The Historic Preservation Office’s newly released 2016 Historic Preservation Plan has some good maps about LeDroit Park’s historic architecture and development.

Architects

Though James H. McGill designed the neighborhood’s original eclectic country houses, architects A. H. Beers, George S. Cooper, N. T. Haller, and A. E. Landvoight designed much of the neighborhood’s subsequent housing.  (Click any of the following maps for larger versions)

Builders

If you research your house’s original building permit at the Washingtoniana Division of the MLK Library, you will find that it lists both an architect and a builder.  The builder typically hired the architect and arranged for the financing and sale or lease of the finished product.  The McGill-designed houses were built by A. L. Barber & Co., but other builders included Barr & Sanner, W. R. Coon, George C. Hough, Harry A. Kite, and Thomas W. McCubbin.

Contributing Structures

Not every building in a historic district is historic or worthy of preservation.  The National Park Service defines a contributing structure as one that “by location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association adds to the district’s sense of time and place, and historical development.”  A non-contributing building can include “one where the location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association have been so altered or have so deteriorated that the overall integrity of the building has been irretrievably lost.”  Also, buildings built within the past 50 years are typically considered non-contributing.  (The “50-year Rule” is a common, if controversial, historic designation threshold.)

Date of Construction

The McGill houses were built between 1873 and 1883.  After that other lots were sold off and developed as rowhouses.  Some McGill houses were torn down and replaced with smaller rowhouses.

All of the above maps are from page 69 of the Historic Preservation Office’s report.

Join your fellow neighbors for food and fun at the LeDroit Park Holiday Party. There will be free appetizers, a cash bar, and all children are welcome.

The party is on Sunday, December 15 from 4 to 7 pm on the second floor of Shaw’s Tavern (6th Street & Florida Avenue).

The LeDroit Park Civic Association is hosting the party, but you don’t have to be a member to attend.

A Bloomingdale resident share this 1937 news story in which the author recounts the early days and residents of LeDroit Park.

The writer describes what LeDroit Park looked like before 1875, which is about the time the neighborhood started to develop.  He recalls that he could stand at 7th Street and Florida Avenue (née Boundary Street) and see all the way down to North Capitol Street.

Few houses stood on Florida Avenue at that time, he notes.  The Washington & Georgetown Railroad, a streetcar company, kept a car barn on the triangular block opposite what is now the Howard Theatre.

The neighborhood was created by combining the Miller, Prather, McClelland, and Gilman properties pictured below.  The Prather property was used as a pasture and the Miller property was not maintained.

The wood and iron fence, which caused a great dispute in the 1880s, extended from the neighborhood’s boundary at 2nd Street to within a few feet of 7th Street.  “At the west of the grounds is an attractive old gate, made to match the artistic fence.  It was evidently driveway gate, though its use as such has been abandoned and the driveway itself obliterated.”

Early residents

The author lists several of the neighborhood’s earlier residents.  Before LeDroit Park became the favorite enclave of Washington’s black elite, it housed many prominent whites.  While few of the people listed below are household names today, many of them held high positions in government.

• Henry Gannett, Chief Geographer, U.S. Geological Survey, and described as the “Father of Government Mapmaking“
• Rep. Benjamin Butterworth, House of Representatives (R-OH) and Commissioner of Patents
• Arthur A. Birney, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia
• Col. O. H. Irish, Chief, Bureau of Engraving and Printing
• Sumner I. Kimball, General Superintendent, U.S. Life Saving Service, forerunner to the U.S. Coast Guard
• William T. Hornaday, Chief Taxidermist, U.S. National Museum (now called the Smithsonian) and controversial director of the Bronx Zoo
• Arnold B. Johnson, Chief Clerk, U.S. Lighthouse Board
• Edmund Wood, Chief of the Financial Division, Bureau of Indian Affairs
• De Lancey Gill, painter and photographer, Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology
• George S. Prindle, patent attorney
• Ellery C. Ford, lawyer (This name appears at the African-American Civil War Memorial on U Street)
• Andrew Langdon, co-developer of LeDroit Park
• James H. McGill, architect of LeDroit Park and other Washington buildings
• Staughton S. Doyle, music teacher
• Ezra B. Barnum, clothier and grand juror who indicted Charles Guiteau, who assassinated Pres. James Garfield in 1881
• Dr. Joseph N. Rose, botanist
• J. J. Albright, possibly the wealthy coal magnate and associate of LeDroit Park developer Amzi Barber.
• Capt. Howard L. Prince, Civil War captain and Librarian of the U.S. Patent Office
• George E. Sloat, employee of the Pension Office
• Charles Ruoff, partner, Willet & Ruoff
• Marie Ginesi, employee of the Post Office
• Charles Darwin (no, not that Charles Darwin), librarian, U.S. Geological Survey
• W. Scott Smith, correspondent, New York Times

Here are names I haven’t been able to research:

Brenton L. Baldwin, Emma B. Smith, F. H. Ramey, W. E. Williams, Ralph Baldwin, B. Pettingill, S. S. Gannett, F. J. Young, Henry A. Merrick, Rev. C. H. Fay, N. M. Brush, Charles W. Fisher, Abram L. Swartout, W. Norman Fleming, Charles A. Hamilton, O.B. Brown, William H. Degges, W. F. Hildebrand, James A. Marter, T. B. Campbell, T. J. W. Robertson, E. M. Merrick, H. B. Wyman, M. Horstman, A. W. Conlee, C. R. Follin, Mary Ragan, Oscar T. Towner, E. Woodruff, W. Hollingsworth, H. E. Cooper, and J. B. Thomas.

If you dig up any information on these people, please add it to the comments.

