The Georgetown Metropolitan

For this edition of Where the Streets had Old Names, GM is going to explore both names of a tiny street. The story of those names and how they came about says a great deal about the history of 20th century Georgetown and the role of gentrification.

The street is now known as Pomander Walk. It’s really an alley, not a street, but it contains ten tiny rowhouses. They were built between 1889 and 1890 and like other alley dwellings, they were built to house domestic workers and other laborers. (Sometimes they are mistakenly described as former homes of enslaved people, but they were built decades after the end of slavery). In the case of this alley, the residents were primarily (if not exclusively) African American.

Despite the homes being so small (approximately 600 square feet each), they were originally split into two, with each floor hosting a different family. At the time of the 1900 Census, the enumerator counted twenty-seven people living in the seven homes he surveyed (GM’s not sure why three of the homes weren’t counted). All of them were black:

The alley was called Bell’s Court. It was named after Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, who lived around the corner on what’s now called Volta Place (here’s the story behind that name, by the way). Bell was a large property owner in Georgetown, however building records indicate that the alley was built by someone named F.P. Naylor. Naylor was likely part of the same Naylor family that gave its name to places all over the DC area (e.g. Naylor Road, Naylor Court).

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• There are so many GU students testing positive right now that their conference center that they use to isolate the students is full.
• Petite Souer is hosting a bonbons and bouquets pop-up this Friday for Valentine’s Day.

MPD released photos of an individual sought in connection with the shooting murder of Tarek Boothe on January 31st.

According to MPD:

The Metropolitan Police Department currently offers a reward of up to $25,000 to anyone that provides information which leads to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for each homicide committed in the District of Columbia. Anyone with information about this case is asked to call the police at 202-727-9099. Additionally, anonymous information may be submitted to the department’s TEXT TIP LINE by sending a text message to 50411.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• How Takeout Tuesday helps local restaurants.
• Some fun mapping Georgetown love stories.

If you’ve used Metrobus over the last month, you might’ve found yourself waiting a lot longer than you expected. Due largely to staffing shortages driven by the Omicron surge, WMATA ran the buses on a reduced weekend schedule all week.

With the surge thankfully subsiding, WMATA restored bus service to normal weekday service yesterday.

Readers may recall the alarm GM was raising last spring after WMATA proposed draconian service cuts to bus service across the city (including in Georgetown). Those cuts, thankfully, were never implemented mostly due to the massive infrastructure bill passed last year.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Over 20 GU students still testing positive for Covid each day. That represents over 7% of all cases in the District.
• A bit more on the M St. shooting last week.

GM’s trying something new. He’s started a TikTok account. He’ll try to fill it with little virtual Georgetown walking tours like this. Follow along if you like the first one.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Takeout Tuesday this week is Brasserie Liberte and Reren Lamen.
• The Asian skewer restaurant, Sticx, has (or will have) a wine bar upstairs called Stonz.