Petworth - the Neighborhood

My Petworth Wardman Pied-a-terre

Rowhouses in Petworth

 This has been my neighborhood since late January 2021. I walk the dog up and down the street at least three times a day, gradually getting to know who lives where. I still can't remember the names of the kids or, for that matter, the adults. Except Milton. He lives about 3 houses down, sits on his front stoop (is it a stoop- I hesitate to call it that. It has a roof, room for a couple of chairs and a small table and front steps, but not the steep ones you see in Brooklyn brownstones. Milton sits out when he's feeling up to it. He's in his early 80s. He says how ya doing? Fine day. I stop. We chat. I mention I play golf. He mentions his friend, Barbara, who worked for NOAA and went to Howard with him. I happened to play golf with her once. Small world.

 Then, across the street from Milton is another older man, Caribbean of some sort. He takes his place around mid-morning on his porch and is on the phone until he abandons his post in the evening. Talking constantly, waving to me as a walk passed with my beagle mutt, Gunnar.

Interspersed are a wide variety - a reporter for a major newspaper, a nonprofit worker, a proud family sporting a "2021 a Sidwell Friends Graduate" sign on the front lawn (Sidwell Friends is the alma mater of the Obama kids, and all the local rich and famous),  a Hispanic family that runs all sorts of businesses, including a food truck. The older son is always fixing up someone's car so the street is transformed into a mechanics/auto body venue until the car is reclaimed or sold.  Most residents try to make something of their patch of lawn, some elaborate floral gardens, some weed patches, most in between.  Few of these houses have any backyard to speak of, just a space for a car, with an alley running behind the rowhouses.  

The alleys are the uncharted, as far as I know, roadways that locals use to cut over from one street to the other. Uncharted, I say, because my GPS goes nuts when I use an alley to get to North Capitol Street avoiding all the one-way streets surrounding the house. Those alleys are a godsend since the morning traffic from North Capitol clogs our streets - we sit where two one way streets converge, both going in the same direction - heading to various schools and jobs outside the neighborhood.

This is upper Petworth, distinguished from just Petworth which identifies with the metro stop of same name.  

Each street sports a different style of rowhouse. The architectural differences are minimal but unique enough to satisfy the owner's need for individuality. 

The Petworth we see today was designed in the 1920s by, among others, Harry Wardman whose Wardman style became the face of Petworth, to supply the growing need for housing. I could do an entire picture book of the different styles of houses. Someone probably already has. Some, like my daughter's, have decent property, fireplaces, old woodwork inside. Most have sealed off their fireplaces. I can't imagine what it must have been like in the 20s and 30s and 40s in winter with all those fireplaces burning up wood, or more likely coal. 

The ceilings are average, the kitchens are galley kitchens, and there's usually 3 bedrooms upstairs, a living room, dining room, and full or semi-full basement. I know our basement is full because I live there with a door out to the driveway (one of the few.) 

The original Petworth dates back a few hundred years when John Tayloe III purchased about 200 acres north of Rock Creek Road and he named it Petworth after the town in England he ancestors supposedly came from (source: DCist.com).

Our area of Petworth is about a mile or so east of Rock Creek Park, a beautiful oasis in Northwest DC with miles of walking trails, play areas, a golf course, and an old building or two. 

Rock Creek Church Cemetery, the older established cemetery in DC circa 1719,  landscaped to perfection, holds a few notables such as Henry Adams, Eugene Allen - the White House butler in the movie "The Butler," Julius Garfinkel, founder of the local department store of that name, Gilbert Grosvenor, Chairman of National Geographic, Alice (as in Alice Blue) Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy's daughter, Senator George McGovern, Gore Vidal, Upton Sinclair and others. 

On the other side of the cemetary, which is at the top of our street, is the Lincoln Summer Cottage and the Old Soldiers and Airmen home and the Old Soldiers Golf Course.  The golf course faced dire financial straits during the pandemic and was almost acquired by a developer for "affordable" housing. I'm not sure what the outcome was but the course is still open and I hope to play there this fall.

When I bracket "affordable" it's because these rowhouses, which probably sold for less than $50,000 as late as the 1980s, jumping up to the $200,000s around 2009, now go for $500,000 and up, with the average closer to $650,000 or $700,000. One up the street recently sold for $850,000. The neighborhood, which was nearly 100% African-American until recently, has been gentrified and, although there is a Ward 4 Heritage guide DC government uses to set restrictions on what changes you can make to your home's exterior, the interiors in many high-end rowhouses have been gutted to accommodate the open-concept as a way of making a narrow house more livable. An article in the Real Estate section several years ago estimated the population was now 75% black and 25% white. That has probably changed. As I walked my dog this morning almost every parent walking offspring to school was white or Hispanic. On a ballpark estimate I'd say it was now 65-35.

The old closed-down school down the street, where Obama's daughters played weekend soccer matches, has been completely refurbished and is now the much sought-after DC Latin Public Charter School. My son's first house was across the street from the old school and I'd walk my toddler grandson over to play in the field. One day, all entrances were blocked by men wearing ear pieces (everyone in DC knows what that means) who wouldn't let me cut across to exit the park. I persuaded them otherwise...

There is a small shopping strip up the street with a laundromat, a liquor store, a grocery store and a medical supply store. The patch of grass that borders New Hampshire Ave is usually populated with folks with nothing else to do. Lots of broken glass and trash but I have finally talked myself into going to the store when I need just one item.  

Every rare once in a while, my daughter will call downstairs at night to say "don't go outside" to indicate the sound of gun shot had been reported, usually down closer to the shopping strip which is surrounded by low-rise apartment buildings.  There was a triple murder about 7 blocks away last week but that may just as well been miles from us.

I just now recalled the murder last year that was virtually across the street in my quiet Northern Virginia house. Of course that, like these murders, was personal. No need to push the panic button.

Finally, Petworth is becoming the new restaurant center of the city. Lots of great choices. The coffee shop up the road had a concert on its front porch the other day. 

Well, writing about the neighborhood has, I hope, made your knowledge of DC more personal, more appreciative rather than feeling wary. I know it did me.