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"Yeah, a former associate of mine has been set up in there pretty tight for a number of years," said community activist William Alston-El, who through community work and life experiences is affiliated with Anacostia's underworld. "His wife died and that's when he started. He's on crack, he's pretty gone in the head, you know. Yeah, you could say it's a crack house abandominium, a lot of people have been up in there, you know what I mean?"

By 2011 the taxes grew to more than $3,000. At this time Redemptor Litium, LLC, with holdings throughout all city neighborhoods, purchased the lien.

"This is a typical law school exam question," says James M. Loots, the lawyer representing Redemptor Litium, LLC. "The tax sale is supposed to fix the problem of getting the property under control and back to contributing property taxes."

Loots says his client has filed a motion for judgment and followed every necessary step to receive an order of foreclosure from posting the mandatory orange notice on the front door, to searching for heirs in the probate docket, to advertising in the paper for all known and unknown heirs to come forth.

The case is on a judge's desk and awaits another status hearing scheduled for next month.

Unfriendly neighbor

Dewey Sampson lives next door to the crack house abandominium. A federal employee, Sampson bought his home a little less than two years ago. On move-in day, two men sitting out front of the house next door offered their help, as good neighbors. Sampson soon learned from a long-time resident two down over that the men didn't live there. Nobody does. They are known undesirables, squatters.

"Early last summer I saw the orange sticker posted on the door," Sampson said. "I was really excited. I thought something was going to happen, but I didn't think it would take this long."

After the posting, last fall Sampson called the police on two squatters, who after an evening of drinking and drugging were cursing at each other loud enough for Sampson to hear through his walls.

"The police came right away. When they took one of the guys away he kept yelling, 'This is my house! This is my house! I was like what is he talking about?" said Sampson.

After telling him what I'd heard from Alston-El, Sampson said it now made sense. What's still illogical to Sampson and his fiance is how the house could sit vacant for so many years.

"This is a paradigm example of what the tax sale process is designed to address—getting vacant or neglected properties back on the tax rolls and into productive use. Unfortunately, that process takes a very long time," said Loots.

The sooner the better for Sampson, who last week saw a face he'd never seen before leaving the back of the house. "I don't want to judge people, but she looked like she was on drugs." Adding insult to injury, Sampson just paid an exterminator as a result of termites coming over from the abandominium.

"Those guys coming and going primarily are a safety concern for my fiancé, me, and the entire neighborhood. What if they set the house on fire and it spreads?" Sampson said. "What do we do then?"

Inside the house

This past Sunday morning with iPhone in hand, I went around to back of the home. Although the city boarded up the front door and the adjacent window last fall, I saw no evidence that anyone has made an effort to secure the rear.

I opened the mesh-screened back porch easily. There were bars on the back porch window to stop intruders from climbing in, but the back door is wide open.

Stepping inside the kitchen, the rancid smell of urine welcomed me. The counter was covered in stubs of used candles and empty cans of Goya beans. The floor was littered with all sorts of debris, including chunks of fallen plaster from the ceiling. Slices of light from the second floor peeked through through small gaps in the floorboards above.

In the living room, more clothes covered the floor, along with discarded syringes and a bent spoon used to fire up dope. Two windows fronted 14th Street, one boarded up, one deflecting the morning sun behind a thick curtain. Peeling back the curtain, I saw Engine Company Fifteen; down the street is Saint Phillip the Evangelist Episcopal Church; in the median sits the restored Old Market House Square, which had a ribbon cutting last fall.

In the tight hallway junk mail fertilizes the floor. Three framed pictures rest atop the radiator: a baby girl not yet pre-school aged, a young man flashing a smile in cap and gown, and repentant hands coming together in a moment of prayer. Lord knows the rebirth of Historic Anacostia's crumbling homes need communion through any and all lines of invocation. Underneath the three photos is an unread Washington Post from this past November.

I ascended the staircase, keeping my ears open for any sounds of rustling. At the head of the stairs is a small room, the door ajar. A bare mattress sat snug in the far corner, amid fallen sheetrock and plaster. Behind the door I saw dress shirts and suits. I walk back into the hall and past the bathroom with the upturned bathtub and toilet laying on its side.

