Posts about History

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.

The Hamlink House, 1733 Q Street NW. Photo by the author.

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.

Photo from the Washington Post archives.

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.

The building's interior is apparently in poor condition, having been neglected for many years, and some floors are reported to be partially collapsed. Reclaiming it won't be easy. Yet however much the structure has suffered, we owe it to ourselves to save this fine old mansion.

It seems odd to encounter a residential building like this on K Street, the avenue of "trophy" office buildings, and it's even odder that the building has languished for so long. Many see it every day and wish that it would be restored after such profound neglect. Its woes have been written up on Peter Sefton's engaging Victorian Secrets web site and noted in blogs such The Other 35 Percent.

Many were shocked to learn of the recent plans to tear it down. After the filing of the raze permit was first publicized on the H-DC History Net, local blogs quickly reported the alarming news, including The Location, Prince of Petworth, and the City Paper.

But the house is not yet doomed. The DC Preservation League filed an historic landmark nomination for the property in 2008, and thus the city's Historic Preservation Review Board will be required to review the case before a raze permit can be issued. If the property is designated a landmark, the raze permit will be denied, although the owner will still have the right to appeal the decision.

Detail of the adjoining townhouse, included in the historic landmark nomination. photo by the author).

Architectural historian James Goode has called K Street between 9th and 20th streets the "Park Avenue of Washington" in the late 19th century because of its distinguished mansions and their prominent owners. "In the 80's and 90s K street was the most exclusive residential section of Washington and the center of social life of the city," wrote The Washington Post in 1929. "In those days all entertaining was at home and diplomats from foreign countries mingled with Government officials, statesmen, and ranking Army and Navy officers in the big, handsome houses set far back, fronted with deep lawns, hedges and trees, that lined the street."

Among the most opulent were the Childs House at 1527 K, built by a wealthy Philadelphia widow in 1894. Designed purely for socializing, the mansion was in the French Renaissance style of Parisian townhouses. Nearby, wealthy Senator Stephen Elkins (1841-1911) built a massive Georgian Revival house at 1626 K in 1892. Elkins had made millions from land speculation in the west and mining in West Virginia. The mansion's ballroom could accomodate 200 guests, was approached by a grand walnut staircase, and was decorated with gilt Louis XV furniture.

The fine house at the corner of 11th and K was not at the center of K Street's gilded age excesses (which is one reason it has survived), but it has many of the key elements of the street's lost residential format, including a spacious front lawn, officially called "parking" because it was reserved by city regulation for park-like features.

The distinguished building and adjoining structures were constructed in 1878 in the then-prevailing Second-Empire style by successful Washington builder Michael Talty (1812-1890), an Irish immigrant. An early resident of the house was William H. Burr (1819-1908), a former Senate stenographer who had become a well-known proponent of philosophical skepticism.

Peter Sefton has called Burr "one of Washington's most notorious curmudgeons, iconoclasts, and disturbers of the cultural status quo." After raising eyebrows with such incendiary tracts as Self-Contradictions of the Bible (1860) and Revelations of Antichrist (1879), Burr settled in at 1017 K as a kind of genteel retirement home in his later life.

Col. Harrison Allen during the Civil War. Image from the Library of Congress).

Another well-known resident was General Harrison Allen (1835-1904), who came to Washington in 1901 to be second deputy auditor of the Post Office department. During the Civil War, Allen had been commander of the 151st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, which he led at the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

During an artillery bombardment shortly before Chancellorsville, a shell passed only a few feet over his head. Just before the Battle of Gettysburg, Allen was given leave, causing him to miss most of that big event. He was nevertheless retroactively promoted to Brigadier General in 1865 for "faithful and meritorious services."

After the war Allen entered politics, serving as a delegate to the 1868 Republican Convention, as state senator, and as Pennsylvania's auditor general. In 1882 he was appointed United States Marshal for the Dakota Territory, where he pursued stage coach robbers and horse thieves until getting his Washington appointment from President McKinley.

