New York Avenue NW Stable for Sale

The Portland Stable 643- 645 NY Avenue 

   William Horstkamp built The Portland (643 New York Avenue, Square 0405, lot 0006) in 1887 (permit number 1818.5) for its new owner F.M. Draney. Constructed of pressed brick with a concrete foundation, it had a front of 58 feet, a depth of 105 feet and was 4 stories tall. (Source: Kraft database) The livery stable cost $8,000 ($175,000 today) to build and the open stall fee of $30 quoted in the ad below is equivalent to about $670 per month today.  The building was designed and built in so that it looked much more like turn of the century row house residences than a stable. You can also see this design in the neighboring stable at 629-625 NY Ave. – which is still standing. After being in business for 4 years and having established what appears to have been a solid reputation The Portland Stable came up for sale.

“Among the livery stables of this city the Portland Stable of F.M. Draney ranks with the best. It is conveniently located on New York Avenue, near 7^th Street and can be reached by four lines of cars – the Seventh Street cable, Eckington, Ninth Street and Columbia cars. The front of this building would do credit to many dwelling –houses, being neatly built of red press brick laid in black mortar. The building is four stories in height. The first and second stories are partly used for horses and partly for carriages. The third story is for carriages, paint-shop and harness repair-room, all the painting and harness repairing being done on the premise. The fourth story is devoted to hay, grain and forage and also storage of vehicles etc. when not in use. A large carriage elevator establishes communication between the ground and top floors. An Otto gas engine supplies the motive power for running the elevator up and down. Hay is cut in the fourth story with this same power, the engine and cutting box being connected with long belts. The entire ground floor is laid in Portland cement; it has the appearance of stone being laid out in tiled squares of different sizes. It wears as hard and enduring as stone.

            The stable is exceptionally well lighted, ventilated and superbly drained; hardly any objectionable odor can be detected around the building. The best evidence of the healthfulness of this stable is that during the recent epidemic of pink eye in this city not one case infected this stable. Perhaps the most convincing testimony of the healthfulness of the stable as well as the abundance of good feed are the horses themselves, all of them bearing witness to this being fat, hardy and well groomed. Despite the fact of the double advance in feed, $30 is the price charged for each horse per month for open stalls and $22.50 for box stalls.

            Every class of vehicle is kept for hire – handsome landaus, luxurious broughams, stylish Kensingtons, buckboards, surreys, phaetons, horse and buggies and wagonettes for park driving or picnics – all to be had at fair and reasonable prices. To those who are looking for a first-class and reliable livery stable the Portland at 643 and 645 New York Avenue is the place.”

(Source: - Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, February 22, 1891, page 31 and image 31)

   At a roughly 24,000 square feet, The Portland probably qualified as one of the largest livery stables (but not the largest) in the city at the turn of the century. The Portland Stable was an impressive, self-contained business, managing harnesses, carriages, feed and horses. It was multifaceted and fit the requisite balance of any successful business or portfolio. In flush times people bought carriages and horses and boarded them. In lean times, they rented them (like Zip cars). Who could have predicted “the panic of 1893” that lay two years ahead? No doubt their flexibility enabled them to survive this well. http://www.thehistorybox.com/ny_city/panics/panics_article10a.htm

Today the Warehouse Theater lives on the site of the Portland Stable (645-643 New York Avenue).

***

The largest stable in D.C. was probably the B.F. McCaully & Co’s stable (Tally Ho) at 1300 Naylor Court– now the D.C. City Archives. 

   Another large historic livery stable in the Logan-Shaw neighborhood was the Mount Vernon Stables 1898 – 1908 (also known as the W.H. Penland & Co. stable (1894-97) and Proctor Alley Livery Stables) at – 1211R-1219R 13th Street. When cars rapidly replaced horses, the stable was converted into a garage for the Terminal Taxicab Company DC. In its last life before being converted into condos, it functioned for years as a successful British Sports Cars garage.