In the far room, Clothes strewn everywhere, a king size bed headboard sans bed, a plastic lawn chair, a DirecTV remote with no television to control. Running up in the home on the lonesome, without the better company of friend, I feel I should get going.

Passing a closed green door, I heard the static of a raspy cough. Time to get ghost. I slipped down the stairs, knowing the man behind the green door will not pursue what he likely thinks is a fellow squatter just looking for a small poor man's piece of the rock, an abandominium.

Over debris, clothes, beer cans, and drug paraphernalia I passed through the living room, crouched under a long board that's presumably been set up as a barrier between the kitchen and further entryway into the abandominium for a less able-bodied person. My first and last self-guided tour of an Anacostia abandominium.

I give Alston-El a call, telling him what I saw.

"What's the waiting list for housing in this city, 45,000? Me and you could find that many units and more in all these abandominiums," Alston-El says. A painter-by-trade, Alston-El repeats his lament, "They fix these places up and then there'd be jobs for everyone from the community who can work with their hands. It could create some small businesses. Yeah, but they don't want to do that, you see, because it would save the neighborhood. But, nope, too much like right."

Madam Chairman and members of the Council,

Appointing DDOT Director Terry Bellamy to the WMATA Board of Directors represents a very significant opportunity. There are many such opportunities, such as to work with you to push WMATA to correct its stifling and longstanding stance of secrecy toward riders and simply to make sure needed repairs are on track, but specifically having the DDOT director on the board is a chance to bring DDOT and WMATA closer and foster greater coordination between these agencies.

Each controls an enormous share of the transpor­tation infrastructure that our residents depend on every day, yet the two agencies often do not work in harmony as much as needed to move transportation forward.

By far the greatest opportunity to improve transportation for District residents lies in our bus service. DC spends over $190 million per year in public operating dollars on our bus service. That is about 3½ times the amount we spend on Metrorail, and is more than double DDOT's operating budget.

Bus delays from traffic swell this cost and cause pain to our residents. For example, I recently received this email from a reader who will soon be moving to the Wisconsin Avenue area:

My wife took a bus going from Federal Triangle over to Wisconsin Ave for an appointment but also near our future new home. She became stuck in traffic on I St and is now cursing the bus. What is the outlook for the H & I bus lanes?

With the volume of buses that use that route, it really should be a priority. Anything that can be done to help speed up the process? My wife was spoiled by few stop Metrorail commutes and the bus is a big adjustment for her.

This type of question is far from unusual. Residents rich and poor, black and white, in outer low-density areas and inner high-density ones all struggle with bus delay if they aren't fortunate enough to have both home and work close to a Metrorail station.

There is an enormous amount DC could be doing to reduce the costs of bus travel while improving speed and reliability for our bus riders:

• Allow appropriate turning movements for buses to help them get through congestion
  
• Create queue hopper lanes that help buses bypass traffic waiting at signals
  
• Enforce illegal parking that prevents buses from making turns or bus stops
  
• Locate bus stops in ways that allow buses and customers to use them more efficiently
  
• Create bus lanes where practical
  
• Implement traffic signal priority
  
• Improve the accessibility of bus stops so that fewer riders are dependent upon, or beholden to, costly and unreliable MetroAccess service
  
• Remove on-street parking where the benefits outweigh the costs.

There are dozens of recommendations in WMATA line studies and service evaluations that have not yet been implemented. Sometimes, these just do not come up in internal DDOT discussions. At other times, WMATA and DDOT's transit staff point to the recommendations, but the engineers and traffic operations folks balk at implementing the studies.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution. These divisions work for Director Bellamy. He can bring these issues from WMATA and ensure that DDOT prioritizes implementing them.

Here are a few examples:

• WMATA was implementing bus priority on the 70s lines at the same time DDOT was planning the 7th Street streetscape. However, there was no coordination on signal technology needs.
  
• The 90s line study proposed bus enhancements along U street, but DDOT paid no attention to these recommendations while they simultaneously designed streetscape enhancements on U Street. Meanwhile, efficiency recommendations for 8th Street go almost completely unnoticed.
  