On September 22, 1904, he spent the evening playing cards with his wife and friends in the downstairs parlor at 1017 K and appeared to be in perfect health. However, the next morning he was found dead in his upstairs bedroom, the apparent victim of a heart attack. I'll leave it to others to speculate whether his ghost still haunts the old house.

After Allen's death, the inexorable process of change for 1017 K—and all of downtown Washington—slowly took shape. The wealthy began moving to the trendier, northwestern "suburban" neighborhoods of Dupont Circle and Kalorama and ultimately out of the city altogether. Many of the large buildings they left behind were subdivided for boarders or converted for commercial uses before eventually being torn down.

A photo from the Library of Congress of a K Street row near 14th Street, circa 1915, shows the transition taking place: A large Department of Justice building rises between two elegant Second Empire houses, looking ready to push them out. They'd all be gone before long.

Department of Justice Building on K Street c. 1915. Im agefrom the Library of Congress.

The mansion at 1017 K had a notable second life when it became the headquarters of the DC Statehood Party, organized in 1969. As described by Cultural Tourism DC, the DC Statehood Party gained prominence in 1971 when Julius Hobson (1919-1977), a noted civil rights activist, ran for the non-voting delegate seat in Congress now held by Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Hobson was a civil rights pioneer who between 1960 and 1964 had led more than 80 pickets of downtown retail stores, successfully gaining jobs for thousands of African-Americans who had previously been barred from or severely limited in working at these establishments. Hobson's campaign for delegate, though unsuccessful, raised the profile of the Statehood Party and helped establish it as a viable third party in the District. The party continues to this day as the DC Statehood Green Party.

It's been many years now since 1017 K has been occupied by the Statehood Party or any other organization, despite its unique status as the last of its breed. Striking parallels can be drawn with a legendary historic preservation case from the past, the Rhodes Tavern at 15th and F Streets NW. In the late 1970s and early 1980s an extraordinary effort was mounted by concerned local preservationists to save the tavern, which had been built in 1801 and was a polling place in the first DC municipal elections held in 1802.

There were many very good reasons to save that rare building, but one of the most compelling was that it was one of the last reminders we had left of the type of building that used to line Washington's central business district in the the city's earliest days. As Nelson Rimensnyder has pointed out, Washington's first building regulations, decreed by George Washington himself in 1791, specified that "the wall of no house be higher than forty feet to the roof" and that "the outer and party walls of all houses...be of brick or stone." The result was uniform rows of simple but elegant Federal-style townhouses along the city's few main thoroughfares, including Pennsylvania Avenue and F Street.

The strategically located Rhodes Tavern, a prominent example of this type, witnessed every Presidential inauguration from Thomas Jefferson to Ronald Reagan. It was devastating when the fight to save the humble building ended in 1984 with its complete destruction. Not only was this particular jewel of early Washington gone, but all traces of the original building type specified by George Washington were lost forever from the inaugural parade route.

Rhodes Tavern before its destruction. Image from the Library of Congress).

The K Street mansions of the late 19th century were another major defining element of the city's built environment that are now—almost—all gone. If 1017 K is torn down, we will have no reference point left on K Street to recall this part of our shared past. There will be nothing but office boxes, and we'll never be able to undo the loss of this last reminder of the genteel residences that once lined this busy office canyon.

Cross-posted at Streets Of Washington.

"People cherish their recent memories of this building as a nightclub, but this was one of the first progressive community banks in Washington," said John DeFerrari of Streets of Washington, who attended the Preservation League fundraiser.

According to DeFerrari, the Equitable Co-Operative Building was built in 1912, and was the headquarters for the Equitable Co-Operative Building Association. Equitable was a pioneering thrift institution co-founded by John Joy Edson, a leading financier and philanthropist who believed that facilitating home ownership would provide stability to the city by improving its housing stock.

In 1985, Equitable moved out of the city. A nightclub called The Bank moved into the space and proceeded to remove the mahogany teller counters to make space for a dance floor. Within a couple years, the Fifth Column, another dance club, moved in and featured avant garde artwork juxtaposed against the restrained elegance of the building's original architecture. In 1995, Fifth Column closed. Before the end of the decade, Platinum nightclub debuted, but by 2008 it, too, closed.

