Unstable "Stable"

A light blue Victorian home lives at 403 P Street NW with a small stable-like building behind it. There is currently a dumpster in front of the building on P Street and there are neighborhood rumors that the rear building is going to be torn down to make space for parking or expansion of the primary building. The home (built in 1890) was designed by George S. Cooper, an architect who designed about 850 buildings in Washington. The building in the rear was built in 1891, measures 15 feet by 27 feet and has many of the typical features of a stable or a small warehouse. The original permit describes it as being a “fuel house and storeroom.” No architect is listed for this building but the builder was Galloway and son.

Unlike Naylor Court NW, with a unique collection of small buildings that has been protected by law (every address) through the National Register of Landmark Historic Properties since 1990, this alley building has much less (if any) protection. The author is unaware of a unifying HPO policy that governs their decision making process about stables and other small alley buildings in the city. This little building (403 rear P Street NW) is not a part of a unique and cohesive collection, although there are several stables in the alley.

In the author’s opinion, at the very least, the building should be documented architecturally, (dimensions, inner structure etc), bricks salvaged where possible for use in historic preservation projects in the city (these bricks are in high demand), the original “hayloft doors” salvaged and eye kept out for archeological artifacts that might be uncovered during the process of its destruction, should that eventually happen.

Stables and other small rear alley buildings are prime targets for destruction, because their disappearance makes it so much easier for developers to gain access to work on the rear of the primary building. These are charming little properties that can almost always be restored, rehabilitated and adaptively reused given the expertise and the will to do so. Stables and utilitarian alley buildings are very simple structures. These buildings are a unique and characteristic historic architectural feature of Washington D.C. today, for no other major cities in America have such a sizable number of standing stables. Some go back to Lincoln’s era and are irreplaceable.

The legacy of alley life percolates out to the street in Shaw.

In many ways the lives of buildings, companies and communities function as ecology. One use gives way to another, as times and needs change. Everything is interconnected –so clearly witnessed today as we watch the downfall of practically everything. Vacant land in the late 1700’s gave way to stables and alleys which gave way to auto repair shops which gave way to either abandonment or adaptive reuse. Blagden Alley and Naylor Court like most alleys in Washington, housed people, horses and small community-based businesses. Needs were met, even if they were humble. For example, there was a bicycle repair shop in Blagden Alley in 1900 and artisan shops. Of course there were also illegal gin joints, and brothels filling somewhat less wholesome demands. It was a thriving macroeconomic culture that was easily understood and made sense. As alleys were destroyed by government intervention, focus turned to the street side of life allowing the inner core of blocks to quietly rot.

Little corner street side gas stations - once community fuel lines – eventually gave way to big oil corporations and were also gradually abandoned or destroyed. Yet all is not yet lost, for today Frank Asher has created a corner garden shop at the South West corner of 9th and N northwest called “Old City Green” on the site of a former gas station that had crumbled beyond recognition.

OLD CITY GREEN Mission:
To invite nature back into the city by supporting local landscapers with market value product and by providing the Shaw community and D.C. at large with plants, garden supplies, training and opportunities to increase awareness of and appreciation for “our urban garden”.

This “new green growth” is helping to draw together a community in a loving and healing way, much like the early small tendrils of growth in nature after a forest fire. This is a welcome and healthy metaphor of new hope in a community that struggles daily to look for signs of anything positive. Maybe it’s time for all of us to take our eyes off the “big picture” of world economic crisis, “talking heads”, blogs and “politicomedia” and focus once again on helping each other in ways that are close to home and understandable.

In Frank’s own words…

Old City Green….Why now?

“I started out as a small gardener/landscaper, picking up dog poop and pulling weeds out of the tree boxes in Dupont Circle.” frank Asher explains, “I had to buy product from local garden centers nearby and/or nurseries out in the burbs…That was time consuming and hurting my business. There were discounts up to 20% given to industry gardeners, but it wasn’t any more than discounts given to regular “membership” customers. In essence, I was unable to really make a profit in cost of goods and supplies…Any small retail business will tell you where there profit is… I have always thought: How can I help other gardeners/landscapers like myself stay afloat? Especially now when people are cutting back. We’re still working out the business and legal issues, and hope to have to co-op up and running in full swing by mid April 09. The Landscapers Co-op will not only support the professional gardeners and landscapers it will also help community gardens and garden associations. It will help create a new urban capacity to grow food, mitigate environmental threats and cultivate a unique sense of beauty and common unity.” Noted cosmologist Thomas Berry says all communities need a compelling story. Well, said Frank: Old City Green is about honoring the connections we have with each other…How the individual can be supported by his/her immediate community of friends and a the same time, give back to the local neighborhood and the community at large.
What is strange about this is that most business people have never heard of the “triple bottom line” …I am happy that Old City Green can introduce this model and be a part of something bigger than just making a buck.