LeDroit Park will be part of a rat control pilot program sponsored by the city. Learn how you can participate at the next LeDroit Park Civic Association meeting, which will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 26 at 7 pm in the basement of the Florida Avenue Baptist Church (623 Florida Ave NW – enter on U St). The full agenda includes:

• Rat control pilot project coming to LeDroit Park
• Howard University community update
• Common Good City Farm presentation
• Public safety update
• Community open forum
• Holiday party plans (Dec. 15, 4 – 7 pm at Shaw’s Tavern)

All neighbors are welcome and encouraged to attend.

Want to join the civic association? Join online or at the meeting!

[Download the meeting flyer]

Two— possibly three— new movie theaters are set to open within a mile of LeDroit Park by 2016.  All will be located within a block or two of Florida Avenue and are easily accessible by foot, bike, and 90s bus.

Atlantic Plumbing site – 800 V Street NW- unknown screens

Prolific developer JBG is starting construction on its Atlantic Plumbing project by the 9:30 Club.  The project includes two mixed-use buildings on 8th Street NW, each on opposing sides of V Street.  The northern building was supposed to include an 11,000-square-foot movie theater, but a September article in the WBJ makes no mention of a theater.  The building will probably open in 2015.

Landmark Theater – New York Avenue & N Street NE- 10 screens

Capitol Point, another JBG mixed-use project, is located on New York Avenue NE near the maddening intersection with Florida Avenue NE.  The mixed-use project is slated to receive a 10-screen Landmark Theater showing foreign and independent films.  The chain currently has a location downtown on E Street and one in Bethesda.  This new theater is scheduled to open in 2016.

Angelika Film Center – Union Market (5th Street & Neal Place NE) – 8 screens

Soon after you pass under the railroad tracks on Florida Avenue NE, Union Market appears embedded in the background on the left.  These blocks constitute a wholesale food market that is slowly being redeveloped.  The new Union Market building has met great success, featuring produce, prepared foods, oysters, meats, and dairy products along with chairs and tables for the impatient.  The market fare is definitely upscale and vendors never shy from the word ‘artisanal’.

The market building’s developer announced it will open an 8-screen Angelika movie theater on an adjacent lot.  Angelika theaters feature foreign and independent films and, as the Post described it, “culinary offerings from former Food Network executives.”  The developer expects the theater to open in 2015.

Are we over-theatered?

Another movie theater is coming to different part of the District.  In the Navy Yard, developer Forest City is planning an upscale 16-screen theater near Nationals Stadium and the Navy Yard Metro.  The theater, at N Place and the future 1½ Street SE (a terrible name for a street), may not open until 2016 or later.

Can’t wait until 2015? There are four existing theaters within a 2.5-mile radius of LeDroit Park as the crow flies.  The Landmark E Street Cinema (1100 block of E Street NW) and the Regal Gallery Place (7th & G Streets NW) are easily accessible from the Green Line, Yellow Line, and 70s buses.  To the west of us, the West End Cinema (23rd & M Streets NW) and the AMC Loews Georgetown (3111 K Street NW) are easily accessible from the G2 bus, whose eastern terminus is LeDroit Park.

In 16 days the Giant at 7th & O Streets in Shaw will reopen after closing for redevelopment in 2011. The new store occupies 78,000 square feet, making it the largest grocery store in the District, and the closest grocery store to LeDroit Park.

Unlike the previous Giant, which was situated with its back to 9th Street, the new Giant will occupy the former historic market building along 7th Street.  LeDroit residents can easily access the Giant by foot, bike, or the G2 bus, which runs along the north side of the store along P Street on its way between Georgetown and LeDroit Park.

The store is part of a larger development, City Market at O, which includes 182 hotel rooms, 407 market-rate apartments, and 90 affordable apartments for seniors.

Giant isn’t the only store opening soon.  The new Trader Joe’s at 14th & U Streets is set to open early next year.

400 block of U Street NW

A recent open house in LeDroit Park perfectly illustrated a great feature of the L’Enfant Plan. The house at 469 Florida Avenue sits directly on the New Jersey Avenue view corridor of the Capitol. Typically this location would be reserved for a civic monument such as a statue, circle, square, or government building, but L’Enfant drew his capital within the confines of Florida Avenue, the two rivers, and Rock Creek.

In some cases, such as Rhode Island, New York, and Maryland Avenues in Northeast, Massachusetts and Connecticut Avenues in Northwest, East Capitol Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue SE, subsequent city officials and developers continued these avenues beyond the city’s original boundary.

LeDroit Park, however, stood right in the way of what could have been an extended New Jersey Avenue NW. Instead of terminating the avenue at a civic point, builders in the neighborhood’s rowhouse era (1880s and after), built without regard to the design principles of the L’Enfant Plan. The result is that one row house has a stunning Capitol view worthy of a monument.

The LeDroit Park Civic Association held officer elections at Tuesday’s meeting.  The members at the meeting voted unanimously to elect the following officers:

• Golda Philip, President
• Eric Fidler, Vice President
• Marc Morgan, Secretary
• Donna Morris, Treasurer

Mr. Morgan, the association’s president for the past two years, was looking for a new person to fill the role of president.  Mr. Morgan, you may recall, is also our ANC commissioner and will remain involved in neighborhood affairs.

Someone snatched a pumpkin from a porch on the 400 block of U Street.  The resident is not happy and left this sign:

To the person who stole my son’s pumpkin:
Thank you for the life lesson. This will teach him that sometimes people are mean for no reason and you have to just brush it off.
Because my son is 2-yrs-old and cannot read this sign, I will add:
You are an a‐‐‐‐‐‐‐.