    

The original stable was about 12,900 square feet in size and described as having “distinguishing features (that) illustrate state-of-the-art technology for a late-19^th century stable facility; 3 stories, red brick, utilitarian design with segmental-arched windows including individual horse stall windows; metal-framed structure with sanitary concrete flooring …” 

This former state-of-the-art stable has now become a state-of–the-art Ellis Denning project called the Fennessey Lofts.

http://dcmud.blogspot.com/2010/01/fennessy-lofts.htm 

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Vernon_Stables.jpg

Thankfully, this building was protected from demolition by virtue of having been placed on the National Register of Historic Places years ago and was thus preserved for new generations to appreciate and enjoy in what is probably its final adaptive reuse life. But one never really knows with old buildings …

Alleys as Arterioles

M

elissa was finishing her second year of medical school at Georgetown University and one late spring afternoon she found herself meandering through one of the few reclaimed alleys in the area. She had just finished a grueling cardiovascular system pathophysiology exam, was exhausted from nights of cramming and blissfully let her mind wander aimlessly. She felt safe. The golden beams of a dying afternoon sun danced over the alley bricks and bounced randomly off the walls of stables and other century-old alley buildings.

Still flushed with images of the circulatory system swimming in her brain, she couldn’t help but think about alleys as arterioles or little arteries and streets as larger arteries and highways as the aorta. The gutters became lymphatic channels. People and cars and bicycles became red blood cells and white blood cells and platelets. She remembered one of the questions that she knew that she had gotten correct on the exam. (It’s asked every year) Q. What are the three things that result in clots in a blood vessel? A. (a) Slow blood flow (b) Damage to the walls of the blood vessel and (c) An increased tendency to have blood elements stick together (clot). Now her alley-arteriole-analogy took on a more dynamic rheological perspective. What did alleys (like blood vessels) require to stay healthy? They needed a steady flow of people and dogs and cats walking through them, attracted because they were places that were different and interesting and beckoning. They needed to be kept free of damage such as graffiti, collapsing roadbeds and buildings that were being demolished by neglect. They needed to be free of trash and overflowing dumpsters that attracted more trash and the obstruction of abandoned mattresses, abandoned cars and worn out water heaters that made alleys impassible.

It suddenly all seemed blindingly simple and clear to Melissa. As an undergraduate she had toyed with the idea of studying urban planning and had taken a couple of courses before changing her mind.  She understood what professors and pundits meant when they discussed the growth and development of cities as an ecology that followed the rules of nature.  She wondered why everyone couldn’t see this.

With a light heart she picked up her step and continued on her way home, wrapping her mind around large buildings as bones, bridges as appendages and traffic lights and streetlights as parts of a giant flickering nervous system. She was now discovering a human physiologic equivalent in everything she saw all around her. For this afternoon at least, through the haze of her fatigue, Washington D.C. and its alleys had become alive!

Two worlds collide in the alleys of Washington DC

J

eb was 11 when he began working seriously in his father’s stable. He was a large boy for his age and because his mother had been “poorly” for the last few years and they needed more money to hold the family together, his dad had forcefully encouraged him to leave school to work with him. It was 1912. The stable and livery business had been slowing down ever since the “horseless carriage” had appeared on the streets of Washington about 10 years ago. Horses were reliable but required great care. These new machines were unreliable and also required great care. Jeb’s dad could not see any possible future for this recent “fad” of unreliable machines which were terrifying horses and pedestrians alike. Some were even electric (38% of the car market in 1900) like President Taft’s new car – a Baker electric. Jeb disagreed. 

Jeb was a smart kid and knew he had to figure out how to make a living for more than just a few years while his mother was ill. He believed in this new “fad”.

At the end of each day after the last horse had been stabled for the night, Jeb would ask his father for permission to visit the stable in the middle of the alley where they were beginning to work on horseless carriages. His father did not exactly approve of this but knowing that his willful son would go anyway and knowing the passion and curiosity that were growing within Jeb, he reluctantly gave his blessing.