It was 9 years ago when I started cleaning out tree boxes in my neighborhood. They had been abandoned and were full of dog doodoo and weeds... A merchant in Dupont Circle offered to pay me to maintain the boxes and in just a short time Fairies' Crossing was born. I then took a Master Gardening class and my business in planting and designing gardens just took off from there...I must admit, I am one lucky man to get to play in the dirt. I want to help bring people and plants together... Old City Green helps me make that wish come true.

http://www.oldcitygreen.com/

Washington on the Move

The Architecture of Transportation in the Capitol Region

The eighth biennial symposium on the historic development of

Metropolitan Washington D.C., March 7^th and 8^th 2009, Society of Architectural Historians

The Adaptive Lives of Washington DC Stables over 150 Years

Stables are architecturally simple yet elegant structures, melding form and function. Because of this simplicity and their “hidden” location in alleys, many DC stables have been blessed with multiple lives over the past 150 years. Originally built to house horses, carriages and hay, their classic features – bollards, square two story configuration, hayloft door and beam, horse head height windows, cupolas and massive doors and hinges – make them readily recognizable today. Some were private and small while others were commercial and large. The occasional stable was born into elegance as part of an estate (such as the Heurich mansion). With the civil war, came a massive demand for D.C. stables that continued throughout the city’s period of reconstruction. However, by 1900 few new stables were being built as the automobile eclipsed the horse and carriage, street car lines developed and demand declined.

Nonetheless, their simple architecture allowed easy conversion of many stables to alley auto repair shops. The transition from stables for horses to auto repair shops was not difficult, for the mechanics of coaches had similarities to the early automobile. The leaf springs for example on a model T Ford as well as the wooden spoke wheels were easy for a blacksmith to repair. For a while, some large stables catered to both automobiles and horses. Eventually however, people either adapted or went out of business. In the peak of the automobile era, 14^th Street was an auto showroom corridor. The alley stable auto repair shops served the needs of a poorer community who could barely maintain their cars. Cars were abandoned, stolen and set on fire. The drug and prostitution trade flourished in choked alleys and crime surged. The neighborhoods felt into decline for many years and people were fearful of investing in homes. Today, that is slowly changing.

These were hard lived years for stables. Some were abused but most were neglected. Many were destroyed as alleys began to be abolished by government fiat through a series of alley abolition acts started in the Depression by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1934 with the creation of the Alley Dwelling Authority “to provide the discontinuance of the use as dwellings of the buildings situated in alleys in the District of Columbia.” No alley houses were to be inhabited after July 1^st 1944. Ironically a long period of building stagnation in D.C. (after the1968 riots) protected many of the remaining stables. Today, few alley auto repair garages exist but stables are slowly being rediscovered and restored to live adaptive new lives as musician and artist studios, offices or homes.

Unlike the labyrinths of London mews, intact collections of stables are virtually nonexistent in D.C. today. Almost none were built outside of the city as it was defined by turn of the century maps, for a moratorium of building stables was passed. To search for stables within Washington, one only needs to read a city map from 1900 which defined the borders of the city. After 1900, very few stables were built, partly because of the decline in demand and partly because of the inherent fire hazard of stables. They are almost all within the confines of an alley for they served the elegant homes on the street side and it was a way to reduce the noise and smell that accompanied an active stable.

Today, stables have a hard earned right to be protected (two D.C. alleys and their stables were recognized as National Historic Landmarks in 1990) and nurtured so that they can continue to thrive. They uniquely remind us of their struggles and the roles that they have played in the special history of Washington, its alleys, transportation, commerce and the arts. They have a special charm that is timeless.

The stables in Washington D.C. can be classified into several categories: - small and utilitarian private stables, moderate sized stables, large commercial stables (such as the US Parks stables) and elegant “mansion stables” such as the (White House stables). As one walks through the city with a trained eye it become easy to spot stables in the alleys even though many have either been joined to their primary building or been modified almost beyond recognition.

