Mount Pleasant DC Forum

[jn_zara]

Curious About Historic Preservation?

YOU ARE INVITED TO AN ANC1D FORUM ON

Historic Preservation: Eyes on Mt. Pleasant

MONDAY MARCH 26TH
6:30 - 9 pm

ST. STEPHEN’S CHURCH
1525 NEWTON STREET, NW
WASHINGTON, DC

¡Todos Bienvenidos! Hay traductores y equipo para traducir
inglés a español, y español a inglés.

PLEASE COME, LEARN, SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCES & FEELINGS!

How does HP affect YOU?
How does it affect your neighborhood?
How does it affect affordable housing?
The rights of the disabled?

Refreshments will be served!
For more info: [email address removed - log in to view]

[jack]

This report on the Historic Preservation Forum appears in the April issue of DC North:

Ward 1 News

by: Natasha Abbas and Susan Ruether

Mount Pleasant Residents Address Impact of Historic District Regulations

Mount Pleasant Advisory Neighborhood Commission held a forum on historic preservation on March 26 at Saint Stephen’s Church at 1525 Newton St., NW. Approximately 50 residents, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners, developers, and representatives from the Historic Preservation Review Board and affordable housing advocacy organizations were in attendance at the meeting.

Agenda items included an evaluation of the neighborhood historic preservation process, the relationship between historic preservation and the rights of the disadvantaged in DC, and historic preservation as it pertains to issues of affordable housing and gentrification. Panelists included representatives from the Historic Preservation Review Board, Manna, Empower DC, and other community groups.

Mount Pleasant was designated a historic district in 1986, subject to historic preservation regulations that restrict the types of modifications that can be made to housing stock. However, not all residents are aware of what that entails. A recent instance was that of Cornelius and Mary Lucas, who had lived in their Mount Pleasant home for 46 years, but were denied permission by the DC Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB) to add a needed handicap access ramp to the entrance of their basement on the basis that it would detract from the historic aesthetic on the block.

Amber King, a new resident to the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, said at the March meeting of ANC 1D that she had recently installed vinyl frame windows on her home and was now being asked by the Historic Preservation Office to replace them all with wood, despite the cost she had already incurred on initially replacing them. “After it was all said and done, we received a citation stating that you did a renovation without a permit, and what you put in was not acceptable,” she said. Materials are a prime consideration in the regulations regarding exterior improvements, but King said that efficiency, safety, cost effectiveness are also considerations, not just historical value.

Washington, DC, has over 40 historic districts, second only to New Orleans, and each building in those district requires a permit for exterior work described Tersh Boasberg, chairperson of the HPRB at the March 26 forum. According to Boasberg, the number of historic districts continues to grow because zoning protection is not enough to really protect neighborhoods given that there is no prohibition against demolition on zoning and no design review of new construction.

“While zoning treats things in kind of a gross way, historic preservation lets you fine-tune your neighborhood so that you can maintain the character of the neighborhood,” said Boasberg.

Some Mount Pleasant residents at the meeting maintained that the regulations also impact how diverse, inclusive, and integrated a community is. Jim Dickerson, a 37-year resident of Mount Pleasant and founder of affordable-housing nonprofit Manna, said that historic district regulations can not only pose problems for the disabled but also low-income residents. Dickerson pointed out that the regulations, especially on materials, require an additional amount of money, which creates many barriers for affordable housing. “It’s not inexpensive to do affordable housing, it is very expensive. [When it comes to historic preservation] there are no funds provided for it, there are rules provided for it,” said Dickerson.

Gladys Mitchell, a Mount Pleasant resident since 1957, called for better communication between the historic preservation office and residents, emphasizing that communication and outreach must not be limited to the Internet.

Mitchell, who says that the historic district regulation has played a positive role in preserving the appearance of the neighborhood, also says it has contributed to the cost increase in housing, which made the neighborhood inaccessible to many communities. “The prices of property are so high that only folks that have good jobs and a lot of money are able to buy in,” says Mitchell.