• A study about the potential for bus lanes on H and I Streets downtown was supposed to be complete in March, but still remains months from completion, with no clear path to implementation thereafter. Short segments H and I are where many of DC's most heavily used bus lines bogged down in commuter traffic wasting hours and ruining bus reliability.

WMATA isn't the only source of bus operating efficiency needs. The DC Circulator routes, for which DC bears 100% of the operating subsidy, is an ideal place for DDOT to prioritize operational enhancements.

I have spoken over several years with officials at both WMATA and DDOT. I repeatedly hear from WMATA that they are not finding the support at DDOT to implement their recommendations, and hear from folks at DDOT that they don't feel WMATA is ready to support DDOT or understands the constraints DDOT must labor under.

I am sure both groups of people are right. It is often difficult for two agencies to coordinate closely, especially when the agencies answer to different masters. I am sure many people at DDOT find it simply less work to tackle projects that don't require calling the Jackson Graham building, and those at WMATA have less trouble simply solving problems they can handle without going to New Jersey Avenue.

But this is necessary. Bus service is our best chance to save money and improve mobility for the residents of the District. We're not going to build any new Metrorail lines in the near future, and while streetcars will bring meaningful economic development, they will not be a speedy ride across town. But our bus service can and should be a desirable mode of travel for all.

There is no big megaproject to undertake that will fundamentally revamp bus service. Improving this mode of travel requires making many small and medium-sized fixes over many years that build up in the aggregate. The same applied to bicycle lanes, and tireless staff worked for years to gradually build up more and more lanes. DDOT needs to start now to put in one bus improvement at a time, then another, and another.

Right now, that is not yet happening, which costs DC millions of dollars and makes bus riders suffer, often at the expense of commuters from Maryland and Virginia who we often end up prioritizing despite clear policies at DDOT, and statements from this council, to the contrary.

The time is now. Montgomery County yesterday released their proposal for building 160 miles of a new bus Rapid Transit System, mostly on dedicated lanes. The Council, with your support Madam Chairman, just created a special fund for bus enhancements beginning in FY13, which could raise several million dollars per year if DDOT moves swiftly to implement performance parking in the downtown area.

With Director Bellamy on the WMATA Board, I am hopeful that this state of affairs can change. We will have a single person who can instruct his staff in DDOT meetings to advance bus improvements, and then head over to WMATA and push the staff there to uphold their end of whatever is necessary.

I hope you will ask Director Bellamy questions such as these:

• Do you agree that bus efficiency must get much higher priority from the department?
  
• Will your participation at WMATA represent a turning point to get long-awaited, significant progress going on these bus projects?

If the answers to both are yes, then Director Bellamy's presence on the WMATA Board will not just mean yet another voice contributing to already crowded debates, but a very positive step toward getting these two agencies working together to exploit our greatest untapped mobility opportunities.

The stones have survived more than two centuries, but conditions vary from stone to stone. Made of sandstone, a soft sedimentary rock, many stones still bear the "Jurisdiction of the United States" engraving and the year they were placed. For others the inscriptions have worn off over time.

Surrounding vegetation, undeterred by the fences that buttress the stones, has eroded numerous stones while the stones on a grassy plane are in the best condition. Through small cracks in some stones, similar to potholes in the street, water has seeped in, fragmenting the stone, such as on stone NW#6:

The most immediate and practical solution would be to install a canopy over each stone, similar to the canopies that in recent years have ensconced Metro station entrances.

Making stones National Historic Landmarks would aid preservation

In the early 1990s, all 26 of the stones on the DC-Maryland border (23 of the originals are still in the ground, while one is in a basement in Colesville, MD) were added to the National Register of Historic Places.

National Historic Landmark designation, a further step, would make it easier to obtain grant funding to preserve the stones. It would also bring National Park Service technical assistance and monitoring of the stones' condition. But thus far, only one stone, SW#9 in Falls Church, is a National Historic Landmark.

Stephen Powers, acting co-chairman of the Nation's Capital Boundary Stones Committee (NACABOSTCO), says the organization is currently developing an application to submit the Boundary Stones for National Historic Landmark status.