They are all two stories in height for the hayloft occupied the second floor. There is a second story central hayloft door with a beam and pulley. Remnants can still be seen in some stables. The lower level always had a large carriage door for the horses and vehicles with the edges protected by characteristic bollards and an adjacent smaller door for people. The huge stable doors were hinged to the wall, secured with massive plates that extended several brick spans into the wall and the row of bricks above the plate were laid “end on.” Many stables have “horse head height windows” that allowed sun and fresh air inside the stable. Older stables had been poorly ventilated and the toxicity of the ammonia levels and other equine respiratory threats resulted in a high sickness rate amongst the working horses. Occasionally one will glimpse a rein ring on the wall of the stable or the remnants of a cupola to vent the hayloft and control temperature.

It is not widely appreciated that some of the stables in Washington, especially the larger stables were built by well known architects, such as Nicholas T Haller, who also built the Warder Building and the Luzon Apartment building. The quality of his work and that of other architects is evident today, for a number of these stables are intact today.

Clearly, the lives of the stables in Washington D.C. paralleled the evolving story of transportation. In 1828 when the C and O canal was completed, goods were transported from the Town of George to Washington D.C. by horse. There is still evidence of a mule stable in Georgetown by the canal today. By 1835 canal traffic slowed with the completion of the Baltimore and Ohio Railway into Washington. By 1862 the first horse car service began, connecting the Capitol to the State Department and an experimental electric trolley began in 1888. By 1890, a cable car operation commenced. All of these advances significantly affected Washington residents’ abilities to move goods and themselves around the city and the need for horses diminished rapidly. While the horse car operation ended in 1898 car barns at either end of the streetcar run still exist and have been adaptively reused as residences. In 1897 the first automobiles drove along Washington streets signally the finality of the horse driven era of transportation.

The 14^th Street corridor car showroom era too has passed, for today there is only one remaining dealership within the city. Despite the rapidly fading past and new demands of the future, many stables have managed to survive and adapt to other lives.

The value of the contribution of the stables to the ebb and flow of city commerce and transportation is often lost in the quest to develop new businesses and residences. Even in circumstances where it is impossible to save a stable there is still the opportunity to at the very least archive its dimensions and structural features and even explore the site archeologically. This was done with the White House stables as reported in a 2004 Washington Post article “Below Ground, Washington’s Lost History.” The White House stables had been razed to the ground by Taft in 1912 to make room for his new motorcar.

There are many impediments to salvaging stables in addition to the government alley abolition acts. For example, it is still not legal to have a residence that faces a 15 foot wide alley. Stables cannot be easily separated from the rest of the property on which they reside so cannot be bought as individual entities. The wear and tear of many years of abuse and neglect have taken such a toll on many structures, that there is little incentive to properly repair and restore the building.

The art of brick and pointing repair was lost for many years and eclipsed by the ease of use of Portland cement which ultimately destroyed the very structure it was trying to save. Bricks became stress points through this rigid mortar and lost the limestone “give and take” that has allowed European buildings to stand for centuries. A welcome resurgence of interest in the value of limestone mortar is occurring today.

In one alley the Save Our Stables (S.O.S.) initiative was created this fall to spawn an awareness of the historic nature of the Washington alleys and the lives of the buildings within them. Despite protection through the National Register of Historic Landmarks, Blagden Alley and Naylor Court alley structures continue to be torn down and replaced with modern buildings. “The greenest building is one that already exists.”

References

1. Alley Life in Washington – Family, Community, Religion and Folklife in the City, 1850 – 1970 by James Borchert, University of Illinois Press, 1980
2. The Secret City – A History of Race Relations in the Nation’s Capital by Constance McLaughlin Green, Princeton University Press, 1967
3. The Mews of London – A guide to the hidden byways of London’s past, by Barbara Rosen and Wolfgang Zuckerman, 1982
4. The Timeless Way of Building, by Christopher Alexander, Oxford University Press, 1979
5. Memories of the Buggy Days, by Henry W. Meyer, Brinker Printing Company, 1965
6. American Stables – an architectural tour by Julius Trousdale Sadler Jr. and Jacquelin D.J. Sadler, New York Graphic Society Boston, 1981
7. Saving America’s Treasures, National Geographic, National Trust for Historic Preservation 2001
8. Preservation and Conservation – principles and practices, Proceedings of the North American International Regional Conference, Williamsburg, Virginia and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Sept 10 – 16, 1972, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1976
9. Neglected Neighbors by Weller, The John C Winston Company, 1909
10. Coach Houses of Toronto – by Margo Salnek, Boston Mills Press, 2005
11. Loft Living – recycling warehouse space for residential use by Kingsley C. Fairbridge and Harvey-Jane Kowal, Saturday Review Press/E.P. Dutton and Co. Inc, 1976
12. Making the Case: Historic Preservation as Sustainable Development by Patrice Frey, National Trust for Historic Preservation, 2007 http://www.preservationnation.org/issues/sustainability/additional-resources/DiscussionDraft_10_15.pdf
13. A Timeline of Washington DC History: http://www.h-net.org/~dclist/timeline1.html