[jack]

DC’s Historic Preservation Process, Policies
Debated at Mt. Pleasant Neighborhood Forum
Residents Protest Program is Too Inflexible

[from April 2007 issue]
________________________________________
By Anthony L. Harvey


In an unprecedented and often contentious March 26th community forum organized by the Mt. Pleasant Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) and styled “Historic Preservation: Eyes on Mt. Pleasant,” over 65 residents turned out to hear speakers and to raise concerns about how the city’s historic preservation program is administered and its policies set. Also in attendance were the leaders of not only Historic Mt. Pleasant, but also of the Dupont Circle Conservancy and the Capitol Hill Restoration Society.

The forum, which was held in St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church at 16th and Newton Streets, featured “heavy-hitter” panelists ranging from Tersh Boasberg, the District’s Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB) chairman to Jim Dickerson, founder and president of Manna DC. The two-and-a-half-hour session consisted of three panels with speakers and lively audience participation which served to robustly animate the program.

Each panel focused on specific topics, as follows:
• “Historic Preservation: Its Benefits and Detriments. What is the process [and] can it be more inclusive?”
• “Historic Preservation, the Elderly, Handicapped, and Other Disadvantaged. What is the relationship between historic preservation and the rights of the disadvantaged in DC? Are the rights of the disadvantaged properly addressed by the historic preservation process?”
• “Public Property, Affordable Housing, Gentrification and Historic Preservation.”

While most persons attending and panelists expressed support for some form of historic preservation, especially by those from the historic district neighborhood organizations and the city agencies overseeing historic preservation enforcement programs, three issues directly affecting resident homeowners were raised over and over by forum participants. These included questions of how home owners are kept from modifying the fronts of their homes to deal with issues of old age and disability access; the continuing issue of window replacements with homeowners being required to replace worn out windows with restored original ones or replacements replicated using the same materials as the original windows; and landscape and sidewalk improvements which the Historic Preservation Office has deemed non-historic.

ANC Commissioner Jack McKay, who appeared on the same panel with Chairman Boasberg and the Acting Director of the Historic Preservation Office (HPO) and Acting State Historic Preservation Officer David Maloney, provided a Power Point presentation of several neighborhood bones of contention, the first being the replacement of deteriorated metal and wood windows with vinyl windows on a red brick home on Rosemont Avenue. Vinyl, say those who question the absolute restriction, horrifies HPO and HPRB, notwithstanding that the material was present when the Mt. Pleasant Historic District was established 20 years ago.

McKay’s second example provided a before and after pair of photographs showing an 18th Street home’s front yard with a low, curved stone topped sidewalk border wall and its replacement in the second photograph with a lower concrete topped wall which HPO required, asserted McKay, because concrete is the only HPO recognized “historic material” for Mt. Pleasant sidewalks and walkways. This house is one of four with identical façades -- houses built as a quartet. Their front yards all have this curved border with the house to the left having a low concrete border wall, while the house to the right has an existing a low pointed stone wall, and the fourth house having no wall at all.

Chairman Boasberg continued to articulate his understanding that the entire community was consulted on historic preservation issues and that the ANC was always informed and, when requested, accorded extra time to consider preservation matters -- 45 days asserted Maloney -- and always accorded great weight when HPRB decisions are made. Skepticism of this and other assertions was openly expressed by community activists culminating in the last panel’s concluding speaker, Manna DC’s Jim Dickerson, a long-time resident homeowner on Newton Street, who asserted that all of his neighborhood friends from before establishment of the historic district had been gentrified out of Mt. Pleasant.

Dickerson related his experience with the historic preservation process during Manna’s construction of 1,000 affordable housing units over the past 20 years. Historic preservation, he asserted, has made it less feasible and more costly to build affordable housing. Further, Dickerson challenged the very process by which historic Mt. Pleasant had been created -- “by a small core of proponents using scare tactics.” Alex Eckmann of Monroe Street challenged Dickerson, countering that in his experience of the process the historic district designation was broadly supported and that someone had served as an outreach coordinator to residents in each block when the matter was being considered back in the mid-1980s.

Dickerson also expressed objection to the blanket designation of Mt. Pleasant as “historic” rather than simply the identification of specific structures and sites as being “historic.”

Concluding the spirited question and answer period were eloquent pleas for making the provision of affordable housing a subject to be specifically dealt with as part of the historic preservation process.