Despite the changes in the building over the years, the architectural value of the building and its interiors remain intact.

"You're never going to see this type of craftsmanship," said John D. Bellingham of Monarc Construction and President of DCPL's Board of Trustees, remarking on the dentil molding, cornices, and frieze architecture.

"It's proven that a city that retains its historic character attracts more tourists," Bellingham said while lamenting "slap-happy" renovations that can do more to distort historic preservation than support it.

Historic interior of the Equitable Building at 915 F Street NW. Photo by the author.

"Walking into this place is like walking into the National Portrait Gallery," said Douglas Jemal, president of Douglas Development Corporation, as his eyes scanned the interior. "Look at the grandeur. This is a special place and deserves a special tenant. None of that strip mall [expletive]."

Noting clothier Ralph Lauren as a possible tenant, Jemal said there is a growing interest among European and American fashion retailers to establish a presence in Washington. Forever 21, H&M, and Zara have stores nearby.

Whether the Equitable Building becomes part of an reemerging downtown fashion district or an upscale restaurant, preservationists agree the development of the Equitable Building will retain the neighborhood's historic character.

"Like so much of the city, I'd love to see another old ghost of a building get a second chance at a new life," said another preservationist. "Saving buildings like this one preserves the soul of our city and keeps us connected."

According to diligent researcher and mapmaker Brian Kraft, the five houses in the above photo were built in 1885 by Henry A. Griswold, a prominent developer and President of the Anacostia & Potomac Railroad Company.

Valley Place SE today. Photo by the author.

This small, one-way street, despite being in the heart of Historic Anacostia, retains its bucolic charm. And just as they have for the last half-century, the resilient residents of Valley Place patiently wait for the neighborhood's renaissance to arrive.

Partially inspired by England's garden city movement, the planners intended for Greenbelt to be a self-contained community surrounded by a green belt of parks, forests, and farms. Today, Greenbelt is not as isolated, but the historic center maintains its park-like setting. The federal government sold off most of the original green belt in the 1950s and it was developed in typical suburban fashion.

The planners who designed Greenbelt had big ideas about creating a new type of community. One of the most revolutionary decisions was how to deal with cars.

Greenbelt was designed with the automobile in mind, but it was not designed for the automobile. This is the largest and most crucial difference between Greenbelt and the prototypical post-war suburb. The community is walkable, traffic is calm, and despite being surrounded by sprawl, cars do not dominate the landscape.

Pedestrian path. Photo by the author.

The planners created two independent circulation systems in the town: one for pedestrians and one for automobiles. As a result, the community has been described as "inside out." Pedestrian pathways wind through the community, providing access to the interior of residential superblocks and connecting residents to commercial and civic spaces. Five underpasses were built under the major streets to allow pedestrians to move through the city without encountering cars.

One effect of this design is homes with two fronts. On the "garden side," the homes front on the pedestrian pathways, and often on playgrounds and other green spaces. On the "service side," the homes open to the street (or in some cases, the parking court).

At the heart of the city is the Roosevelt Center, the town's retail hub. This area includes a grocery store, a cinema, and several shops and restaurants. The businesses are oriented onto a plaza, with the parking in the rear.

Roosevelt Center at Sunset. Photo by the author.

The city is oriented on a crescent-shaped ridge, with a lake and woodlands in the center of the crescent. The city was originally surrounded by a large greenbelt, though most of this has been developed. A good deal of greenspace remains within the community, however.

And while Greenbelt did not become the prototype for the American suburb, it did inspire other communities, including Columbia, Maryland and Reston, Virginia.

The real legacy of Greenbelt, though is in its residents. The history of activism and social engagement that was brought by the pioneer residents during the Depression has continued to be a part of life in the community.

If you're interested in celebrating 75 years of Greenbelt, the symposium is on Friday, April 27 and Saturday, April 28 in the historic community center. I'll be speaking on a panel about transportation on Friday afternoon. The deadline to register for the event is tomorrow.