Reaffirmation of Blagden Alley Naylor Court historic designation.

Yesterday the Historic Preservation Office of the DC Government released their updated inventory of Washington Historic properties and sites. The alley community needs to keep this designation in the forefront of their minds whenever any thought of development within the Naylor Court Alley is raised for discussion. It’s very simple - these properties are protected by law.

The destruction of the 1863 stable and its 1868 home that was allowed to occur over the past July 4th 2008 weekend must not happen again. The community cannot be apathetic; neither can it relax its sense of vigilance. The information about alley protection is in the public domain and needs to become learned as community knowledge. The historic alleys no longer pose the urban threat to the city that they once did. The old mindset of government, architects and urban planners is hard to influence, but 50 years from now, others will be grateful that some in the past could see far enough ahead into the future to fight for a dream that they themselves will not live to see realized.

Blagden Alley and Naylor Court acknowledged for their historic contributions to the city.

Tear it down! Save it!

This month there is a wonderful article in the Washingtonian magazine discussing the history of historic architectural preservation in Washington D.C. by Larry Van Dyne. I highly recommend it to anyone with any interest at all in the architectural history of this city. It is insightful, well written, well balanced and filled with a myriad of facts and small vignettes of the struggle between progress and preservation.

“Robert Peck – who has held top positions at the Preservation League, the Greater Washington Board of Trade and General Services Administration – sums up the past 30 years this way: Preservationists once had to sit in the path of the bulldozer to save buildings. Then we got one of the strongest laws in the country and had to adapt to having lots of leverage.”

Blagden Alley and Naylor Court were recognized in the article for their unique role in the history of the city: - “Blagden Alley and Naylor Court preserves examples of the alley dwellings that once housed many of Washington’s working poor.”

While landmark historic designation is designed to confer protection, this does not always happen. It’s up to the community to consolidate and focus their efforts to protect buildings such as the Rhodes Tavern built in 1800 that was summarily razed as was the home of Francis Scott Key at the entrance of the bridge that now bears his name. While these were examples of failures to protect history, there are many stories about how communities rallied to save buildings that would otherwise have perished.

“Each year the Preservation League (since 1996) garners press coverage by issuing a list of ten historic places it considers the city’s “most endangered” … The local list usually includes some landmarks that are legally protected but are deteriorating or face a threat from development as well as places that have yet to gain recognition.” A nomination has been submitted for Blagden Alley and Naylor Court this year in light of recent aggressive development and destruction of landmark protected historic properties in these alleys. This article clearly demonstrates that a coalition of caring individualists can ultimately make profound differences in the world Washington D.C. historic preservation.

Context and Massing in Historic Districts

These are two of the most frequent descriptors that weave through conversations when historical preservation architects discuss proposals for modern buildings in the midst of a group of historic properties. How large is the proposed structure? What is its configuration? Does it comfortably blend into the architectural environment? Does its presence somehow diminish the neighborhood? Mindful of these questions, the HPO and HPRB continually struggle to balance their approach to a first proposal that allows one to distinguish what is original from what is new, yet simultaneously encourage a tasteful continuity with the past. The final building should not appear contrived but rather, an interpretation of the spirit of the neighborhood. Builders and developers on the other hand strive to maximize the use of their allotted “footprint” of land. With the restrictions of 60/40 ratios of land use restrictive covenants, this often means “going vertical.” Getting the proportions right at the beginning is the key, for once a structure has been approved it very unlikely to be disapproved after the fact simply because the plans and products look somewhat different and (even objectionable) when the project is finally constructed in full scale. Not all of the city is designated as “historic” even though properties in non historic areas date back to the 19th Century and are identical in configuration to their protected peers elsewhere. This problem is under vigorous discussion.

