Posts about Dupont Circle

It was at 8 o'clock on the evening of Sunday, January 31, 1892, that [Howard J.] Schneider shot his wife, Amanda Hamlink Schneider, and his brother-in-law, Frank Hamlink, almost in front of their father's door, on [1733] Q Street between Seventeenth and Eighteenth. Schneider was a young electrician when he met Amanda Hamlink, in the summer of 1891.

He was of good family, not a bad-looking young fellow, who dressed well and drove fast horses. He made love to the young lady, became engaged to her, and one day in June when they were out driving he produced a marriage license and threatened to shoot himself unless she married him at once. Miss Hamlink yielded, and a minister in Hyattsville performed the ceremony.

The marriage was kept a secret until fall, when the young woman's father discovered it. Then there was a scene, the father suspecting at first that the marriage had been a fraud, and requiring Schneider to produce the certificate. After that Schneider went to the Hamlink house to live. His cruelties made the life of his wife an unhappy one. More than once he threatened to shoot her. Finally he began staying out late at night, and after due warning was locked out from the Hamlink house.

About this time, a few weeks before the tragedy, he became enamored of a young girl from Virginia who was visiting [her sister who also lived on that same Q Street block]. He determined to secure a divorce from his wife, and made preparations to go to Chicago. On the Sunday evening of the tragedy he had sent a colored man to the house with a note asking if his wife intended to live with him.

While he was waiting for an answer across the street from the house, his wife, with her brother and sister, walked down Q Street from Eighteenth. Schneider crossed over to them, leaving his chum, Marion Appleby on the south side of the street.

Grasping at his wife roughly by the wrist, he told her he wanted to speak to her. The brother interfered. Schneider drew a revolver and fired five shots. Three of them entered the body of his wife, whom he still held by the hand, one pierced Frank Hamlink's breast, and the fifth crashed through the window of the Hamlink house.

Frank Hamlink fell into the street, dying almost instantly. Mrs. Schneider was able to walk into the house. She languised until the 6th of February, and left a dying declaration detailing the circumstances of the crime.

Howard Schneider threw down his revolver by the body of Frank Hamlink and fled. Within a half hour he walked into the nearest police station and gave himself up, saying he did the deed in self-defense.

Although most of us have never heard a thing about it, Howard Schneider's trial was one of the most infamous the city has ever experienced. The Washington Post's April 10, 1892 edition (the day after the verdict) was the largest edition it had ever published up to that time. 10,000 additional copies and an extra came off the presses.

Many witnesses were called, and in a dramatic twist, most of them lived on T.F.'s block of Q Street row houses. This meant that they knew both the Hamlink and Schneider families and some were still indebted to T.F. for the property.

When T.F. took the stand, he was accused of intimidating some of his neighbors. In one instance, he had sold a Q Street row house to a Mr. Bean and still held 2 notes for $2000 against him. Before Mrs. Bean testified at trial, T.F. had told the Beans that he could renew the note. After she testified, T.F. wrote Mr. Bean that he would no longer do so because he was unsatisfied with his wife's testimony.

Howard and his friends did their best to plant evidence that he acted in self-defense, but the prosecution was able to debunk most of these details. They proved that Howard stole Hamlink's gun, shot him with it, and then threw it by his body. They showed that Howard planted a second gun and that he created fake bullet holes in his own clothing.

Perhaps the most telling and dramatically sad testimony of the trial came from Mrs. Schneider, Howard and T.F.'s mother, who was forced to describe the mental instability of her son. Of Howard, she said:

He was always talking to himself in his room…and would swear at me or some imaginary person. When I went upstairs to remonstrate with him he would slam the door and swear. He would leave the house after breakfast in pleasant spirits, and would return to lunch out of temper. Often he would break out at the table violently. He had trouble with everyone with whom he had dealings, and always complained that they were against him. He was constantly making appointments and failing to keep them.

Howard's important family bought him good lawyers, but that was all they could do to help him. For the year after he was convicted of the murders and sentenced to death, his attorneys appealed to overturn the conviction on insanity grounds. They brought the case as high as the US Supreme Court, which refused to step in. On March 17, 1893, after President Cleveland denied clemency, Howard J. Schneider was hanged in the DC District jail.

Cross-posted at The Location.

According to Lange, Pinky Swear is renting the space from Spooky Action Theater, which has a lease for the basement. A resident who lives nearby notes that Spooky Action hasn't been holding productions in the church for a while, which is why this issue is just arising now. Also, he said that the theater groups have been using the narrow alley, adjacent to homes, as the entrance rather than the front door of the church on 16th Street.