DDOT gets money to restore stones, but funds disappear

DDOT actually legally owns the stones, according to Ric Terman, co-chair of NACABOSTCO. In June 2003, DDOT's Chief Engineer at the time, John Deatrich, accepted legal responsibility for the DC-Maryland stones after Department of the Interior officials determined that a 3-foot easement around each stone was federal property to be overseen by DDOT.

Terman says that acquiring a National Historic Landmark for all 26 stones was part of the draft Memorandum of Agreement between multiple city, state, and federal agencies.

In 2005, DDOT announced that they had been awarded a $200,000 Transportation Enhancement (TE) grant from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to preserve the stones that mark the DC-Maryland border. In 2006, DDOT presented a draft scope of work for the project, funded by $160,000 in TE money and $40,000 of local funds, predicting an August 2006 start date. Later that year, a Draft Memorandum of Agreement was circulated between DDOT, FHWA, and the National Park Service to "inventory, evaluate, preserve, and restore the original sandstone markers."

Six years later, DDOT hasn't started the project, it's not clear whether anyone signed the Memorandum of Agreement, and the funding for the project appears to be gone.

"At this time, DDOT does not have funding for marker improvements, but we will be working with District agencies, our Federal partners, and other interested groups to develop a comprehensive approach to preserving the monuments," Maurice Keys, DDOT's Chief of Strategic Planning for Planning, Policy and Sustainability Administration, wrote to Jane Waldmann, of the Tenleytown Historical Society, in January.

Keys recently said, "DDOT does not maintain the stones. Volunteer groups have taken responsibility for maintaining a number of the monuments. DDOT recently requested approval of funding from the Federal Highway Administration to inventory and assess the condition of the monuments." What happened to the $200,000 TE grant that FHWA awarded in 2005?

Barry speaks up for the stones

Largely out of sight, out of mind, the Boundary Stones that lie in Ward 8 have found a vocal champion on the DC City Council: Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry.

"The Boundary Stones are an important part of our history in the District of Columbia," Barry said. "We take this responsibility very seriously. I am thrilled that these small monuments of our heritage have finally been brought to the forefront and given the recognition that they so greatly deserve."

Without public funding and attention from the city, it has largely fallen to private citizens and bi-annual service events led by Powers to maintain the stones. Chapters of the DC Daughters of the American Revolution have helped with full-scale restoration projects at a handful of stones, and the American Society of Civil Engineers, National Capital Section has provided over $3,000 to restore and paint fences around 20 stones.

The efforts of these volunteers are crucial, but it's time to get the stones designated as National Historic Landmarks and for DDOT to help the Boundary Stones get the attention and protection they deserve.

Here is the full spreadsheet of data (XLS). We mainly lose points on average park size, where our median of 0.7 acres is the smallest among the cities due to the many small federal circles, squares and triangles. 96% of residents live within ½ mile of at least one park, putting DC near the top on that metric, but for many that park is just a small federal square or triangle without many amenities.

DC also ranks low in playgrounds, with only 1.68 per 10,000 residents, which comes out to about 100 playgrounds. Downtown residents have been asking for a playground, and other neighborhoods could benefit from them as well.

Meanwhile, we score near the top on the other metrics. 19.1% of DC's land area is parkland, second only to San Diego and New York. This ranking unfortunately includes things like parkways and, in DC, the parking lots around RFK stadium. But that still doesn't diminish our robust amount of actual parkland, most in the large federal spaces like the Mall, Rock Creek, the Arboretum, the Anacostia and Potomac waterfronts, the Fort Circle, and more.

DC spends and the federal government spend $303.45 per capita on parks, the most of any city thanks to the Mall's role as a major national tourist destination.

In the press release, Peter Harnik, director of The Trust for Public Land's Center for City Park Excellence, notes that residents in Wards 1 and 5 especially need better park access, and there are not enough sports playing fields.

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.

