

Sylvia C. Brown is Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner for 7C04. Her Single Member District, bounded by Sheriff Road, Division Avenue, Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue, and Minnesota Avenue, covers a significant portion of the Deanwood neighborhood.

Although Burnham never went into business with his father-in-law beyond his firm's design of Sherman's home and the Chicago Union Stockyards landmark gate, he did benefit from Sherman's Chicago interests and he may have benefited from Sherman's longtime relationship with the Pennsylvania Railroad. John B. Sherman (1825-1902) and Samuel W. Allerton Jr. (1828-1914) were cousins whose families had been in business together since the first decade of the nineteenth century. My 2002 article, Hudson River Cowboys: The Origins of Modern Livestock Shipping, looks at some of the Allerton family's business genealogy and my forthcoming article on the East Liberty Stockyards (Western Pennsylvania History, Winter 2010) expands on the Allerton and Sherman firms.

But back to Burnham and to Washington. Burnham in 1901 was hired by the McMillan Commission in its efforts to recreate the federal city envisioned by Peter L'Enfant and remove noisome nuisances like the Pennsylvania Railroad station from the Mall. Prior to the implementation of the McMillan Plan, the National Mall was bisected by railroad tracks and open sewers euphemistically called canals. To achieve the McMillan Plan's goals towards becoming the City Beautiful, the nuisances had to go. Nearly 40 years after Burnham brought the City Beautiful to Washington, his ideals were deployed by advocates seeking to rid the District of Columbia of the business dominated by Margaret Sherman Burnham's family.

Before the McMillan Plan and later efforts to sanitize Washington's gritty urban landscape by clearing out alley dwellings and the wholesale involuntary relocation of entire communities, Washington had a vibrant industrial landscape interspersed with its federal buildings and emerging residential neighborhoods. Lost among the many histories of Washington's urban fabric are the agricultural industries that thrived within the city.

Large working farms, like the Soldier's Home (later the Armed Forces Retirement Home), raised cattle and vegetables within the city limits. Cattle, hogs, and sheep were driven into the city on turnpikes and concentrated in drove yards like the Drover's Rest in Georgetown, on the Mall, and on Capitol Hill. The animals driven to Washington's drove yards were killed in nearby slaughterhouses and sold in the District's markets.

When railroads began carrying the bulk of the nation's meat animals starting in the 1850s, Washington's drove yards followed patterns laid down in other eastern cities and they relocated adjacent to the railroads leading to the city center. For the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, this meant opening drove yards on Capitol Hill along First Street N.E. between North E and F Streets. Unlike its trunkline competitors, the Pennsylvania, the New York Central, and the Erie railroads, the B&O was a latecomer to the livestock business.

Like the other railroads, the B&O outsourced (via valuable contracts) its livestock yarding to professional drovers and livestock entrepreneurs. In Washington, the B&O did business with William E. Clark (1835-1895). Clark was a Pennsylvania native who began managing the B&O drove yards in 1861. Located near the B&O station, the drove yards were little more than impermanent pens where animals were kept before being sold to local butchers; horses and mules that came in on the railroad went to different markets for work in Washington's streets.

The drove yards remained on Capitol Hill through 1877 when the land adjacent to the B&O's Capitol Hill tracks was sold and the operation moved up the line and onto the Metropolitan Branch to Queenstown in what is now the Brookland neighborhood. Throughout the 1870s, Clark and several partners tried to get a charter from Congress to incorporate the "National Drove-Yard Company of the District of Columbia." The company proposed to build a stockyard and market facility complete with pens and scales where all of the District's livestock business could be concentrated.

The 1876 bills to incorporate the business stalled in the Committee on the District of Columbia. For a little more than a decade, the former Queen Farm served as the B&O's livestock depot in the District of Columbia. Beyond livestock market reports, maps, and a former "Drove Yard lane" mentioned in a 1900 volume on Washington trolley trips, little appears to have survived in the historical record regarding the B&O's Queenstown Drove Yards.

Since the arrival of the B&O into Washington, the District of Columbia had close ties to Baltimore's livestock and meat-producing industry. With two railroads in the city, the Pennsylvania and the B&O, Baltimore developed two railroad drove yards. The Pennsylvania's was adjacent to that road's Baltimore & Potomac Railroad at Calverton Station west of the city.

The Calverton Drove Yards were first managed by livestock entrepreneur Cary McClelland who had bought up much of the land near the station; later, the yards were run by the Calverton Stock Yards Company. The B&O's drove yards were located at the railroad's main yards at Mount Clare until 1880 and the incorporation of the Baltimore Stock Yard Company of Baltimore County when the yards were shifted west to Claremont. (In 1891, the two companies merged to form the Union Stock Yard Company of Baltimore County and Claremont became Baltimore's principal stockyards.)

