This week on Georgetown Time Machine, I’m exploring yet another interesting shot from the DC Historical Society. According to the photo’s record, it is showing the old Aqueduct Bridge during the great Potomac Flood of 1889.
To orient you, the old aqueduct bridge ran south from just west of where the Key Bridge now stands. So the photographer is standing roughly in front of where the Car Barn now stands. Here is a clearer photo of the bridge before it was demolished:
Interestingly, this steel version of the bridge only opened the year that the photo was taken.
The photo record doesn’t really provide a whole lot of detail. It just says “View south along the Aqueduct Bridge Georgetown bridge during Potomac River flood of 1889”. It’s not even clear what time of year this flood happened. Some Googling tells me that it occurred on June 1st-2nd and was due to spring rain storms:
More to the point, the flooding was a direct result from the much more famous and tragic Johnstown Flood that took place days before. A wonderful article on the Potomac Flood can be found here.
The silly old timey bike that you see in the photo is called a penny farthing. Interestingly enough, it was already out of style by the time the shot was taken. They were being replaced with the “safety bicycle”, which is what they called bikes with two smaller wheels (i.e. the same type we have today). You can even see one of these “safety bikes” just to the left of the penny farthing.
Last week, the DC blog Popville passed on a message it received from some residents near Volta Park who discovered what appeared to be fragments of bone at the field renovation construction site. Like many, I was alarmed to read that and I reached out to DPR for an explanation. I was able to speak with a staff member who gave me a full accounting of the situation, which I will share with you now.
Background History
Before I get into the more recent story, it’s important to give you a summary of the more distant past of this particular property (I highly recommend reading the Wikipedia page on the property, which is surprising extensive). The old Presbyterian Burial Ground was established here in 1802. For about half a century, this was the primary cemetery for Georgetowners, rich and poor alike. The establishment of Oak Hill Cemetery in northeast Georgetown challenged this status. Between the competition from Oak Hill and the fall in revenues that came from hosting fewer burials, the Presbyterian Burial Ground began a gradual decline in the second half of the 19th century.
By the late 1880s, internments ceased at the property and the cemetery was soon closed. But by that point, approximately 2,700 graves had been established, each of which could host multiple remains. A call went out to the family members of the interred to come and remove the remains. While many did so, the grim fact is that the vast majority of the graves were left. The cemetery continued to degrade and fall apart until finally in 1909 the city purchased the property to be converted to a playground. (Again, I recommend reading the Wikipedia article linked above, which has a fairly detailed blow-by-blow of this decline with some fairly shocking and gothic details.)
In the hundred plus years since then, many projects have been done in the park, with varying levels of sensitivity towards the hundreds (if not thousands) of remains that continue to, well, remain. These projects often disturbed the graves and caused bone fragments to be mixed up in the soil.
So this background story leads to two conditions that are relevant to the current situation: There are bone fragments found in the soil throughout the park and there are still undisturbed graves scattered around as well.
Present Day
So that takes us to last fall. As part of the field renovations, a series of French drains are being installed. These are long trenches, approximately 3-4 feet deep. They are critical to addressing the surface flooding that can impact the park after heavy rains. The crews successfully installed trenches along the western and southern edges of the park. Then the workers began digging a trench westward across the outfield from the pool area.
As they got about 20-30 feet across the field, the workers encountered what appears to be a fully intact grave. This was surprising because as the expression goes, most graves are “six feet under”, i.e. six feet deep. As mentioned above, the workers were digging only 3-4 feet down for the trenches.
Once the workers encountered the grave, the work stopped immediately. Throughout the project an archeologist has been on site at all times that digging is being done. When bones are found–which has happened multiple times on this project–the work stops and the archeologist takes over. They recover the bones and hold them until they can be re-buried on-site at a sufficiently deep spot.
This is the preferred method for dealing with these remains. The identity of the body is basically impossible to determine, so there’s no way they can be transferred to some distant descendant. And keeping them in the general spot that they were buried seems to be the most respectful outcome.
So while the crews were not surprised to find bones, they were surprised to find a full grave, and one so shallow at that. There are a couple possible explanations for the grave being so shallow. I was told that the most likely explanation is that it was an unauthorized burial. Perhaps the family simply wanted to avoid paying the fee and did it themselves (and thus not as deeply as an authorized burial would be). Another possibility is that the grave used to be deeper, but erosion or field leveling brought the surface closer. In either event, the decision was made to leave the grave as is. A wire mesh will be installed above it to prevent future unintended incursions.
The trench will be redirected around the grave. Also, since there’s a chance that other shallow graves are around, the trench will now be dug much less deep. Instead of 3-4 feet deep it will be about 15 inches deep. But this requires a specialized style of French drain that can work at shallower depths. (When we were being told that the delay was about waiting for a specialized pipe, this is what they were talking about).