The former stable Jeb visited as a child now called itself a garage. Gone were the smells of manure, replaced by the smells of gasoline, oil and grease. The second story hayloft no longer held hay. Instead there were rows of shelves of new replacement automobile parts – leaf springs, rubber tires, spoke wheels, axles, drive shafts and a number of  “odds” bin for smaller parts. The air was vibrant and Jeb was immediately captivated. How could you not be excited by this new world? It was so very different from his previous experience in his dad’s stable. The endless conversations were about what was coming next and whether this “new age” would last. In a way, nobody cared, for there was so much work at hand keeping these machines running. Most automobiles at the time actually required a chauffeur who was also a mechanic because driving and keeping them running was well beyond the capacity of the average owner. By contrast horses and carriages were so much simpler.

Model T Ford central leaf spring

Yet, there were enough similarities between the old and the new stable worlds that Jeb fit well in both. Fro example, the leaf springs of these new vehicles were almost identical to the leaf springs from carriages and replacing or repairing them was the same for each. The wheels and front axles were very similar. Everyone was learning “on the job” and sharing new information as each previously unrecognized problem was approached.

While Jeb’s dad remained skeptical about this new era, he was proud of his son who was growing in so many ways. Eventually Jeb began to work full time at the new garage and his younger brother took his place in his dad’s stable.  There was always a spring in Jeb’s step over the years when he walked a couple of miles to work at 14^th and L Street each day. The alley was alive with clatter of hooves and the backfires of ill tuned cars. It was an uneasy mix of colliding transportation and service worlds. 

(Notice the hayloft doors above the Ford sign and the bollard at the original carriage entrance. 

The open windows are venting fumes. reference -http://www.shorpy.com/node/7035) 

By 1926, the automobile was clearly winning the transportation war. Essentially no new stables had been built in DC after 1910 and gasoline stations began appearing on corners throughout the city. Jeb was now 25 years old. He had missed action in WW-I because of his age but was grateful to have a job when so many did not. While his faith in the new “fad” had paid off handsomely he was saddened that his parents had not lived to see his success. He was now the manager of a highly profitable service garage that sold and serviced Ford Lincolns, Fordson tractors and Ford trucks. His neighboring garage serviced Nash, Overland and Willys-Knight cars. There were nearly a 100 different automobile manufacturers now. Who knew where it would ultimately end?

Jane Jacobs and Alleys

The Death and Life of Great American Cities,  Jane Jacobs, Vintage Books Edition 1992

© 1961 by Jane Jacobs

A question arose several months ago at a community function during a discussion about Jane Jacob’s philosophy of urban development in the context of alleys. After it was generally agreed that Jacob’s philosophy was laid over a template of ecology, the question posed was, “how do market forces create change in the context of architectural historic preservation?” After a little reflection, my own answer was that the best change was never “complete and immediate” but incremental. Just don’t tear down what currently exists and wait for time to catch up with opportunity. Jacobs addresses this question elegantly in two rather complex chapters in her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities -  Gradual money and cataclysmic money and Unslumming and slumming. Times and driving economic forces have changed since these chapters were written in the late 50’s but the principles remain rock solid. (see Reconsidering Jane Jacobs)

It takes so much more imagination to reconfigure and adaptively reuse old buildings than to tear them down and start with nothing. Scorched earth may create a nice blank slate for architects and urban planners to provide an easy short-term solution but it’s one that is sure to come back to haunt everyone in the long-term. Sometimes urban planning approaches look like burning down an old established forest with thousands of different flora and fauna inhabitants and then boastfully converting it into an instant Christmas tree farm. Fast but badly flawed. New but nasty.

Jane Jacobs didn’t write very much about alleys and the many roles they play in cities. Yet her basic philosophy about how best to “unslum” large cities could as easily apply to alleys as it did to the NY slums about which she wrote extensively. Have a look at the following two excerpts from her book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”.

