Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

kirkl3s t1_iy4gg7d wrote

I remember reading in a few books that rich folks maintained homes in the hills around the city to escape the heat and humidity of the downtown area. I've also read that the SW Waterfront area was a shanty town for the early 20th century.

34

messmaker523 t1_iy4gn0u wrote

Navy Yard was a lot more fun back then

8

CaptchaCrunch t1_iy4lwqk wrote

You may need to be more specific re:timeframe - young people unironically consider the 80s to be “the 1900s”

23

EC_dwtn t1_iy4ojj4 wrote

Desirable depends on who you ask and when, but a few things that were different:

  • Anacostia and Congress Heights were almost all white prior to the 50s.
  • The area where Fort Reno Park is now was an integrated, majority Black neighborhood torn down under pressure from residents from Tenleytown and Chevy Chase.
  • Pretty much everyone living in SW DC had their homes torn down as part of the urban renewal process than began in the 50s.
115

Separate-Sentence366 t1_iy4rzhn wrote

My row house on Lincoln Park was built circa 1890 and when we bought it it came with a binder of newspaper clippings from the era about the neighborhood that suggested it was going to be a fancy up-and-coming place.

26

dustymaurauding t1_iy4w787 wrote

how long ago? the 1900s is a long span of time. In the early 1900s the "city" was much smaller and the northern part still had a lot of farmland. But there were large houses up there too.

3

rectalhorror t1_iy4wv9v wrote

K Street in 1900 was upscale rowhouses, not the office blocks of today. Around the same time, Georgetown and Foggy Bottom were working class factory towns with a lot of industrial capacity. Heurich Brewery was where the Kennedy Center is now and there was still port activity and shipping on the Georgetown waterfront.

My dad went to Georgetown University in the '40s and one of his profs grew up in Foggy Bottom around the 1890s. He and his friends used to walk across town and stop by the White House and ask to play with President Roosevelt's kids. The Secret Service would just let them in and they'd play with all the farm animals that they kept on site; goats and ducks and chickens and the like. Then they'd bring out some sandwiches for lunch and walk back home like no big deal. And this was right after President McKinley was assassinated.

176

BarracudaAcademic539 t1_iy4x7bo wrote

Columbia heights had some very stately houses as many of the farmsteads were being developed between 1900-1920. The Columbia Heights Citizens’ Association put out a pamphlet in 1904 documenting many of these homes and even alluded that the White House might move uptown to the area.

Malcom X park was a pretty poor neighborhood before the land was seized to create the park. There is a fantastic website out there that goes almost house by house on the (soon to be) displaced residents.

22

Evaderofdoom t1_iy4y7r7 wrote

This reads like a homework question but not sure of a class that would be this specific to DC?

4

Oldbayistheshit t1_iy53fgq wrote

Grandfather grew up in NE my grandmother grew up in SW. he was considered rich and she was considered poor

8

Flame87 t1_iy53fri wrote

I'd love to live up there but I haven't looked at pricing because I know it'd cost somewhere between $lul - $nope

2

angrydad69 t1_iy5dh9b wrote

The embassies on mass ave were built by the elites

3

giscard78 t1_iy5japl wrote

Replying to kirkl3s (#742,009)

If you go on the tour, they tell you he lived there for about three years and commuted to work everyday, mostly alone, on Old Bob. There is a statue of the pair.

5

Mysterious-Extent448 t1_iy5p3wc wrote

They lived in DC til the FHA stepped in and only allowed the white folks to move out of the city.. while redlining the city so housing repairs couldn’t be financed. Systemic

6

kavorka2 t1_iy5vo29 wrote

Dupont Circle was wealthy early 1900s. Then became run down mid-century. Then trendy gay. Now just white and rich and less trendy and less gay.

17

fvb955cd t1_iy5z8xn wrote

Replying to BarracudaAcademic539 (#741,306)

1900s wasn't a great time for the park, but just before that it was part of a whacky rich person plan. In 1888, senator John Brooks Henderson built the still existing redstone walls around... His actual castle.

The castle was to be part of a development that would include a better presidential residence to replace the forgettable little white house. Or failing that, the Lincoln memorial. Failing both plans, she settled on a park, leading to your point.

10

NPRjunkieDC t1_iy60mij wrote

Edit: I read 1990.