Now, an example, namely Porter Street/Klingle Road between Cleveland Park and Mount Pleasant. This looks like a bit of interstate highway plunked down in the middle of the city, evidence of a long-forgotten plan to make Piney Branch Parkway into an inner-city crosstown highway. It's a four-lane divided roadway, limited access, no residences, no businesses, no crosswalks, no cross traffic, and it's no wonder that drivers speed up at this point, not because they're crazy speedsters, but because the road is clearly built for higher speeds.

The 85th-percentile speed for this road is 41 mph, as indicated by the 2006 Speed Study Map. Hence, the speed limit should be 40 mph, or maybe, if we're being conservative, 35 mph. But in actual fact, the posted limit is 30 mph, which is more than "slightly lower" than the 85th percentile. It comes as no surprise that the speed camera placed at this location has been a bountiful source of speeding tickets.

The MPD belatedly argues that "there is a lot of pedestrian and bicycle traffic accessing the park" here. But there's no bike lane, no sidewalk on the north side ("Pedestrians Prohibited" is posted), and the sidewalk on the south side is virtually by vegetation. These are indications that pedestrian access is, to say the least, discouraged. As for bicyclists, as one of that tribe, I can say that this is one of the most bicycle-hostile locations in the city, and not because of traffic speed, but because of road design.

So, is the 30 mph speed limit appropriate? There's no apparent justification for such a large deviation from the 85th percentile speed. In fact, just to the west of this location there are apartment houses and parked cars and driveways, and traffic speed there might be expected to be a greater concern than down where this "highway" opens up. But that's not where the speed camera is pointed, suggesting that the MPD is not really interested in the safety of residents, but in issuing lots of $125 speeding tickets.

The speed camera wouldn't matter if the speed limit were reasonable. Nobody can complain about a ticket for going much over the 85th percentile speed. The problem is not the speed camera, but the unreasonable speed limit, such that that 85th-percentile driver would, in this case, be exceeding the posted limit by a solid 11 mph.

So one has to wonder about other speed-camera locations in the District. The question is not the speed camera, but the appropriateness of the speed limit where the camera is located. Anyone defending a speed camera at a certain location should begin by confirming that the speed limit at that location is reasonable.

In one of DC's most controversial preservation cases, the HPRB rejected the application, since the church had been designated as historic. The owners appealed, and Mayor Fenty asked planning director Harriet Tregoning to personally sit as the Mayor's Agent, which hears such appeals. Using the broader discretion available to the Mayor's Agent, she granted the raze, but only once the owners present a new design that gets past historic and other review.

Separately, the church and developer also reached a settlement with the DC Preservation League where they gave $450,000 for DCPL's operations preservation programs involving religious properties in exchange for DCPL ending their fight against the project, the staff report notes; other groups such as the Committee of 100 continued to oppose razing the structure.

Earlier this year, the developers working with the church proposed an 11-story building with ground floor retail, offices above, and a church space on the first 3 floors at one end. Since the buildings along 16th have cornices at 90 feet above the street, they designed a building with its own cornice line slightly below that height. Behind and set back, a glassier structure would rise to the higher point.

This building would still not be as tall as the adjacent one to the west on I Street, which falls into a different zone and isn't part of the historic district.

At a community meeting with residents of the Dupont and Golden Triangle area a few months ago, people were generally enthusiastic about the proposal. Architect and former HPO staffer Michael Beidler suggested some ways to set the upper portion back slightly more to create more separation.

Last month, however, the designers presented a different and significantly smaller proposal. Staff of the Historic Preservation Office (HPO), and some of the groups that opposed the original raze, opposed having a building taller than the 90 feet prevailing along the street. In response, the architects shrank the top portion to a single extra floor, set significantly back and only minimally visible from anywhere outside.

In their staff report, HPO rejects even that proposal. The report argues that on 16th Street, it is not historically appropriate to allow any buildings over the prevailing 90 foot size. A few buildings have penthouses, but not ones with space for people to use, and the report seeks to draw a firm line there; if this building can even have a single floor of occupiable penthouse, then the St. Regis hotel will want a rooftop restaurant, it says, and several other buildings will likely follow suit.