The policy question here is, are our zoning rules too restrictive?

On the one hand, zoning creates some predictability. Residents right near the church know to expect a lot of activity on Sunday mornings but not nighttime performances. Audiences coming out of theaters can sometimes be noisy, and could disturb people. That's especially true if they're using a back door adjacent to homes rather than a front door.

On the other hand, having more arts events contributes to a much richer city. Groups like Pinky Swear are small, have little money, and can't afford spaces in places like downtown. Established theaters have theater companies that already use those spaces most of the time. If our zoning keeps the arts corralled into a very narrow range of opportunities, that limits it tremendously, especially for young and emerging artists.

Any zoning changes take tremendous time and money. A developer of a large building can afford to do this, but a small theater company or church can't possibly do it just to put on a play.

There are significant parallels between this case and the recent regulatory disputes around secondhand stores and the car service Uber.

Uber was doing something new and innovative which the existing regulations didn't precisely predict. Their model might or might not have been legal under the regulations, depending how you interpret it. The Taxicab Commission decided that they were breaking the rules, and came down hard.

Used bookstores, vintage clothing shops, and more operated for years under a general retail license, but recently DC officials determined that they actually have to use a different license that mainly covered pawn shops. That license is much more expensive, and requires far more detailed reporting requirements, which made sense for pawn shops to avoid stolen merchandise but is less applicable to stores which buy used goods from distant wholesalers.

In all 3 cases, one can make a case that DC needs to enforce the rules as written. Should we really turn a blind eye to unlawful behavior? If so, how do we decide which unlawful behavior to ignore?

On the other hand, bending zoning rules has sometimes brought tremendously positive results. In many of the warehouse districts of older industrial cities, for instance, revitalization began when people moved into the vacant spaces and started living there. Often, though, they weren't zoned for residential. As New York's Soho became a popular loft space, for many years all of the residents were breaking the zoning rules.

In this case, the zoning code could be more permissive toward arts uses. Arts performance could be one of the "corner store" type uses that can locate in residential zones subject to various restrictions, as I previously suggested. The new code could also allow arts uses in residential zones under a "special exception" rather than a variance, which still requires a long and complex process before the Board of Zoning Adjustment, but lets the BZA grant permission more easily.

For cities to thrive, neighborhoods need to evolve as the desires of their residents changes over time. Zoning can rarely keep up. The best thing we can do is err on the side of more flexibility and fewer regulations.

Current building needs changes

The brick building, on Church between 17th and 18th, was originally the gymnasium for the private all-girls Holton-Arms School, which was located in Kalorama until moving to Bethesda in 1963. In 1975, the building became a theater, and the Keegan became its full-time resident company in 2009.

It's a charming and intimate theater, and the Keegan has put on some great productions there, but the building poses some big obstacles. The front steps are not accessible for people with disabilities, and the front lobby is very small. There's a very limited backstage area and almost no space for building sets, creating costumes and props, or for actors to dress.

The bathrooms are tiny, squeezed into the basement, and not very nice. During intermission, there are long waits. I live on this particular block, and so when Greater Greater Wife and I go there for shows, we just go home to use the restroom between acts, but that's not an option for most people.

After seeing the condition of the bathrooms, an arts donor gave the Keegan money to renovate the space. They shared with neighbors and the ANC their proposed plans to dig out a basement, to create space for production and green rooms, opening up more space for the lobby and bathrooms.

The only externally-visible change would be a small new foyer in the current side yard, between the theater and the building next door. The new foyer would make space for an ADA-compliant elevator and new stairs between floors.

At a recent community meeting, one question from neighbors revolved around the design of the addition. The architect, Stoiber & Associates, has proposed a very modern look for the addition, with wavy lines and multi-colored glass.

Besides the theater, Church Street is filled with turn-of-the-century painted brick townhouses, with a few larger apartment buildings at the end of the block and one in the middle, across from the Keegan. Would a tiny addition just over 16 feet wide in this style look very strange tucked amid the rows of brick townhouses?

What do you think?

Preservationists differ on "compatibility"

This question raises a point of great debate in historic preservation. When a new building comes into a historic area, or a historic building gets an addition, the law says that the addition must be "compatible" with the historic district. But what is "compatible"?

Some preservationists feel that "compatible" means the new addition should resemble the old in style. This is the approach review boards take in some places, such as Georgetown. The Old Georgetown Board wanted the Georgetown Apple store to look like a Georgetown building and not a typical glassy or white Apple store.