Additionally, for more information and a tour of one of the original homes, you can visit the Greenbelt Museum at 10B Crescent Road every Sunday from 1-5 pm.

In the Barry Farm community there are two historic homes on the 2700 block of Wade Road, SE that are not included in the city's thus-far unrealized redevelopment plans. Dews' home at 2717 Wade Road, built in the early 1920s, is one of the two.

"When they do that redevelopment, it doesn't matter to me. I plan on having my senior citizen's apartment," said Dews. "See, this is not part of the dwellings," he says, referring to the neighboring public housing project of Barry Farm Dwellings.

Yet, Dews has noticed recent changes that have affected his family's two-story home, one of the last remaining houses in the neighborhood with a basement. In recent years, a sidewalk was installed out front of the house. During his childhood and adolescence, Dews said it was a dirt road.

"I've watched them change the houses down there twice since I was coming up," he remembers, citing an influx of refugees from the urban renewal efforts in Southwest Washington. "At first it wasn't those big houses. It was little what we called shotgun houses. Open the front door and see through the back door. Back in the 40s & 50s."

2717 Wade Road SE was built in 1923. Photo by the author.

Born in 1949, Dews says, "Most of the neighbors I know died."

Even with turnover in the area's housing, there was always a tight community. "It really didn't change the neighborhood that bad. See Barry Farm was always like a tribe," he said. Then, referring to the nearby Garfield Heights neighborhood, he added "they had the Garfields on the other side of the bridge. They didn't come over here and we didn't go over there. It was no guns, it was sticks and baseball bats back then, and fists."

During our conversation, along with local filmmaker and artist Tendani Mpulubusi, Dews shared some insights into his background. "I'm one of the original Teenorama dancers," Dews says reticently of the popular local teenage dance show of the 1960s. "I got on the cameras a couple times."

Dews and his extended family are well-known in southeast Washington. They were members of the Seafayers Yacht Club, founded in 1945 as the nation's oldest black yacht club. At one time, Dews owned a 55 foot boat.

He credits his life's success to his father. "My father had a third grade education. I thought he was the dumbest mother-(expletive) in the world, back then. But after I grew up I realized he was the smartest man in the world with a third grade education," Dews recalls fondly. "He always lectured us and whooped our ass."

Saint Teresa of Avilla Avila, at the northwest corner of 13th and V streets SE, is the oldest Roman Catholic Church in DC east of the Anacostia River. It was originally part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, because the Vatican did not make the City of Washington a separate archdiocese until 1939. St. Teresa, in fact, is older than the Archdiocese of Washington by more than a half century.

The new church was greeted with great enthusiasm even before it was finished being built. An April 1879 Washington Post article describing the laying of its cornerstone also reports of a celebratory parade, saying:

The route was determined on as follows: from City hall, down Four-and-a-half street to Pennsylvania avenue, thence to St. Peter's church, where the visiting clergy and others will join the procession, thence across the navy yard bridge to Uniontown. With regard to the formation of the line, it is thought that it will be the same on St. Patrick's day, except that there will be five divisions instead of four, the colored societies making the fifth.

According to The Anacostia Story. by the turn of the 20th century black parishioners were dissatisfied with the limited role they were permitted; African Americans were relegated to celebrate Mass in the church basement.

In response a group under the name "Mission of St. Teresa" organized to establish a separate church and parish for African American Catholics. Others changed their affiliation and went crosstown to Saint Augustine, the city's mother church for black Catholics since 1858, four years before the city's emancipation.

By 1920 ground was dug, dirt was moved, cement was turned and cornerstone laid for Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church on Morris Road SE, on the grounds of Fort Stanton.

According to Cultural Tourism DC, this was the second formal division of St. Teresa's. The first occurred when white parishioners left to establish Assumption Catholic Church in what had been the village hall for Congress Heights at 611 Alabama Avenue SE on April 2, 1916.

Saint Teresa today. Photo by the author.

As the neighborhood's demographics began to change in the 1960s and the neighborhood became increasingly African American, the congregation of Saint Teresa changed as well. In 1976 Saint Teresa received its first African-American pastor. On a recent visit, with the exception of some college students, the overwhelming majority of worshipers are African American.