But how does this explain the bones just being left out in the open that were photographed?
The bone fragments were in piles of dirt that had been excavated for the trenches. As I mentioned, as the soil has been dug up throughout this project, bone fragments have appeared. But why were they left in the pile out in the open? The explanation I was told was that they weren’t visible at the time the work stopped. But with weeks and months of rain since then, the dirt washed away and the fragments emerged.
In either event, the piles have been covered with a tarp since last week. I was told that the fragments would be collected by the archeologist as well, but I don’t know if that has happened as of Sunday night. They will be re-buried on site at some point.
Plan Going Forward
The discovery of the grave has added significant delays to the project. On top of the change in plans for the trench, a whole new set of approvals and permits needed to be issued. That simply takes time. But they anticipate finishing the work by April to May. Once it’s warm enough to install the new sod, that will go down. The field will be off-limits 1-2 months more after that point in order to give the grass time to grow.
Then the park will fully reopen. At least that’s the plan….
A longtime empty lot in the heart of Georgetown is for sale. The lot at 3245 O St., immediately west of Hyde-Addison, is for sale for $1.75 million.
Many people have asked about the property over the years. I knew little myself, having heard rumors of a fight over the property but I tracked down a Washington Post article about the property from 1997 to finally get the details:
A protracted battle to preserve a crumbling historic house in Georgetown ended as the house was reduced to rubble yesterday.
While District officials have been balancing the city’s budget, debating the death penalty and tackling other weighty issues, community activists in Georgetown have been doing battle over “The House.”
Few paid much attention to the red brick house at 3245OSt. NW back in 1980, when Mark and Malika Roberts bought the property with the idea of tearing it down to build a new home.
But over the years, residents said, the house was unattended and uninhabited. It also became the most talked-about Georgetown house since the filming of “The Exorcist.”
The Robertses wanted the house demolished. Community leaders called for the property’s restoration, saying it was part of a patch of dwellings built for port workers in 1812. The residences, they said, were testimony to Georgetown’s being more than an enclave for the rich and politically powerful.
The battle moved to bureaucratic circles. Although the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board denied the Robertses a permit to tear down the house, officials at the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs granted them a permit in April.
Neighbors unsuccessfully appealed, first in D.C. Superior Court and then in the D.C. Court of Appeals. The appeals were exhausted last week.
And yesterday, private contractors demolished the house.
“In tearing this home down, we lost a bit of history,” said James Fogarty, a Georgetown advisory neighborhood commissioner. “A dangerous precedent has been set, where if a home is neglected, it can be destroyed without any regard to its historical significance.”
Next-door neighbor Betsey Werronen said, “Now not only is there a hole on our street but a hole in history.”
The Robertses, who have maintained that the house needed to be razed because it was a safety hazard, referred all inquiries to their attorney yesterday.
Adam Lipton, the Robertses’ attorney, said the house was demolished because it was a health hazard and a threat to a nearby elementary school. “The mortar in the wall was so bad that kids were pulling out bricks,” Lipton said.
“This is rewarding neglect,” fumed Westy Byrd, an advisory neighborhood commissioner. “For 17 years, the owners have neglected this property.
“The Historic Preservation Review Board denied the Robertses permission to demolish the property, but the city allowed them to,” she said.
According to property records, the family still owns the lot and would appear to be the ones selling it.
Happy New Year! Here is your January Northwest Georgetown ANC update:
Volta Park Update
I have been receiving many questions from constituents asking about the status of the Volta Park field renovation. As many have observed, after an initial flurry of work, it appeared that the construction ground to a halt in the early fall. I was repeatedly told by DPR that there was an issue with a pipe order. I had a growing doubt about that explanation, so I had a long conversation with the DPR rep in December. He assured me once more that as well as the delay over the pipe order, the contractor had run into some unexpected issues at the site, including the discovery of an ancient pipe that wasn’t on any of the existing maps. But he assured me that work was continuing even though it didn’t always look like it.
And last week DPR issued an official update on the project, which you can see below:
The ket takeaway from this recent update is that they are forecasting a completion date of this spring. I am not sure whether that also includes time for the grass to grow, during which the field will continue to be off-limits or not. I will update when I find out.
This has been a frustrating project, but I hope the final result will be worth the wait.
(Since first sending this update out on Saturday, I became aware of this article where a resident reports finding human remains on the worksite. I am very alarmed at that and am following up for answers from DPR.)
Parking
The TL:DR version: We’re thinking about pursuing the addition of resident-only parking for parts of Georgetown. Fill out this form to let me know what you think.