There's some merit to this approach. Georgetown has a charm that comes from a consistent architectural style. Architects often want to make their buildings as flashy as possible, but rows of small buildings like those along a commercial strip shouldn't out-compete each other for dazzle; they should look like a row. They needn't all be identical, but shouldn't create a chaotic riot either.

In the rest of DC's historic districts, the Historic Preservation Office has generally taken a different approach. They argue that a new building should not try to look like old buildings, but exhibit a style and materials "of its time." In other words, a building built in 2012 should look to the observer like a 2012 building.

But not all 2012 buildings look alike. A 2012 building could use brick, like the rest of the street, only it could look like 2012 brick. Or, it could strive for a super-modern look that's totally opposite.

At a recent Historic Preservation Review Board meeting, board member Graham Davidson criticized a project on Florida Avenue, saying, "Your responsibility is not to create an icon... [but] to knit the neighborhood back together." Will the board want something iconic or something that seems to connect the fabric on both sides?

The theater is in the center of a residential block, and is a larger building than the adjacent row houses. That means it already serves as a focal point rather than a part of the row. By that logic, a prominent addition would make sense, to further punctuate the building's unique role among its neighbors.

On the other hand, the board might feel that a flashy design for a tiny addition detracts from the beautiful, old, historic main theater, and want something less conspicuous. They could ask Keegan to tone down the flash and dazzle in favor of either a more modest glass atrium or a brick addition that doesn't stand out.

As a resident of the block, I can see both sides of this one. As modern designs go, this is actually fairly attractive. However, always hard to know for sure how a project will look just from its renderings. Will the colors be as vibrant as they appear there? How much will it stand out, really? Plus, this isn't a large building in a distinctive architectural style; it will be 15 feet wide. Will such a small piece look too strange with such different materials from everything else?

Regardless of the approach Keegan and HPRB choose, a renovated theater that meets the needs of today will enhance the neighborhood and strengthen the arts in DC. The donor's contribution goes a long way, but the Keegan will need to raise more money from its audience and supporters to get the project built.

Keegan will present the latest draft of the plans to ANC 2B at next Wednesday's meeting, and the Historic Preservation Review Board will discuss the proposal later this month.

I used to live near there and parked on the street. When I had to move my car for street cleaning, it would usually take under 5 minutes mid-morning to find an alternate space, but coming home from a car trip on a Saturday night or Sunday morning could mean a 20-30 minute quest for a space.

Residents in this and other spots are understandably interested in change. They'd like a less daunting parking experience. Plus, if the residential blocks are supposed to prioritize parking for residents, why are we giving it to diners?

More importantly, why should this parking be free? Parking in garages isn't free. At the meters on 18th, it's not free (except Sundays). Free parking on residential streets just encourages people to circle the neighborhood for a long time to save some money.

DDOT could pursue a few options.

Reserve parking for residents of all Ward 2 neighborhoods. A simple approach would be to set up the same arrangement Jack Evans has suggested for Logan Circle: Designate one side of every street for holders of Zone 2 stickers only. A related option, with similar pros and cons, would be to extend Residential Permit Parking hours later into the night and to weekends.

These options would free up a lot of parking for residents, though with so many residents in the area, it still wouldn't guarantee that anyone would be able to park on any given block.

There are also a few downsides. For one, people often have contractors, housecleaners, friends, family members, and others who don't live in the area drive to visit residents. In other wards, these parking changes went hand in hand with visitor passes. Each household got one, and any car sporting a pass counted as a resident.

In Ward 2, there would be too much abuse. If every resident got a pass, many would sell them to people who want to drive jobs in the ward. DDOT monitors Craigslist and other sites for people selling passes, but the temptation and potential profit would be far higher for Ward 2.

Another downside is that it would also encourage more driving from neighborhoods like Georgetown, which happen to be in Ward 2, at the expense of drivers from U Street or Adams Morgan in Ward 1 or other DC neighborhoods. If we are dedicating parking to residents of a neighborhood, then it should actually apply to residents of that neighborhood, not them plus others who by accident of legislative line-drawing live in the same ward.

Reserve parking for actual Dupont residents. DDOT could reserve one side of the street as above, but also give out new 2B stickers to residents of the ANC 2B area. Only drivers with those stickers would get the new privileges.