By the early 1880s, Alvin N. Bastable (1837-1922), a Virgina native, had begun concentrating all of Baltimore's livestock business. In 1887, Bastable, along with Philadelphia stockyards owner and meatpacker Joseph Martin (Samuel Allerton's partner in the Philadelphia and Jersey City Stockyards and an owner of the Baltimore Union Stock Yards) and Clark, received a corporate charter from the State of New Jersey for the "Union Stock Yard Company" to build and run a fully integrated stockyards and slaughterhouse business in the District of Columbia.

One year later, the Union Stockyards opened next to the B&O and Pennsylvania Railroad tracks south of Benning Road on the east side of the Anacostia River. The new stockyards served both roads. Shortly before they opened, the Pennsylvania Railroad issued these instructions to its freight agents:

General Notice. Hereafter, all shipments of Live Stock For Washington D.C., will be handled at Union Stock Yards, located at Benning's Station, on Baltimore & Potomac Railroad. Agents will forward all shipments of Live Stock destined to Washington D. C. to "Union Stock Yards, Bennings Station, Md."

Four months later, the railroad updated the earlier notice:

Here's the notice that supercedes that notice! All Live Stock, in car loads, (except horses), destined to Wash D.C., will hereafter be receipted for & forwarded to Union Stock Yards. Shipments of horses, in car loads or less, & all other live stock, in less than car loads, will be receipted for & forwarded to Wash. D.C. , unless shippers request delivery at Union Stock Yards, in which case shipments should be sent to Union Stock Yards, Wash D.C. Philadelphia.

Over the next four decades the abattoir and stockyards at Benning Station were the District of Columbia's livestock depot and market as well as the District's principal slaughtering facility. Bastable, along with long-established Washington butchers, created several corporations under which several slaughterhouses operated next to the stockyards at the Benning Road and Minnesota Avenue intersection. By the 1920s, trucks began to supplement the rail deliveries of cattle. Farmers from Prince George's County and other parts of Maryland delivered their animals at the stockyards for sale and slaughter. Benning Station was Washington's version—on a much smaller scale—of Chicago's stockyards and Packingtown.

According to various sources, as much as 75 percent of the dressed meat produced in the District of Columbia originated in the Benning stockyards and slaughterhouses. Before closing, the Benning Station yards handled between 10 and 20 thousand cattle (excluding calves) annually. Hogs during the same period ranged from c. 50 thousand annually to 190 thousand (in 1924 and 1928). In addition to providing the District of Columbia with much of its meat supply, the stockyards and abattoir provided jobs to the men and women living in the adjacent working class neighborhoods of Northeast Washington.

A fire in 1934 swept through the slaughterhouse and subsequent efforts to rebuild it touched off a battle in Congress to outlaw all slaughterhouses, stockyards, and other nuisance industries in the District of Columbia.

Officially known as "A Bill to prohibit the use of buildings or premises in the District of Columbia for the carrying on of certain undesirable industries" and dubbed the "Abattoir Bill," Congress held hearings in 1937. If enacted, the law would have banned the manufacture of chemicals (fireworks, gas, glue, and acids), rendering, refining, stockyards, slaughterhouses, and tanneries in the District. Parties as diverse as the American Planning and Civic Association, the American Institute of Architects, the Department of the Interior, and various District community organizations all offered testimony supporting the bill while the meat and livestock industry vigorously opposed the bill. The City Beautiful concept first introduced to Washington by Burnham was front and center in the Abattoir Bill hearings, as suggested by Sen. Patrick McCarren (D-Nev.), chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia:

Washington being the Capital City should be the city beautiful and therefore nothing of this nature, that is heavy industries, industries that have a certain unpleasantness with them, should be permitted to exist within the city.

While most of the testimony received in 1937 opposed the abattoir and supported the bill, a few local residents sided with representatives from the meatpacking and other industries targeted in the bill. Northeast Washington resident Charles F. Longus, who lived "within two squares of the abattoir," wrote a letter to the Washington Star and a typed copy was included in the evidence reviewed during the 1937 hearings. "I am at a loss to know why this has caused such a stir," he wrote.

As a life-long resident of this place, I think I voice the sentiment of its citizens in saying that during the life of the abattoir it has served the community well. For over 40 years ... the abattoir has been the main place of employment, and I believe the life of every resident of Benning has been touched in some way by the operation of the abattoir. It was formerly run by Kane [sic; it was Keane & Co.], Loeffler and Auth and has employed all along from 50 to 100 men regularly, to say nothing of the part-time employees... I think the residents of Benning should have a say in the matter and I think they will say if opening the abattoir means work, by all means open it.

The Benning Citizens Association also opposed the bill. Identifying themselves as "an organized group of tax payers" who "directly represent a very small majority who would be employed" in the abattoir, they asked the subcommittee members, "As to the nuisance of this abbatoir [sic.], we as residents for years in this area wonder where and when the odors were so great that they carried to the Capitol, as said odors did not orriginate [sic.] in Benning."

