Post by uphilldoggieIf so, what is the exact address and do you know if it has been restored?
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From victoriansecrets.net
Address -> 2901-2907 14th Street NW
Status -> The DC RLA website currently says that the Hines site is
awaiting an "exclusive use agreement". In the meantime, the Greater
Washington Urban League reports that it will be moving into the Hines
buildings (see http://www.gwul.org/).
Article
LAST RITES ?
Walking late at night, would you cross 14th Street to avoid passing
this desolate row? And would four lanes of asphalt be enough
insulation if you knew that 10,000 Washingtonians had started their
final journey from its stoop?
In 1969, the route of the 50 bus had a new last name---"the-14th-
Street- riot-corridor". Perhaps it's just a rumor that newer models
were automatically assigned to more affluent lines, but the 50 buses
were invariably wheezy and geriatric. As we left the flatlands with
the Peoples Drug at the corner of U Street, the driver would try to
build speed and the bus would labor forward strain forward like an
arthritic horse straining to canter. At W Street, the transmission
would whine like an electric drill boring concrete and rattle the
windows in their frames as the driver assaulted the Fall Line slope in
low gear. On the way up, there was always time to study the
streetscape in detail.
Even after the riot, the east side of 14th Street was still a faceless
string of vacant storefronts, used car lots, and gas stations. But
above Belmont Street, the west side of the street was bounded by vast
vacant lots, outlined by thick closely-spaced wooden posts driven into
ground like dock pilings. In the summer heat, the lots were barren tan
clay with the texture of unfinished concrete. But with spring rains
they grew weeds in scattered tufts like a cheek shaved with a dull
blade, and their low spots became orange puddles from the leached dust
of a billion crushed bricks. The lots, with their backdrop of
boarded-up and fire-scared buildings, were riot souvenirs until the
mid-1970s.
The ridge that runs like an eyebrow above Florida Avenue has always
inspired medieval fantasies. Although the 14th Street hill had nothing
as elegant as 16th Street's faux castle battlement it had a gothic
abbey at the southwest corner of Chapin Street. Built of dark stone
like the Heurich House, this 1870s mansion had a lowslung extension
along 14th Street whose sky blue curtains were blowing to tatters
behind broken windows. In 1969, the subtraction of more ordinary
neighbors made some ruins seem so grand that no one would dare tear
them down, although in time they did. One was the ivory-colored shell
of Victoria Towers one of the most elegant "french flats" in 1890s
Washington, which stood at the crest of the hill behind a row of dead
storefronts.
This orange-brick row at 2901-2907 14th Street NW was one of the few
active spots on the 14th Street ridge in the 1960s-70s. Until the late
1980s, it was flanked by rows of cars as the headquarters of the
United Planning Organization, which coordinates the efforts of social
service agencies in the District. It was built in the 1880s as a type
of housing that never caught on along upper 14th Street, the luxury
rowhouse.
By the late 1890s, when fashionable apartments like Victoria Towers,
the Savoy Apartments, and the still-standing Olympia Flats were being
erected on the 14th Street hill, its neighbors were storefronts with
apartments above. But in 1900, the row still housed affluent families.
At 2903, the 5 members of the family of real estate broker Charles
Simpson were maintained by 2 servants. William Tucker, M.D. lived in
the bay-fronted house at 2905, where his widowed mother was assisted
by 3 servants in tending to 6 boarders, including an architect and an
accountant and 4 government clerks. At 2907. David Wolhaumper, M.D.
and his large multi-generational family roughed it with no live-in
help at all.
From the turn of the 20th century, Stephen Hines both lived in and ran
his funeral home from 2901, the turreted house on the northeastern
corner of Harvard Street. But by 1920 the entire row, which sweeps
around the corner into the 1300 block of Harvard, housed members of
the Hines family and employees, including a husband and wife embalming
team. During its 60 years on 14th Street the S.H. Hines home buried
thousands of upper-middle and middle class Washingtonians, including
Bernard Baruch's mother and such one-time notables Joe Turner, world
champion "matman", wrestling impresario, philanthropist, and
rough-hewn Duke Zeibert protype whose Kit-Mar Restaurant and Arena
stood near the foot of the hill.
Today the future of the Hines row is murky, even as the Columbia
Heights area undergoes a spectacular revival. Determining the plans
for the property, presently in the hands of the DC Redevelopment Land
Agency, frustrated Councilman Jim Graham, who in 2000 raised the
possibility that the building might "fall in on itself " before it
would be redeveloped (see
http://www.innercity.org/tivoligiant/77.htm). The DC RLA website
currently says that the Hines site is awaiting an "exclusive use
agreement". In the meantime, the Greater Washington Urban League
reports that it will be moving into the Hines buildings (see
http://www.gwul.org/).
Hopefully some way can be found to preserve the Hines row before
Councilman Graham's prophecy comes to pass.