Reserve parking, then "sell" the excess. Any of these schemes to reserve parking may overly limit parking especially at lower demand times. Should we just leave part of the street empty much of the day? DDOT could also reserve one side of each street, or even both sides, but also let drivers pay for some of the extra space.

It's too expensive to install multi-space meters on each block, but now that DDOT has ParkMobile, it could offer these spaces through that service. Just put up signs that say something like, "Reserved for cars with 2B stickers only, OR pay $5 an hour for this space at ParkMobile."

DDOT would set the price at a premium level. This parking is primarily reserved for residents, but others can use it too if they want to pay the higher rates. If they don't, then use a garage, or arrive by Metro, bus, bike or foot.

Set meters to a market rate. There are a number of meters in the neighborhood. At night, they're usually all full. During the day, they're often not very full at all. If a more rigorous analysis bears out this anecdotal evidence, DDOT ought to raise rates at night and lower them during the day. That could bring more drivers in to patronize businesses middays, when the neighborhood is only moderately busy, and generate more revenue at night, when people will fill up the spaces regardless.

DDOT and ANC commissioners will likely support approaches which have support at the meeting and oppose those which don't. Some good ideas for 17th Street's streetscape got thrown out because a majority of people at a community meeting opposed the idea. If you live in the neighborhood, it's important to try to attend.

The meeting starts at 7 pm in the Foxhall Room of the Hotel Dupont, which is on Dupont Circle at New Hampshire Avenue on the north side. Go in the New Hampshire main entrance and turn right to reach Foxhall.

DDOT sent the Congo and the State Department a letter a month ago, finding that the paving violated DC regulations. That was the basis for the State Department's follow-up letter telling the Congo to take the paving out.

Another successful fix comes from Mount Pleasant, where ANC commissioner Jack McKay alerted us recently to a change that had destroyed the pedestrian walkway along Irving Street. This section, where Irving climbs from Adams Mill Road along the edge of Rock Creek up into the neighborhood, has high-speed traffic and no sidewalk.

McKay wrote,

...that bit of road is also a vital pedestrian link between a bus stop and the Harvard Towers, a 193-unit DCHA structure housing mostly the aged and the disabled. Being aged and/or disabled, the residents mostly take the bus, and for years walked in the street, into oncoming traffic, to reach this bus stop.

But in 2006 the Mount Pleasant ANC persuaded DDOT to build a temporary barrier of jersey wall, creating a safe pedestrian passageway to that bus stop. (The ANC also purchased a bench for that bus stop, which DDOT installed so that those folks would no longer have to sit on an uncomfortable guard rail while awaiting the bus.)

Initially there was a series of posts in the street to guide drivers away from that jersey barrier and into the traffic lane. The posts gradually vanished, ampu­tated by careless drivers. That left the jersey wall barrier exposed in the street, with only the post mounting hump remaining to direct cars away from it.

Recently, the jersey barrier was moved over, creating a less crash-prone arrangement for the speeding cars but blocking the path for pedestrians.

Was this a misguided DDOT crew thinking they were making the road "safer"? We don't know, but after being alerted to the situation, DDOT restored the jersey barriers to their correct spots and added one of the sand-filled crash barrels.

This stretch of road still feels like a highway, and crash barrels are more usually seen on high-speed highways than local streets, but making the roadways in and around Rock Creek Park more hospitable to all modes is a longer-term issue that will involve additional significant changes from both DDOT and the National Park Service. Meanwhile, it's great that residents can at least walk safely to their bus stop.

The land beginning just in front of the porch all the way to the street is actually public space, not part of the lot. DC laws prohibit parking cars in public space, even when there is a driveway. However, many embassies nevertheless park cars there, and there's little or nothing DC can do about it.

On the question of the trees, representatives from the embassy assured community members they could build the driveway without killing the trees, but many with experience from other projects were doubtful. In the end, the embassy withdrew its request for the driveway, but received approval to convert a walled-in rear yard into a parking lot as well as to add a flagpole.

Then, in September, the embassy paved the entire yard and removed all of the trees. Members of the Dupont Conservancy asked the State Department to intervene, and the Dupont Circle Citizens Association protested outside the building.

The ambassador told the Examiner that they never promised not to pave over the yard. Plus, though they had promised not to build the driveway, he said that nobody can stop them from building the driveway if they wanted to.