After the Abattoir Bill hearings, the District of Columbia revised its zoning law and the slaughterhouse was not rebuilt. Among the principal complaints filed by the federal government was the claim that the stockyards and slaughterhouse imperiled new investments in parkland along the Anacostia and planned public housing projects including Langston Terrace to the west.

The stockyards business was hemorrhaging money without a slaughterhouse and local market for meat animals. Its operation after the fire and subsequent legal challenges was limited to resting and watering livestock in long-haul trains. In 1940, the House of Representatives held hearings on a bill to acquire the stockyards and slaughterhouse properties. The bill died in committee and within a year the stockyards property was sold. In 1942 the Union Stock Yard Company was dissolved.

The McMillan Plan changed Washington's landscape with the implementation of Burnham's City Beautiful ideal. Throughout the twentieth century, efforts like the 1937 Abattoir Bill sought to fully sanitize Washington's urban fabric. This cleansing, it appears, extends to the historical record. Recent histories of Northeast Washington's Brookland and Deanwood neighborhoods fail to mention the once lively, albeit malodorous, livestock and meat-producing industries that once thrived in those neighborhoods and along their margins. For Washington's historical record to be complete, historians must embrace the city's unpleasant offal—like the city's nuisance industries—and incorporate it into the rich neighborhood histories being written for academic and popular audiences.

7A07 sits at the Pennsylvania Avenue gateway to Ward 7. A key property in this SMD is the MPD 6D Substation that the community has been fighting for years to keep open. During this commissioner's term, the lease extension will expire.

The incumbent Villareal Johnson has two challengers, Adwoa Aggrey and Robert Idlett. Some residents hold him in high regard, while others handpicked Aggrey to run against him for to her efforts opposing a permit for a daycare operating out of a private residence. Idlett is a young resident who has worked in city government his entire career. He has wants to organize monthly clean-ups and push for economic development.

Although Johnson comes with mixed reviews from residents in his SMD, he has been a vocal champion of creating community benefits agreements that provide a sustainable benefit to the community as opposed to one-time benefits, such as turkey dinners, which have satisfied some ANC commissioners.

ANC 7B has traditionally been one of the stronger ANCs in Ward 7, containing Hillcrest, Randle Highlands, Penn Branch, Fairlawn, and Fort Davis neighborhoods. Robert Jordan is challenging incumbent Richard Evans in 7B06, which includes Fairfax Village. Jordan comes with fresh ideas to assist the ANC in running more structured and professional meetings. In addition, he is focused on economic development, public safety, and keeping the community litter free.

Evans has missed several ANC meetings and when he is in attendance he does not stay the entire meeting. Most members of the SMD have no idea who he is as he does not communicate with them. Evans sits on a lot of boards and committees, such as DC's Bicycle Advisory Council, Pedestrian Advisory Council, Deanwood Main Streets, and the East Washington Foundation board. However, his participation in each of those committees has been consistently spotty.

Ronnie Streff has been labeled a rabble-rouser due to vocally expressing opinions that sometimes go against the grain of more longtime residents. However, in his role as in the Capitol View Civic Association he has been instrumental in working with the city to have their basketball courts repaved and tennis courts refurbished, in addition to an annual community day.

He is also a volunteer member of MPD and a DDOT Livability Community Advisor. In 7C03, around Kelly Miller, he is challenging incumbent Catherine Woods, who has missed several ANC meetings and when she does attend she is usually arguing for the sake of arguing. Most disturbing to a community over run with liquor stores, she has missed key ABRA hearings over making substantial changes to liquor licenses.

Sylvia Brown, who represents 7C04 in Deanwood, has been one of Ward 7's most effective and visible commissioners. She tweets constantly, showed the City Paper around the neighborhood, and pushes for better transit-oriented development in the area's Metro stations. She is running unopposed, but deserves special mention for her advocacy and particularly her ability to build relationships across both sides of the river.

Veronica Ranglin, a long time fixture in the community, apparently opposes everything. She has been attacking the Kingman Park/Rosedale Community Gardens, citing the garden is a breeding ground for mosquitos, rodents, and other unwanted insects.

Lisa White is running against Ranglin for the Kingman Park district 7D01, the only SMD in Ward 7 west of the Anacostia. White is a fourth generation Washingtonian and a supporter of the community garden.

Both Liz Pecot, challenging Rick Tingling-Clemmons in ANC 7D05 around Benning Road Metro, and Derrick Daniels against Sharita Slayton in Eastland Gardens' 7D02, would bring new life to districts where the longtime incumbents have ceased to put much energy into the community and the role of commissioner. Tingling-Clemmons is also on the ballot challenging Eleanor Holmes Norton as a representative of the Statehood Green Party.

Incumbent Evelyn Hunter Armstrong in Marshall Heights' 7E06 deserves reelection over hopeful Marquette Austin. Armstrong has been working with fellow commissioner Maxine Nightingale-Starling to bring all the commissioners of Ward 7 together. Ward 7 needs to have people like Armstrong working to unite the ward.