Today, Saint Teresa is one of more than a dozen historic churches in greater Anacostia still going strong, an important and familiar neighbor for parts of three centuries.

Excerpts from this post originally appeared in a 2010 article for East of the River.

This photo by Theodor Horydczak (1890-1971), one of more than 14,000 photos of his available through the Library of Congress's American Memory series, captures Anacostia's iconic neon signage in January 1947.

Commercial neon lighting signage first appeared at a Paris barbershop a couple of years before the outbreak of World War I. The new signs, sometimes referred to as "liquid fire," arrived in the United States in 1923. From conversations with Anacostia residents and initial research, Anacostia's sign appears to date back to the early 1940s.

Anacostia's historic neon sign today. Photo by the author.

Within minutes a friend and I were on the roof of this Colonial Revival-style apartment building on the 2600 block of 13th Street NW. We looked over a neighborhood that, in less than 10 years, has been transformed from one of the deepest gang and crew-affiliated areas of the nation's capital to a landing pad for DC's newest arrivals.

View from the roof of 2618 13th Street NW.

Formerly known as the Alden, Babcock, and Calvert Apartments, completed in the 1920s, the Warner Apartments at 2618-2622 13th Street NW were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.

In late 1987, the Warner was the first of a dozen renovated apartment buildings to be completed as part of the city's "$15 million plan to reclaim vacant, privately owned, disintegrating apartment buildings and turn them into housing for low-income District residents," according to the Washington Post in November of that year. "By the time the last group of tenants left four years ago, a succession of landlords, tenants and city authorities had managed to reduce the once-graceful red-brick structure in Columbia Heights to an uninhabitable mess," said the article.

In February 1987 developer Joseph G. Kisha, in partnership with the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), acquired a "Rental Rehabilitation Loan Program Leasehold Deed of Trust, wherein the parties acknowledged" Kisha's "indebtedness to the District of Columbia government for a $220,000 interest free loan to finance the purchase and rehabilitation of the housing accommodation as rental units for low to moderate income," according to records of the Office of the Tenant Advocate.

On October 28, 1987, Kisha closed on the property for $413,872. Of that total, $176,220 came from the Rental Rehabilitation Loan Program, $159,000 from the Land Acquisition for Development Opportunities Program, and a guarantee of a forthcoming $78,652 from DHCD.

Wasting no time, the next day Kisha filed a Claim of Exemption Form with the Rental Accommodation and Conversion Division within the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, asserting that the apartments were "exempt from the rent control provision of the Rental Housing Act because the rental units were owned or subsidized by the District government."

Along with the city subsidized mortgage, Kisha argued that the property was additionally exempt from rent control because in 1984, when his company first expressed interest in its purchase, it was vacant and had been vacant up until the time he requested the exemption from rent control. The city agreed and approved his exemption. All 44 of the Warner's renovated units would go to low-income residents receiving federal rental assistance.

According to the November 1987 Post article, Kisha had concerns that "not enough attention ha[d] been directed at the time when the initial rent subsidies expire." He told the Post he and his business partner planned to own the Warner for fifteen years, but when the rent subsidies ran out, he was quoted as saying, "I don't know what happens then."

Fast forward to August 2006, less than twenty years after the Warner Apartments reopened, Kisha and his 2620 Limited Partnership was petitioned by the 2620 13th Street NW Tenants Association, who alleged that the Rental Housing Act of 1985 had been violated. Rents increased even though the units did not comply with housing regulations, tenants received "substantially" reduced services, and, the association argued, the property was not registered with the Rental Accommodation and Conversion Division.

Kisha sought to have the case dismissed with prejudice on the grounds that the Association's complaints were based on the rent stabilization provision of the Rental Housing Act, from which the Warner was exempted.

In late July 2009 Wanda R. Tucker, an Administrative Law Judge, issued a Final Order in the nearly three year old dispute. The Tenant Association's petition was "dismissed with prejudice," meaning the Tenant Association would be barred from bringing a future action on the same claim.