Apparently DDOT and the State Department don't see it that way. In the letter, Cliff Seagroves of the State Department says,

The District of Columbia's Department of Transportation (DDOT) has investigated this matter and informed the Embassy in a letter dated November 17, 2011, that the referenced action constitutes a violation of the Board of Zoning Adjustment's Notice of Final Rulemaking and Determination and Order (No. 18162), issued on March 8, 2011. DDOT has further informed the Embassy that it is required to remove the unauthorized paving from public space and replace it with DDOT-approved landscaping within thirty days of the date of DDOT's letter.

Subsequent to the delivery of DDOT's letter, the Department of State again formally raised this matter with the Congolese Embassy, advising that it expects the Embassy to comply with the DDOT's requirement that it take prompt, corrective action.

Seagroves adds that he recently toured the interior and feels the Republic of Congo has been taking great care to restore the property.

DDOT's 30-day deadline ends December 17. Will the embassy heed the requests of neighbors, DDOT, and the State Department and take out? Sadly, no corrective action can restore the mature trees, but landscaping will be far more appealing, and appropriate, than the completely paved-over yet empty yard.

This past January, the Republic of the Congo agreed to purchase the Toutorsky Mansion at 16th and Riggs to house their embassy, previously located in Crestwood. The Congo initially asked to create a circular driveway in the front yard, which was then grass and enclosed by an iron fence.

Neighbors and DDOT (and I) opposed the idea, saying it wasn't necessary and was bad for transportation. The State Department said that it saw no security need for the driveway.

The building already has a garage in the rear, and the Congo got approval to turn a walled-off rear yard into parking as well. The circular driveway would lead to curb cuts too close to the corner than regulations allow, and would force moving a bus stop (though some people who ride the bus said moving the stop would be welcome).

One of the biggest worries was that the yard would turn into permanent parking. At first, Congo representatives said the ambassador would park his car there permanently. DC regulations prohibit parking cars in public space, and existing circular driveways can only be used for pick-up and drop-off, not car storage.

However, many embassies do park cars in their driveways, and even though that territory is still technically public space rather than part of the property, there's nothing DC can do about it.

Further, there are 3 mature trees on the property, and while the driveway proposal avoided the trees, people experienced with construction pointed out that building a driveway would very likely kill the trees.

Wanting to move ahead quickly with the application, the Congo withdrew its request for the circular driveway, and the Foreign Mission Board of Zoning Adjustment, which rules on applications to locate embassies, approved the application without any permission for curb cuts or paving in public space.

Recently, neighbors noticed that the embassy was paving its front yard after all. Worse yet, they paved the entire front yard, even more than in the original application. They took out all 3 mature trees.

This doesn't add in the curb cuts themselves and cars can't get into the paved yard (so far, anyway), but it still creates the same visual blight or worse than the initial application, which showed the yard remaining unpaved (except for the driveway) and the trees remaining.

It also breaks promises made during the hearing. According to Jack Jacobson, the ANC Commissioner for the area who attended the zoning hearing, one of the Congo's expert witnesses, local preservationist Emily Eig, testified that the only changes to the property were to add the parking in the rear, restore the building, and add the flagpole.

The Dupont Circle Conservancy sent a letter to the Department of State and the DC Zoning Administrator asking them to insist that the Congo remove the paving, restore the yard, and replant mature trees.

The Congo needs to be held to its promises in its zoning application and in its testimony at the zoning hearing. If the State Department won't do that, then any zoning applications for locating embassies will have no meaning; any foreign government can simply promise whatever residents and government agencies ask, get control of the property, then do whatever they wish. That will make neighborhoods fight even unobjectionable applications, fearing the consequences.

The curb lane in front of the Wilson Building, DC's city hall/state capitol at 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, offers dedicated parking for members of the DC Council. Tommy Wells (who typically doesn't drive anyway) arranged to use "his space" for a Park(ing) Day park, and David Catania joined in to make 2 park(ing) spaces.

The space will be open from 8 am to 6 pm. With the help of Washington Parks and People, Wells will convert these spaces into a park where you can relax (and lobby any councilmembers who pass by). From 12:30 to 1, representatives from the DC Department of Health will organize "light physical activity demonstrations" which people can do in business clothes, and provide information on exercise, nutrition, and more.

In Dupont Circle, Casey Trees is hosting a Park(ing) Day space at New Hampshire Avenue and Q Street, NW from 8 am to 5 pm. And in Montgomery County, the planning department and Congress for the New Urbanism are joining forces to create a space on Ellsworth Drive, between Cedar and Fenton, in Silver Spring, from 10 am to 2 pm.

If you know of any other Park(ing) Day events in the region, note them in the comments and I'll add them to the post.