“In New York’s East Harlem there is a housing project with a conspicuous rectangular lawn which became an object of hatred to the project tenants. A social worker frequently at the project was astonished by how often the subject of the lawn came up, usually gratuitously as far as she could see, and how much the tenants despised it and urged that it be done away with. When she asked why, the answer as, “What good is it?” or “Who wants it?” Finally one day a tenant more articulate than the others made this pronouncement: “Nobody cared what we wanted when they built this place. They threw our houses down and pushed us here and pushed our friends somewhere else. We don’t have a place around here to get a cup of coffee or a newspaper even, or borrow fifty cents. Nobody cared what we need. But the big men come and look at that grass and say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful! Now the poor have everything!’”   (from the Introduction)

“The apathy is abetted, also, by the comfortable thought that the problem of slums is being overcome by wiping out old slum buildings. Nothing could be less true.

            It is so easy to blame the decay of cities on traffic … or immigrants … or the whimsies of the middle class. The decay of cities goes much deeper and is more complicated. It goes right down to what we think we want and to our ignorance of how cities work. The forms in which money is used must be converted to instruments of regeneration – from instruments buying violent cataclysms to instruments buying continual, gradual, complex and gentler change.”

(from Chapter 17 Gradual money and cataclysmic Money)

City Hall in Washington DC, be starting to change their concept of alleys from places for trash and services to paths for people. In a recently revealed budget proposal, Tommy Wells announced that among other things, he would like to - “Fund green alleys. Many alleys have crumbling surfaces and greatly need repair, but there hasn't been much money for this in recent years. $1 million would fund a new Green Alleys program, picking some alleys to rebuild with permeable paving, energy-efficient LED lighting, trees, and more.” This is a welcome proposal indeed! Bricking the DC alleys was a great program of “unslumming” while it lasted. The time is now ripe for adding more “human touches” to draw more foot traffic, vibrant human interactions and the kind of  “gentler change” to which Jane Jacobs was referring so many years ago. 

Recently released

Un-stable Alleys – 2 B or not 2 B

Graffiti on 9th Street at O Street DC NW

Social messaging graffiti is creeping back onto the streets and into the alleys in Shaw, reminiscent of the days of the 9^th Street anarchists a few years ago.  That few seem concerned is probably because few understand the implications of graffiti as an assault on private and public property. It is also an assault on minds. BYPO (a social messaging graffiti artist with a self confessed bipolar psychiatric disorder) has been expressing himself liberally in the neighborhood through his cryptic messages that when traced, lead to his blog http://byporevolution.blogspot.com/

“In the beginning was the word

The sentence came next but that took kinda long

the process a mess

Can’t wait around for messiahs reborn

Arm yourself baby its MINDFUCK time

EVOLVE or DIE TRYING

REVOLT or LIVE LYING

from evolution to revolution

NUCOMINTERN baby: a karmic solution”

Insights into his inner passions become clearer after reading this interview posted on “brightest young things” web site: http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/articles/wall-scout-bypo-interview.htm

Public graffiti social messaging, to make a statement of conscience is one thing. To use this form of expression to instigate negativism, social unrest and hatred of any group is quite another. It is in fact illegal.

Perhaps there are some young lurking “peaceniks” in the D.C. alleys waiting to counterbalance the cyclothymic B+ or B - with their own social messaging expression of caring, inclusion and positivity that is devoid of unbalanced urban cultural code words of anger. ("Housing is a right. Gentrification is a virus.")

On the other hand, defacing others’ property is unacceptable, regardless of where you stand on any polarizing issue! This form of civil disobedience often actually accomplishes precisely the opposite of the intended goal of its creators. Today, there are many much more effective vehicles through which to exercise our freedom of speech in ways that can help us all move forward rather than oscillating in ever diminishing B+ve or B-ve circles. How boring! We all face that negative and demeaning dialectic on the news every night. People, let’s get a little more creative and a little kinder. 

B+ve or B-ve Naylor Ct

Defend the District O & 9th

9th St. & O St. NW

Turning Alleys into Neighborhood Spaces

Turning alleys into neighborhood spaces

Issue Date:  Thu, 2009-01-01

Page Number:  13

Large American cities increasingly are trying to improve the aesthetics, environmental performance, or sociability of their alleys.

In 2007 the City of Chicago issued “The Chicago Green Alley Handbook,” which is aimed at installing permeable paving, introducing planting, and relieving flooding along many of the city’s approximately 1,900 miles of public alleys.

