Photo by Rory Finneran.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
Photo by Dan Reed.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
The ANC met for its October session last night. Here are some of the bigger items they discussed:
Demolition By Neglect Reaches it Inevitable Conclusion
The agenda was marked by a solemn item. The new owner of 3324 Dent Place has filed a raze request with the city. Such requests are rare in Georgetown, and even more rarely granted.
The house in question can be seen above in slightly better days. It is a wood frame house and likely dates from the mid 1800s. It can be seen in this old map from 1903. Even as late as then, that block of Dent was home to only a couple of other houses (also, it was called S St., not Dent).
The house’s more recent history was retold by Chairman Ron Lewis last night. In 1978, the owner of the house requested a raze permit. The Old Georgetown Board denied it. For whatever reason (perhaps out of spite) the house was left to rot for decades. As the neighbors complained last night, the property became a fetid eyesore attracting vermin and mosquitoes. One resident complained that when she lived there 15 years ago, she couldn’t believe the house was in such poor shape. And she mentioned that when she returned to the neighborhood after living abroad all those years, she was shocked to see it had only gotten worse.
Up to a little over a year ago this was a classic case of demolition by neglect. This is the situation whereby an owner of a historically protected building allows the building to fall into such disrepair that the city will be forced to grant a raze permit. The proper response to such a tactic is to jack up the property taxes and deny a raze permit. Unfortunately, in this situation Mother Nature had her say. During Hurricane Irene a large silver maple fell squarely on the house. It is now unsalvageable.
Ron Lewis recognized the difficulty of the situation. Allowing a homeowner to tear down a century-and-a-half year old house is irrevocable. But the neighbors who had lived with the eyesore for too long. It is a shame that such a historic structure cannot be saved, but a raze permit must be issued.
Lewis added a clause to the motion supporting the raze permit that requested that the new owner of the building not be permitted to use this raze as an opportunity to build a much larger house. It’s a small gesture in the face of a bad situation all around. Continue reading
GM had some computer problem in August that prevented him from publishing the “swipe” versions of his Now and a Long Time Ago series. Now that his computer is back in shape, he went back to pull a few of them together. Enjoy:
P and 33rd Continue reading
Filed under Now and a Long Time Ago
Photo by Frankenstein.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
Yesterday, the Atlantic Cities website published an amusing piece wondering whether home value is affected by the street it’s on is called a “street” or, say, “lane”. Apparently a report by Trulia found that homes are worth the most is they’re on an avenue (average $117 per square foot) while they sell for the least on those humble “streets” ($86 per square foot).
This got GM wondering, would Georgetown homes be worth more if Georgetown still had the old street names? The street designation was the same with the old street names, but the given names, so to speak, were more distinctive (for the most part, that is, the east-west streets west of Wisconsin were just numbered first through eighth).
To test this theory, GM looked at the last three years of real estate sales in Georgetown and split them into two groups: streets with either letters or numbers (e.g. 30th or P St.) and streets with some other name (e.g. Dumbarton or Volta). Continue reading
Filed under Real Estate
Photo by Bnedwek.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
Filed under The Morning Metropolitan
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
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