By December 2010 only four units remained occupied. Following the protocol of the 1980 Rental Housing Conversion and Sale Act, the remaining tenants were given the opportunity to purchase all three buildings. The asking price was $5,050,000. The tenants were prohibited from waiving their right to receive the Offer of Sale while their failure to purchase the buildings ensured their eventual eviction.

Last December the 2620 Limited Partnership sold the three buildings and got their money. New York-based Aria Partners, LLC, purchased the property for $5,018,000, a price representing more than $114,000 per unit. In press releases Aria pledged to "substantially renovate the building[s] to [their] historic standard while preserving 20% of the units as affordable."

Inside building "A"

Upon entering building "A," (2618 13th Street NW) a friend and I were greeted by two fire extinguishers coated in a thick layer of dust. Some loose construction materials lay in the corner of the vestibule. I step up the stairs into the hallway, a door to units on my right and left.

I shout out, "Uptown reporter in here!" The sound ricochets through the stairwell, down to the basement and up to the fourth floor.

Front door of 2618 13th Street NW.

I don't hear anything or anyone, neither does my friend. A solitary light bulb, in a no frills hallway chandelier overhead, gleams through the desolate dwelling.

The door on the left is unlocked, opening into a unit with three windows that overlook 13th Street NW. To the right is the intersection with Euclid Street NW. "There goes MPD," says my friend, "Rickey," as the police cruise south on 13th Street NW.

Inside a first floor unit of 2618 13th Street NW.

"Rickey," in his early 50's, grew up on nearby Sherman Avenue NW. He has fond neighborhood memories of "just trying to stay alive despite my best efforts not to." Although he now lives "on that southside" his "heart is always with the uptown."

He says, "I might be too street to tweet but I'm up on the only news that really matters; that corner news of what's happening now."

Rickey claims "everyone knows you've always been able to get high here whether it's vacant or when they got people. This place has never really been run right; it's always been a problem."

As we walk through the hallways and creep into deserted units, we're careful to watch our steps on the wood floors going to pieces. The non-bearing walls have all been knocked down, and drywall accumulates in piles in many of the units.

Watch your step! Holes in the floor of 2618 13th Street NW.

With scant evidence of squatters on the first and second floor, we discover verification on a third floor unit overlooking 13th Street that someone has been here within the past week. "Yep. If I was still getting high this is right where I'd do it. That's what they were doing," says Rickey.

View from the 3rd floor of 2618 13th Street NW.

There are a couple different newspapers scattered about from the same day last week, some cigar guts, and discarded wrappers for Black & Milds and cigarillos, used to roll up weed.

"To a lot of folks this place is too hot," Rickey says as we look down to the street below. "All these new people walking around, acting like ain't nothing wrong in the world. You better watch your back if you dip in here, these people will call the police on you quick, fast, and in a hurry."

Rickey pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and laments, "You know when I was coming up, yeah, there was a lot of guns and knives, and all those drugs around but it was different. The way it feels now, it doesn't feel real anymore."

A metal grate blocks the stairwell to the roof, but it's not locked. We pass boxes full of binders chronicling years' worth of work orders as we walk up the staircase.

Work orders for 2618 13th Street NW.

We're now on the roof. I snap a quick picture. We head back downstairs but not before Rickey, with a fresh cigarette dangling from his mouth, says, "I know some folks in the market for an abandominium, I'll make sure to spread the word if they don't know already."

Post-war DC was a rough place. According to one government official interviewed in the Post in 1902, "Washington passed through its period of lawlessness and disorder fully as bad, if not worse, than that which prevailed in Cripple Creek, Colo. or Tombstone, Ariz."

Small fields of corn and cabbage gardens were scattered about everywhere, many of them within a stone's throw of the Capitol, while cows had the run of the town from Georgetown to Anacostia Creek, grazing on the pavements, breaking into front yards, disturbing the slumbers of the citizens by their incessant lowing, and making themselves generally obnoxious. I recollect there use to be a brick yard at Ninth and O streets northwest and not far distant was a cornfield inclosed [sic] by a stake and rider fence. ...