Recently Los Angeles has been looking at how to create park-like settings or friendly neighborhood spaces in some of that city’s 12,309 blocks of alleys, with encouragement from the University of Southern California’s Center for Sustainable Cities.

Probably the most energetic alley improvement program now under way is in Baltimore, where an organization called Community Greens is collaborating with neighborhood groups and City Hall to reclaim rundown and often crime-ridden rear passages.

Community Greens — an initiative of Ashoka, a nonprofit international “social entrepreneur” organization based in Arlington, Virginia — began working with the Patterson Park Community Development Corp. in 2003 to convert a decrepit Baltimore alley into a place where residents would feel secure and might mingle with their neighbors.

That alley, between Luzerne Avenue and Glover Street in the Patterson Park neighborhood, was outfitted with planters, potted plants, benches, and a barbecue grill. Gates were installed near the ends of the alley, and garbage collection was moved elsewhere — first to areas in front of the houses and later to the ends of the alley.

“It’s been nothing short of transformational,” says Kate Herrod, director of Community Greens. “Where there used to be pimping, crime, and drug activities, they got safety and community.” Residents “feel much more safe and committed to their block” than before, she says.

The success led Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon to sign an ordinance in May 2007 that authorizes “gating and greening” of any alley where the adjacent residents overwhelmingly request it and where there is no objection from the city departments of police, fire, sanitation, transportation, and public works. If 80 percent of the owners of the surrounding occupied houses approve it, various improvements can be made to the alley. The surrounding homeowners must consent unanimously before gates, trees, or other obstructions to vehicles can be included in the upgrading.

Patterson Park now has a reported 14 blocks carrying out alley improvements, considering them, or requesting authorization. In all, about 60 blocks in 22 Baltimore neighborhoods have expressed interest in the program.

From the perspective of New Urbanism, the conversion of alleys to communal spaces has both an upside and a downside. Over the past 20 years, new urbanists made alleys an accepted part of contemporary planning, even in suburbs that historically lacked them. Many developments — in cities, suburbs, and small towns — have introduced or reintroduced alleys as a way of upgrading the neighborhood atmosphere. Rear passages have become inconspicuous locations for garages, garbage collection, and some utilities. Baltimore’s move toward closing some of its long-established alleys goes against that trend.

If many alleys are placed off-limits to parking, that could divert parked cars to the streets. One danger in the emerging trend toward converting alleys into private or gated neighborhood spaces is that it could end up reinforcing the conventional practice of putting driveways or garages in front of houses. That very pattern undermined the attractiveness of many American residential streets during the past six decades. However, in Baltimore’s program, off-street parking is sometimes installed at the ends of the alleys.

The specifics vary widely. In a redeveloped portion of Patterson Park known as Dexter Walk, the area behind the houses has been designed to be fairly open to the alley and the neighbors. Residents can drive in and park their cars behind the homes. When the cars are removed, however, the unobstructed expanse of space becomes a good spot for block parties and other neighborly activities. The houses were built without fences between properties, so that the alley and the rest of the rear area could be used at times for community events.

Baltimore’s experiment with new treatments for alleys stems largely from the city’s severe crime problems. The greening and gating of alleys can be “a way for people to create defensible space,” Herrod says. Many alleys have become no-man’s-lands, she observes. “This initiative is really to help residents take ownership over spaces where there are issues of crime, dumping, and vandalism,” Nathanson confirms. 

Reposted from NewUrbanNetwork

Alleys were not always places of unhappiness, crime, disease and despair. Borchert wrote “Alley children displayed few signs of disorder and delinquency – on the contrary, they appear to be well integrated into the alley community. … Through music and other forms of entertainment alley children created their own amusements; and more important, by working through traditional forms they maintained key integrating experiences."
From "Alley Life in Washington" by Borchert, 1980 page 165

Stable for Sale - 211 R 11th St SE

A stable built in 1893 (permit #0312) at the rear of 211 11th Street SE is on the market for $425,000.

http://www.postlets.com/res/4959503

Child's Play in the Alley

Alleys have long been stigmatized as places of poverty, pestilence, pissing, puking, pugilism, putrefaction, procreation, panhandling, prostitution and porn just to mention a few appellations. This is probably an unfair universal characterization. Many of Washington’s Alleys became daytime playgrounds filled with exuberant children inventing new toys and games. The alleys were relatively free of traffic and safer and infinitely more interesting than the surrounding sidewalks and streets. A collective of mothers and other family members and friends protectively watched over the children from second floor windows.