Up to 1997/1998 mainly all of NW west of Dupont Circle.

Georgetown + Woodley Park + parts of Palisades, etc . Very few parts of Capitol Hill, too. But you needed to know your way around.

Best Addresses was a book about the most elegant apartment/condo buildings in DC . A few on Connecticut Ave, California St , Columbia Rd and Dupont Circle.

Then gentrification happened, and living east of Dupont Circle was in.

DC was designed upto Florida Ave NW. This is the old DC. When you pass the Duke Ellington bridge is where the "suburbs" start .

8

NPRjunkieDC t1_iy616lo wrote

16th St + New Hampshire Ave NW + Georgetown have some grand buildings and mostly townhouses. Kalorama too .

Best Addresses book has a list of the most fashionable buildings in DC .

4

trainingwheelsJoe t1_iy6o7bu wrote

Everything has gotten worse since then, that’s for sure

−6

Loki-Don t1_iy6pqvw wrote

Believe it or not, 120 years ago Columbia Heights was THE desirable location for the middle / upper middle class.

3

bsil15 t1_iy7jyya wrote

Kalorama and DuPont. The James Blaine mansion is probably one of the most famous in DuPont while 6 presidents (5 excluding Obama) had homes in Kalorama

2

9throwawayDERP t1_iy7wxj3 wrote

Replying to Separate-Sentence366 (#740,272)

Glover park has been unchanged in demographics since 1910. Used to have academics then (GU profs and scientists at the naval observatory), still has academics today (GU, AU profs, scientists and some economists/lawyers thrown in)

Kinda interesting how some areas are pretty constant and others have changed a ton.

https://gloverparkhistory.com/glover-park/residential-development-before-1926/hall-tract/

7

88138813 t1_iy7zb7e wrote

If this kind of stuff interests you I would highly suggest buying the book Capital Losses. It showcases the beautiful DC architecture that has been torn down over the years. It's a great coffee table book and super interesting.

5

dcrockett1 t1_iy8fesw wrote

If you look at aerial photos from the 40s there was nothing west of the Potomac, it was all farmland up to the national cemetery.

2

smallteam t1_iy8gfbg wrote

Replying to NPRjunkieDC (#748,680)

> Then gentrification happened, and living east of Dupont Circle was in.

When the Whole Foods on P Street near Logan Circle first opened (Dec. 2000), a liquor store on the block still had bulletproof glass protecting the workers and inventory.

2

NPRjunkieDC t1_iy8i972 wrote

Replying to smallteam (#765,931)

WF on P St + PN Hoffman builders redoing a prime property on Logan Circle.

The very first indications of gentrification. A friend bought for $185K a Townhouse on Vermont Ave. Sold few years later 3X but now 7X.

2

Neilpoleon t1_iy8sl3w wrote

An important thing to note about Washington, DC is they did have housing covenants that restricted where persons of color could buy property/live. (Some areas in the country also had housing covenants against Jews and other marginalized groups.) Here is an organization that shares a lot of this history/research.

3

Separate-Sentence366 t1_iyamnzf wrote

Replying to LegitimateFail3 (#756,966)

Originals! It seemed like they’d been clipped and stored somehow and then carefully put into those vinyl sheet binders that everyone used for photo albums in the ‘60s and ‘70s. When I got them they were packed in an cardboard box from about that era marked “House Memorabilia” that also has pictures of the house and the park through the years. I’ve meant to get it all digitized and put into some proper archival quality storage for ages, but it’s still in the back of my closet just where I found it 20 years ago.

3

speckatacular t1_iycu79t wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#789,548)

I think it was in late 1940s? People had flocked to work in Washington because of the war, and there wasn't enough housing in the city proper. Also people wanted more room to raise their baby boom kids! But pockets stayed rural even after the housing tracts came in. The mascot of Walter Johnson High School on Democracy Blvd is actually a cow, because dairy cows used to roam the adjacent fields when it was built in 1956.

2

CaptainObvious110 t1_iye7wit wrote

Replying to rectalhorror (#741,238)

Wow! It's amazing how times have changed in DC.

For one they need to bring back lots of apartment housing to K St and the rest of downtown as well.

I remember in the not so distant past when going to the museum was as simple as walking through the doors and not having to go through a metal detector.

I truly miss those days and miss the carefree nature of it.

2