As discussed at the December ANC meeting, a few of my colleagues and I are exploring the possibility of introducing resident-only parking in Georgetown. We’ve continued to have discussions with the city since then and are eager to learn more about what is possible and what people think about the idea.
In short, this is how resident-only parking (or “ROP”) works: Right now, most of the residential blocks in Georgetown allow for anyone to park for 2 hours while residents with a Zone 2 parking permit can park an unlimited time. These are known as “RPP” spots (i.e. Residential Parking Permit spots). With the ROP program, a portion of these spots would changed to require a Zone 2 permits to park in them at all during some or all hours. So if you don’t have a Zone 2 sticker, you can’t park in that spot during the restricted hours.
Typically when DDOT implements this program, it sets aside approximately 50% of the spots on each included block as resident-only. And generally they simply designate one-side of the street as resident-only. (If there is parking only on one side of the street, they split whatever there is there between ROP and RPP.)
In other words, on ROP blocks, half the parking would be essentially reserved for people with Zone 2 stickers for some period of the day (or all day). The other half would remain as they current are, namely that anyone can park there for two hours and residents can park there unlimited. (And like now, the two hour rule doesn’t apply to non-residents when they park overnight, on Sundays or on holidays.) Residents can continue to park unlimited in all of the spaces. (And people with valid visitors parking passes can also continue to park just like a resident in any of the spaces.)
I first explored this option almost three years ago. This was driven by the sharp uptick in non-residents completely ignoring the two hour rule. It is fairly obvious that during the height of Covid, when the city basically stopped ticketing, a lot of people who routinely come to Georgetown for work or other reasons got used to simply driving here and parking all day long. While the city reintroduced ticketing a long time ago, it’s clear that they are not effectively enforcing this particular rule.
And the statistics back up this observation. I recently learned that the city publishes data on each and every parking ticket it issues. The dataset is gigantic, and frankly I don’t have the know-how to look at the data over a long period of time. But I took January 2019 and compared it to January 2025 as a way to compare pre and post Covid. The results were shocking.
In January 2019, the city issued roughly 6,800 tickets in Georgetown. Last January they only issued about 3,500. That’s basically a 50% drop.
And even more alarming, in January 2019, the city issued about 2,100 tickets for cars exceeding the 2 hour rule. Last January the city only wrote 650. That’s a 70% drop. Do you think there’s been a 70% drop in people exceeding the 2 hour rule? I sure don’t.
Since first floating the idea three years ago, I wanted to first explore what could be accomplished working directly with DPW to ask for more enforcement. The numbers show that this was mostly futile. A different approach is necessary.
The primary challenge to enforcing the two hour rule is that it requires a ticketing agent to:
A. Notice the car
B. Wait at least two hours
C. Come back and notice the car again, and
D. Decide to actually issue the ticket.
People who want to come and park all-day in Georgetown face a fairly low risk of getting a ticket as a result. And even if they do get a ticket, it’s only for $35. That’s a fairly safe gamble for a daily commuter who’d rather not pay to use a garage instead.
The advantage to ROP parking is that when a non-resident parks there, the DPW ticketing officer only needs to come by once to give the ticket. And moreover, the ticket can be issued immediately after the person parks and walks away, not hours later. Obviously it still depends on some enforcement—and staffing shortages are surely impacting DPW’s abilities on that front—but lowering the threshold for a violation most certainly changes the risk calculation substantially.
There are obviously trade-offs for a ROP program. Residents might find it harder to get a spot in the normal RPP spots if all the non-residents are forced to park there. So if your side of the block is the RPP side, you might have a tougher time finding a spot directly in front of your house. (Ideally this would be off-set by the increased chance that you’ll get a spot on your block in the first place.) Additionally, non-residents will likely have to drive further away from M and Wisconsin to find parking, which has the potential to impact parking supply on blocks far from the commercial streets. These are considerations that I think we need to keep in mind.
This would not be a perfect solution. But it’s really the only tool the city is offering us at this time and right now I think on balance it would be an improvement to the quality of life of Georgetown residents.
The process to actually implement this is not short, and if we do move forward with asking DDOT to give us a proposal, there will still be plenty of discussions to be had with all the relevant stakeholders concerning what the program would look like and whether we should do it in the first place. Right now. what I’d love to hear from my constituents is this:
What do you think of the idea?
Would you want it on your block?
What concerns do you have if we do move forward with it?
DPW announced over the weekend that it is beginning its leaf pick up next Monday for Zone D, which includes west Georgetown. So if you live west of Wisconsin Ave., make sure to get your leaves out to the curb, asap. They can be piled in the tree boxes or bagged in paper bags.
If your a constituent of mine (i.e. you live above Volta Place) and your leaves don’t get picked up within the next three weeks, please let me know!
The Georgetown Metropolitan
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