Children chatting with a blacksmith in 1900. 

http://www.shorpy.com/blacksmith-c-1900

The blend of commercial and residential elements in the alleys was critical because it created a diversity of activities that offered rich interpersonal encounters for everyone.

“Dancing was not the only activity that required exertion. ‘The children in the alley engage in games which require much physical energy … Racing around the alley to the street and back is often enjoyed’ as was ‘wrestling with one another.’ The children played ‘very rough, often bruising each other in play.’ This rough physical play, of course, is functional to the adult lives they will lead, the demanding physical work of the day laborer and the equally demanding work of the washerwoman or domestic.” (Alley Life in Washington by Borchert, page 156)

Row houses in 1938 Ambridge PA

http://www.shorpy.com/node/2411?size=_original

Life was not entirely innocent for alley children. In about a quarter of cases, parents were deemed unable to look after them due to poverty, illness, death, crime, “incorrigibility” or parental neglect and abuse. Children often formed gangs and stole from stores because of hunger. The children also worked hard doing “adult chores” such as carrying coal or ice. They performed domestic duties such as ironing and cleaning. Consequently the generation gap was small and they grew up quickly. They also grew up very tough, yet there was a tight affiliation with one another in contrast to the “outside world” beyond the alley confines.                                           

1943 East Side New York City  http://www.shorpy.com/node/1303

Jane Jacobs wrote about “lively city sidewalks” with “eyes on the street” where children frolicked under the watchful gaze of storekeepers and many others in an extended community. There was a high ratio of adults to children. This was in contrast to parks that were devoid of supervision and rife with crime and danger for unattended children. Jacobs felt that sidewalks needed to sufficiently wide to accommodate child’s play. As sidewalks narrowed, rope jumping became the “first play casualty” followed by “roller skating, tricycle and bicycle riding.” Narrow sidewalks led to    sedentary lives for urban children. (The Death and Life of Great American Cities) Alleys provided the ideal sidewalk being between 15 and 30 feet wide!  

Above: - skipping rope, south side of Chicago  http://www.shorpy.com/node/1724 

Today in Washington one almost never sees groups of children spontaneously playing with each other in the alleys or on the sidewalks or in the parks. It’s a sad paradox that the world outside the home is now considered much more dangerous than ever. Perhaps some aspects of the old alley sociology were not so bad. 

Easter morning outside church, Southside Chicago. April 1941

http://www.shorpy.com/node/195

The children learned and created their own “rules of the game.” They were fit and thin interacting with each other all day. They learned about leadership and loyalties. I wonder what they would think of the world in which today’s children live without “active play” and settle for being entertained by little hand held “joy boxes” and “remote clickers”? One can’t help but think that it must have been more rewarding to have been able to create your own toys and new games using the breadth of your own imagination. How is today’s child going to solve the world’s problems of the future and play with others, deprived of the experience of spontaneous enthusiasm of child’s play from the past? 

Shepherd Alley Update - Razing Hope

A permit is being approved by the Historic Preservation Review Board to bulldoze a one level cinderblock building in Shepherd Ally: - a building that has no historic significance. The applicant is Marriott Corporation, which is an excellent sign for progress and raises hope for potentially humanizing changes in the core of this block. The building to be razed sits on what was once the site of the Woodward and Lathrop warehouse and stable.