The property owner's argument is also more difficult in that they're looking to exceed zoning, though in legally permissible ways. In the typical preservation density dispute, staff want to restrict a building far more than the zoning permits in that area. Here, the owners want to rezone the property from SP-2 to C-3-C as well, which would give greater flexibility, and also to seek a Planned Unit Development, where the Zoning Commission reviews the project in exchange for even more flexibility.

Still, if successful, HPO's action has consequences for the city far beyond the look of the street. To take away the top 2 floors whe moving from the original proposal to what the owners call the "compromise" proposal, they reduced the interior space from about 14,000 to 10,000 square feet, they said during a presentation. At a typical rule of thumb of 250 square feet per office, that would cut 152 potential jobs from downtown DC. HPO's recommended limits would squeeze that further.

Jobs are the centerpiece of Mayor Gray's agenda, and one prerequisite for jobs is space. Already, many companies DC would love to attract, like technology companies, have trouble finding affordable office space compared to the suburbs or other cities.

Downtown, in particular, is the best place for jobs because it already has the transportation infrastructure to move more people in and out than in any other part of the region. It has the restaurants and the office supply stores and more. Plus, residents of many neighborhoods don't want too many office buildings coming into their areas; Dupont residents fought for decades to prevent the neighborhood from completely changing into an office-only extension of the Golden Triangle, for instance. Jobs, and space for jobs, downtown reduces the pressure elsewhere.

To me, the original concept doesn't look out of place in downtown. The grand avenue leading to the White House would be just as grand, if not grander, if buildings flanking it had slightly taller sections behind the main cornice lines that more closely matched the buildings right off 16th.

The report makes a good point that it would be better to set limits for the entire street, rather than piecemeal. However, this debate should more properly be part of a zoning discussion. If piecemeal rezoning a block of an SP-2 district to C-3-C is inappropriate, then it should be inappropriate in an SP-2 zone not subject to historic review. The Zoning Commission has the power to decide whether this should be a C-3-C PUD or just a standard SP-2; they should properly make that decision, not HPRB.

If this were already C-3-C, or if the Zoning Commission decides to rezone it, then a building of this size isn't inappropriate. The report makes repeated reference to provisions in the Comprehensive Plan about preserving the "historic, majestic, and beautiful" avenues, but an avenue can still be all of these things with buildings scaled to downtown.

The developers have some legitimate gripes about this process. They were originally scheduled for an HPRB meeting on May 3, but HPO did not issue its staff report by the Friday before the meeting, as usual. That forced them to postpone the project since there would not be enough time to respond to the staff report, said Sylianos Christofides, a principal at ICG, the project's developer.

In the meantime, the Dupont Conservancy, which initially endorsed the "compromise" approach, reversed its position between the two meetings. They say that ICG changed the project, warranting re-review, but Christofides insists they made no changes. Disclosure: I am a member of the Conservancy and was present at the meeting where the project first came up, but not at the second one.

This process also misses opportunities to create a more appealing building. When applying for the raze, the developers insisted that they would replace it with a top-quality building; I wrote that "HPRB now has a chance to shape some excellent architecture at this site."

The church entrance will have an interesting faceted glass arrangement (which hopefully would not be too hard to clean), but the rest of the building, while perfectly reasonable for an office building (and far better than some of the concrete boxes nearby), isn't especially interesting either. Instead of pushing for more significant architecture on the rest of the project, HPO has focused on just asking for a smaller building.

A grand avenue might have been better served by a building which stands out for its detailing and architectural quality instead of just having to get smaller so as to fade away and not impinge upon the consciousness. In past eras, the grand avenue leading to the White House was a place for notable and visible buildings, not invisible ones. Sadly, our preservation process has more recently evolved into one that tries to make each building as close to nonexistent as possible rather than truly great.

Update: Rebecca Miller of DCPL emailed in with additional information about what the $450,000 payment will fund:

The fund is to be used towards educational and outreach programs related to religious properties and mid-century modernism. The fund will also have a grant component to which congregations will be able to apply to the fund for bricks and mortar money or other projects such as research etc.

Miller was concerned that when I wrote "DCPL's operations" it sounded like that was to fund staff or office space and so forth. That was not my intention and I have updated the post.