The war had ended, leaving stranded in this city a vast horde of enfranchised slaves, discharged soldiers, and a cloud of riffraff, bummers, and camp followers... and their arrival soon made this city one of the most disorderly places in America. Fights, murders, stabbing, and shooting scrapes were of daily occurrence.

The neighborhoods with the most infamous conditions had nicknames that were never shown on any official plat. But the Washington Post put together the amazing map above on its 50th anniversary, to show the neighborhoods that existed when the paper was founded in 1877.

Hell's Bottom, a former "contraband camp" extending irregularly from 7th to 14th Streets NW, and from O Street to the Boundary (now Florida Avenue), was one of the most notorious sections of the city. Living conditions were poor and crime was high.

According to a Post article from 1897, some Hell's Bottom residents lived in shanties the size of a "hall-room," with roofs so low that an average person could only stand upright on one side. These homes, which could house up to 3 families, were of "the rudest possible construction, few having any sashes in the window aperture, a board shutter closing out the cold winds, light and ventilation together, when shut. The only salvation from suffocation lies in the gaping cracks existing round the doors and windows, without which many a family would doubtless be found dead in the morning of cold nights."

Keith Sutherland, an old Hell's Bottom inhabitant, said this about the neighborhood in a 1900 Post article:

"Money was scarce and whisky [sic] was cheap—a certain sort of whisky—and the combination resulted in giving the place the name which it held for so many years. The police force was small. There was no police court, and the magistrates before whom offenders were brought rarely fixed the penalty at more than $2. Crime and lawlessness grew terribly, and a man had to fight, whenever he went into the "Bottom."

Murder Bay: The area east of the White House across Pennsylvania Avenue was known for its brothels, gambling, and crime. It was sometimes called "Hooker's Department," after Civil War General Joseph Hooker, who hoped to concentrate the city's brothels in the area.

The "red light district" known as Murder Bay at the corner of C Street NW and 13th Street NW, April 1912. Griffin Veatch, a "night messenger" or child laborer who directed customers to brothels, is leaning against the tree at left. Photograph by Lewis W. Hine for the US National Child Labor Committee.

White Chapel: A dirty alley between 24th and 25th Streets, and M and N Streets, NW. During the 1880s, there was almost constant warfare between the residents of this area and the police.

Pipetown: East of 11th Street SE to the Anacostia River, this neighborhood was made famous by Pipetown Sandy (1905), John Philip Sousa's semi-autobiographical young adult novel about the neighborhood where he grew up. One Post article described Pipetown as "a community of extensive commons, of ash dumps, of tumble-down houses and shacks of nondescript architecture, a place where goats browsed among the tomato cans and the travelling fair pitched its weather-beaten tent."

Bloodfield: This neighborhood was "a vague name for the entire region around the James Creek Canal" (in today's SW near the Navy Yard), and one of the most dangerous and notorious slums in the city. Arrest attempts by police (who would only walk their beat in pairs) resulted in injury or worse to the officer or the resident:

Policeman Muller was attracted to the Shears house by the shooting, and when he arrived there he found Shears lying dead on the floor of the kitchen having been shot in the left temple. Curry was covered with blood from head to foot and gave evidence of having had a terrible struggle. His badge was smeared with blood and his coat was saturated with it.

Brothels, illegal speakeasies, and tough characters filled the neighborhood:

A steel corset stay, pointed and sharpened into a dangerous weapon, was used in an affray early yesterday evening...

Sergt. Daley, of the Fourth Precinct, was abroad in Bloodfield with his raiding clothes on last night, and, as a result, a number of alleged disorderly houses were closed up.

As the city and police force grew, the neighborhood calmed, but it retained its name up to the '20s.

Cowtown: A neighborhood located north of Hell's Bottom and west of 7th Street, NW.

The Island: This swath of land south of the Mall was so called because the canal cut it off from the rest of mainland DC.

I'd much rather live in Hell's Bottom than Logan Circle, wouldn't you?

Cross-posted at The Location.