There is still hope for Shepherd Alley since the alley is currently a blank canvas that awaits the Marriott Corporation to fill in the shapes and colors. A dialog needs to be opened with the community so that there is a synergistic evolution of thinking and use. To quote Jane Jacobs: - "The pseudoscience of city planning and its companion, the art of city design, have not yet broken with the specious comfort of wishes, familiar superstitions, oversimplifications, and symbols, and have not yet embarked upon the adventure of probing the real world." (from the Introduction [pg. 13] of the Death and Life of Great American Cities) 

Urban Development Transforms Shepherd Alley into a Stasi Prison-Like Site

Shepherd Alley D.C.

Stasi Prison Germany

[http://www.livemint.com/2010/12/03203541/Cold-War-part-TWO.html

The Stasi headquarters (or the ministry of state security of the GDR), from where the dreaded secret police kept, in truly Orwellian style, an eye on “dissidents”, has been turned into an archive and museum. This anonymous block of buildings was ransacked by angry mobs in January 1990, after which the organization shut down.]

100 years ago, at the turn of the last century the planning and development picture for Shepherd Alley was complete. Over the years there were minor changes. Businesses came and went, juts like today. One major change was building a large warehouse and stable for the giant department store Woodward and Lothrop - now long vanished. (see below) 

 

“In Shepherd Alley as many as six different families reportedly lived in the same small house; generally, however, crowding was not that severe.” The average was 1.6 households per dwelling. In this early block map it’s easy to visualize the density of dwellings and imagine the interconnected community.  Shepherd Alley (the block embraced by 9^th and 10^th Streets and L and M Streets) was once the backbone of an integrated late 1880’s block. The alley was ringed by elegant Victorian row homes on the perimeter of the block.   The interior had small and large stables, a few small crowded dwellings and an assortment of businesses. 

(Page 85 Alley Life in Washington Family, Community, Religion and Folklife in the City 1850 – 1870, James Borchert, University of Illinois Press 1980]

                                   

As buildings on the periphery of Shepherd Alley progressively deteriorated, collapsed or were burned by homeless vagrants, large gaps began to appear in the outer shell of the block. These voids became progressively filled by parking lots. In the 70’s a Victorian home on 9^th Street was bought for $3,000 because few wanted to live in such a crime-ridden environment. Newspaper editorials proclaimed that the 9^th Street NW corridor would never, ever be rebuilt after the riots and conflagration. Parking lots became placeholders for development. It was probably not a bad thing for a community to wait until time and money had caught up to the need and capacity of the neighborhood. Developers quietly and sequentially acquired adjacent properties at bargain prices and eventually towering, massive buildings replaced the Victorian row houses and they then became the new walls of the periphery of the block.

Horses and carriages outside of Woodward and Lothrop

http://www.old-picture.com/american-legacy/014/Washington-Department-Woodward-Lothrops.htm

In the early 1860’s the city blocks in Washington were loosely populated, however this was soon to change with the post civil war population and building boom. Daniel Nairn wrote elegantly about “The Physical Evolution of Blagden Alley-Naylor Court” in Greater Greater Washington. http://greatergreaterwashington.org/tag/Shaw/ 

The two blocks that Nairn pictured were immediately north of Shepherd Alley and are reflective of the general progression of alleys and blocks in Washington at the time. The original lots had been laid out in the 1790’s and plats of this block still exist from 1797.

It’s easy to see the interplay between commercial, civic and residential buildings in Nairn’s creative 3-D 1888 map of Blagden Alley and Naylor Court.

There are about 170 “named alleys” in Washington D.C. Just like people, some alleys became famous, some became historical footnotes and many simply disappeared from the modern urban landscape - victims of the 1934 Alley Dwelling Elimination Act.

The alleys had provided cheap housing, small stores, large warehouses and stables following the Civil War years during a great migration of diverse people for many reasons into Washington (50,000 between 1860 and 1870). The alleys became alive and vivacious communities providing cheap housing for an impoverished population that could not find housing elsewhere in the city during these boom years. Conditions were atrocious, crime was rampant and disease was everywhere. Life was difficult for those who eked a survival in the alleys. The city planning process essentially ignored alleys and treated them as hellholes, so deterioration was self fulfilling and inevitable. Yet, the alleys managed to develop a sense of personality and community, frequently reflected in their name (e.g. Blood Alley, Pig Alley, Blues Alley, Tin Pan Alley). Some were simply possessively christened after people of historic significance in the community (e.g. Blagden’s, Cady’s, Nailor’s, Shepherd’s).