The first block of P Street NE is an excellent example of one new building that “got it right” and a new addition “got it wrong.” It all comes down to values. Sometimes it takes the collective consciousness of a neighborhood to guide the decision making of all stakeholders. There are standards and guidelines and then there is common sense.














New construction on a double lot that blends elegantly with its environment.
















New “pop up” construction that is visually jarring and entirely out of sync in massing and context.

Aids to Historic Preservation Research

This is a fabulous database and can be used through the MLK Library in the Washingtonian Section.

Constructing a Chronicle of the City's Structures With Facts, Figures and Fortitude
By John Kelly
Tuesday, February 10, 2009; B03

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/09/AR2009020903245.html]

Iam not well-suited to repetitive, detail-heavy work. For example, putting the Christmas lights back in their little plastic holder -- snapping the bulbs in, looping the wire back and forth, getting it all neat enough to slide back into the cardboard box -- is the sort of task that drives me mad. After a few minutes, I want to scream and throw things.

But the world needs the detail-oriented and the persnickety. The world needs Brian Kraft.

Slim, shaven-headed, soberly dressed, Brian looks like he would have been at home in a medieval monastery copying snippets of scripture, and in a sense that's what he did. Brian catalogued every building permit issued in the District of Columbia over a 72-year period. Working to the warm hum of a microfilm machine and the click of his laptop, Brian transferred details of the more than 60,000 D.C. building permits issued between 1877 and 1949 to a database he created.

It took him seven years.

"It was a long, hard slog," Brian said. "It's not a job I would wish on other people."

The building permit is the starting point of any structure's history. Like a birth certificate, it includes all sorts of information historians might want decades later: who built the building, who designed it, what it was for, how much it cost, what its roof was made of.

Brian, 46, had been a computer science major at Penn State. He was also interested in history. After graduating, he moved to Washington, where he became obsessed with the city's neighborhoods: Who built them? When? He consulted the microfilm stored in the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library's third-floor Washingtoniana Room.

"I was scrolling through the microfilm, and I'm thinking 'This is data,' in a way people in history or preservation wouldn't."

The pool of data had been dipped into here and there before. Brian proposed to drain it.

Coincidentally, David Maloney, the state historic preservation officer, had been thinking along the same lines. Brian was hired as a contractor. Said David: "It is truly amazing that we found somebody who was willing and capable of doing that, of just grinding it out."

And grinding it out is what Brian did. "People said, 'Oh, you just plugged that thing in and downloaded the data?' No, it doesn't quite work like that."

How does it work? "Just eyes and fingers."

Besides the sheer drudgery of copying information from every building permit, Brian had to compare plat maps to make it all make sense to modern eyes. For example, on July 30, 1897, Permit 131 was issued for a row of three brick houses on Yale Street NW, Lot 23, Block 26 of the Columbia Heights Subdivision. Today, Yale Street is known as Fairmont Street, and the houses are on Lots 0832, 0831, 0830, Square 2862. The house numbers have changed, too.

"I wanted it so that the data has current information converted to it," Brian said.

The result of his toil is a searchable database of permits representing 132,000 buildings. You want to find all the wood frame homes permitted on a Tuesday in Cleveland Park? All the churches built in the 1920s? All of developer Harry Wardman's houses? Now you can.

As we sat in the Washingtoniana Room, I asked Brian whether he could look up an address for me: 1440 Otis St. NE. With a few taps of the keyboard, he brought up the information. Permit issued Oct. 9, 1924. Concrete foundation. Shingles on a pitched roof. Valued at $6,000. No mention of an architect, but the builder was listed as A. Jeffery.

"He did quite a lot in Brookland and Woodridge," Brian said. Including the house my father grew up in.

Over the years, Brian became so intimate with the permits that he came to recognize the handwriting of long-dead bureaucrats. He came across odd little buildings, too, such as an airplane hangar built in Wesley Heights in 1910 and a multi-story wooden tower planned for the edge of Rock Creek Park.

The only thing he regrets is that he didn't get up from his chair more frequently and focus off in the distance. "My eyes were fried," he said. "I think it definitely hastened the demise of my close vision."

Brian finished entering the 1877-1949 permits in 2006. He's now in the process of cleaning up the data, and he's started collecting permit information from 1949 to 1958. He expects to be done in about a year and a half. After that: buildings from before 1877.