With respect to the matter of access by disabled persons to their homes being difficult to resolve in light of HPRB’s approach to the issue, a controversy involving a Walbridge Place homeowner’s need that would require a front porch alteration was what was on the mind of many who have questioned whether the rights of disabled persons are being properly addressed by the historic preservation process.

Although receiving scant attention during the formal panel presentations but being strenuously discussed as the forum dissolved into informality were comments focusing on the fronts of row houses on Walbridge Place and Irving Street. Specifically, the case involving the Walbridge Place residence provoked the most intense community controversy. The elderly owners, one of whom is disabled, have been denied approval to modify the front entrance to accommodate a wheelchair ramp as being out of keeping with the historic row of porches in row.

The residence is a row house in a block of relatively intact historic porch-lined houses with blind alley access at the rear leading to built-in basement level garages, a number of which, including the house in question, have been converted into living space. The request by the long-time resident owners, an elderly and handicapped couple who are represented by their son, for wheelchair access at grade from the front of the house was denied by HPO and HPRB for traditionally strict façade preservation reasons. The case has now been challenged and will be heard by the DC Court of Appeals. A similar case on Irving Street where the owner has requested permission for an “at grade” access at the front of the house rather than through the alley at the rear, was also denied by the HPO and the HPRB and may also be appealed, according to Commissioner McKay.

No minds seemed changed by this strenuous but remarkably civil public forum -- in effect a community discourse of strongly held, differing points of view -- often eloquently articulated in the very course of questions and responses. And in a parting, consciousness-raising observation, Jim Dickerson urged those present whose points of view are not presently represented on the HPRB to organize and secure successful candidates for mayoral appointment to the Board. Otherwise, Dickerson asserted, everyone in Mt. Pleasant “is going to end up looking just like you and me!”

Copyright (c) 2007 InTowner Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited, except as provided by 17 U.S.C. §107 (“fair use”).

[igorok]

FWIW, a comment from someone who's been here since before the historic district designation.

Have you ever read a review of a project that changed/rebuilt/added-onto an old building that commended the architect and construction company for a finished design that kept the sense, scale, proportion, and/or whatever-that-was-special about the original design? That is the approach that I think should be taken here in Mt. P, versus keeping things exactly as they have always looked.

A guy I know redid a truly landmark historic house in LA. I never saw the place before he did the work, but the work he did looked like it had always been there. Now, this guy has some real bucks. To give you an idea: The elaborate swimming pool in the back has colorful glazed tiles all around it. Looks like original. Nope. The pool was all new --including the tiles he had had custom made to match tiles that are original to the house's patio. My sense is that if someone were willing to do something "comparable" here - that is, change something in the front of his/her house but make it truly look like it had always been here - it's not likely that permission would be granted. If I am right about this, I think that that is wrong.

Again, FWIW… I think the look of the fronts of houses should be the real priority, which for starters means that if a vinyl window or porch column really does look like the original it should be approved as a matter of course - especially the columns. Beyond that, if a design calls for changes that, frankly, someone would have to say looks like it could have been part of the original design - no matter how extensive the changes - then that likely should be approved, too. And beyond that, if a proposed design is for something that could be described as "an updated version" of the original, but it would truly tie into the scope, scale, and aesthetics of what surrounds it directly and on that block, even that should have a good shot at approval.

As for the idea that a better approach to the blanket "historic district" designation would be property-by-property, in some ways that is tempting. However, I do like the fact that the current system prevents front porches from being removed. One of my nearby neighbors did that some 25 years ago and that's too bad. (I've wondered, if the current owners were so inclined, if there is a DC program that would provide a grant for the cost of a new porch.)

For me, there is a sense of irony about the present designation. While clearly there are some buildings in Mt. P that are distinctive and seem quite appropriate for designation, having all of Mt. P designated seems much like a stand-in for restrictive covenants and homeowners' associations that are popular for many multi-house developments in the suburbs.

Even as things stand now, I've been puzzled by a lack of intervention when people put metal bars on their windows and replace their mostly all-glass front doors with mostly all-wood ones. They certainly do change the "historic" look, but I'd have a tough time arguing against someone who feels that his/her family's security trumps aesthetic concerns of some government agency.