In 2007 and 2008, I did more than 60 oral history interviews and documentary research for Washington’s Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) office. This week, LISC celebrated its 30th anniversary in Washington and it released a book derived from the interviews, written by community development expert Tony Proscio. Continue reading
More than half a century before Decatur Realtor Stacy Reno’s 2011 meltdown on Twitter and in local blogs over her backyard chickens, goats, and turkeys, another Decatur woman provided neighbors a necessary fowl service. “I think she was the only one in our neighborhood that would actually wring their necks and sometimes they would bring her one and ask her to kill it for them,” recalled Betty Barrett Small of her mother, Annie Elo Barrett’s skill at killing neighborhood chickens.
Turn of the 20th century urban chickens being kept on the grounds of the U.S. Soldiers’ Home in Washington, D.C. Credit: National Archives and Records Administration.
The buying of timber land for the purpose of securing the bark is naturally incident to the tanning business The company owns a large amount of land acquired in this way and owns and operates some sawmills for utilizing the timber on it — Lewis H. Lapham, 1901.[1]
Western Pennsylvania is well known as the birthplace of America’s petroleum industry. Edwin Drake’s construction in 1859 of the nation’s first large-scale oil well laid the foundation for the industry that spread from Pennsylvania’s forests to the desert southwest within four decades.
Leroy Well. Stereograph, c. 1860-1870. Credit: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
In the spring of 1979 the South Decatur Community Council, a volunteer group credited with helping revitalize the area now known as Decatur, Georgia’s Oakhurst neighborhood, raised serious concerns about gentrification and displacement. “Gentrification, Speculation, Displacement, Investment Potential. These will soon become common terms as more and more home buyers discover South Decatur,” wrote the organization in its April 1979 newsletter.
As gentrification has taken hold in Oakhurst over the past decade or so, the SDCC’s concerns have materialized in ways the organization could not have conceived. Not only has Oakhurst become whiter and more affluent than it was in the 1970s, it also has become less tolerant of people once welcomed by the community. More than 30 years ago South Decatur’s community leaders called on their elected and appointed officials to maintain housing, ethnic, and economic diversity in the neighborhood. Instead, their entreaties fell on deaf and disinterested ears, according to many of those leaders who still live in Oakhurst and others who have moved away, propelled by the loss of diversity they foresaw. Continue reading
As the 2012 Vernacular Architecture Forum conference dates near, emails from the session chairs are getting more frequent. I will be giving this paper June 9 in a session titled, “Re-Thinking Tradition and the Vernacular Landscape.” In the meantime, here is my abstract.
Originally published on Dateline:Decatur, a post on a local capoeira group. Kick back and watch this video compiled from the three clips embedded in the 2011 post.
© 2011 David S. Rotenstein
Shortly after the first Union defeat at Bull Run in July of 1861, federal authorities confiscated James Crutchett’s Capitol Hill property in Washington, D.C. Just a few blocks north of the Capitol, the property occupied much of Square 683, which is bounded by North Capitol Street, C Street, D Street, and Delaware Avenue. It included Crutchett’s home and a factory where he had begun turning out George Washington kitsch made from wood he was harvesting from Mount Vernon. Continue reading
Dance card. Library of Congress image.
Abraham Lincoln began his first term as the 16th president of the United States in a ceremony held on the Capitol’s east portico. About 25,000 people watched as Lincoln was sworn in Monday March 4, 1861. Lincoln left the Capitol and went to the White House, traveling in a carriage down Pennsylvania Avenue under tight security. Later that evening, the new president and his wife left the executive mansion for the traditional inaugural ball.
Many of the sites associated with Lincoln’s inauguration were permanent buildings: The Capitol; Willard’s Hotel (where the Lincolns stayed before the ceremonies); Pennsylvania Avenue; and, the White House. One piece of pop-up architecture that did not survive beyond the spring of 1861 was the ballroom where the Lincolns and their guests danced into the night of March 4, 1861. Continue reading
Earlier this year we moved into the Parkwood subdivision. Located partly in unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, and partly in the City of Decatur, Parkwood is one of the last subdivisions developed in Druid Hills, the Garden City vision initially designed by Frederick Law Olmsted for Atlanta. Shortly after we arrived I asked myself, “How could I possibly live in an Olmsted suburb and not go rooting around in its history?”