The inner core of the block however, was largely ignored in the planning process of these large peripheral buildings. The street side of buildings was traditionally felt to be more important than the alley side. It’s a matter of published public record that some high visibility senior government planning officials view alleys as being of value for only two things (a) trash and (b) services. Their planning decisions throughout the city have been reflecting this mindset.

The core of Shepherd’s Alley has become a barren wasteland of garbage bins, link fencing, rows of barbed wire and large building underground garage access portals. Young new residents moving into D.C. and living in the new condos repeatedly and loudly complain about criminal activity in the alley and in their underground parking lots accessed through the alley. Street access would have eliminated this problem and created the opportunity for the interior of the block to become a more hospitable place for pedestrians, pets and cyclists. 

Berlin Wall

Hundreds of yards of razor wire line high link fences, embellishing the penal appearance of Shepherd Alley. In a classification system of alley salvageability for historic preservation and development, Shepherd Alley qualifies at the very lowest level ranking (1 out of 5). There are almost no remaining intact historic buildings and the opportunity to create a pedestrian “mews” with ties to architectural artifacts of the past has vanished forever.

While the articulated mandate of the D.C. Office of Planning is to increase the density of living in Washington, neglecting the core of blocks results in lost opportunities for not only increasing density even further, but also to create a warmer human experience of living in Washington. Shepherd Alley has taken on an oppressive and depressing Karma. It’s so foreboding that few people ever walk directly through the alley. The large new developments have literally turned their backs on an opportunity to increase density and diversity of living that lies right in their own back yards. Perhaps the community can have a voice to influence the Phase II development plans of the Marriott to include some forward thinking about looking backwards into the alley as a place for pedestrians, neighborly contact and renewed vibrancy. Living today with alley codes, laws, rules and guidelines that were written for a very different world of yesterday are serving us poorly as we try to built into the future.

Glimmer of Hope: A little park on 10^th Street has been recently dedicated in this block and this is a heartening step in the right direction. Sadly, the push for this oasis came through the community with project champions like Jim Loucks  ( http://www.10thstreetparkfriends.org/?page_id=2 )rather than originating spontaneously from higher levels of government planning. Various levels of DC government gradually and steadily bought into the project, and took ownership. It is now almost finished. Even though the park is part of the peripheral wall of the block and not directly a part of the alley, it nonetheless will have a remarkably humanizing effect on Shepherd Alley by drawing people into outdoor spaces. There is now a warm buzz of enthusiasm and hope for more of this sort of thinking that is percolating through the community. 

To consider only the outer shell of a block in urban planning and to ignore its equally important interior elements seems wasteful and regressive. The inner and the outer elements are architecturally interconnected and functionally interdependent. There can be a graceful ecological synergy between the elements. The alley revival movement is catching fire in many cities, as the realization dawns on inhabitants and planners that overzealous development has resulted in the creation of dehumanizing, depressing and monotonous monoliths. Increased density living potential is being achieved, but the real question should be whether an environment is being created that is attractive for people to move into Washington and stay. Alleys can become the pulse of a city if properly managed. They can also lead to the death of a community if improperly managed. People will either leave the community if they are already here or they will refuse to come if they have been thinking about relocating to inner DC.

An afternoon walk through the Cady’s Alley and Blues Alley in Georgetown should reassure even hardened alley abolitionists of the great potential that alleys hold for synergistic development. The responsibility for the intelligent planning and nurturing of alleys should be a high priority in any city’s Office of Planning and Historic Preservation Office. I’m sure that Jane Jacobs would have agreed!

With such attention paid to detail and beautiful execution lavished on the outer perimeter of Shepherd Alley, (just as at the turn of the last century) it seems a sin of urban planning to create ugly an oppressive inner block through passive disregard.