15 Oct 2018

History:

Lost Capitol Hill: Empty Lots

The majority of houses on Capitol Hill, it is often said, were built between 1880 and 1920. The outliers are the fairly large number of small wooden houses that predate the mid-1870s. There’s also many flat-front federal style houses built of light red brick, whose front-facing garage announces a post-war provenance. It should come as no surprise that these houses were all the handiwork of one person: Barrett Linde (pronounced “LIN-dee”– ed).

Linde was born in the mid-1930s, and graduated from Harvard and the Wharton school before starting to take law classes at night while working for a realty firm during the day. In 1958, the same year he graduated from Penn, he also received his real estate license, and got to work. While most people in real estate at the time were more interested in rehabilitating the enormous stock of rundown buildings across the city, Linde saw an opportunity in the many vacant lots available. He would buy them up and fill them with as many of his rowhouses as he could.

By 1966, Linde was mentioned in the Washington Post for having built “new houses…on the north side of the 300 block of Constitution,” and the following year, he earned a full article in that newspaper for having replaced the old St. Cyprian’s convent and school with 17 townhouses. The Post of September 30, 1967 quotes Linde as saying that he had “contemplated saving the convent-school and building townhouses around it but neighbors had no interest in the old buildings.” The houses he built went for some 40 to 45 thousand dollars, and were, like most of his projects, sold out before being finished.

Not all were enamored with his projects, and when another article praising his work was published in the Post on October 22, 1977, a David D. Brunell of Washington wrote a scathing letter to the editor decrying the Post’s publishing “advertisement” for Linde’s work, rather than looking at “at least a few of the complex social, economic and political issues growing out of controversial land use decisions.” Brunell’s letter was published on December 12 of that year.

 

Some of the houses that replaced the St. Cyprian’s School (RSP)

The following year, Linde found himself embroiled in further controversy when he proposed tearing down a number of buildings near 3rd Street and Maryland Avenue NE. While he had cleared most of a one acre site and proposed building a townhouse condominium development, a number of buildings on Maryland Avenue and 3rd Street remained. Community activists intervened, and a compromise was reached between Linde, ANC 6B, the Capitol Hill Restoration Society and others, by which some of the houses were demolished, while others were kept, and the layout of the project – as well as some of the architecture – was modified to better fit the character of the neighborhood.

This outcome was deemed a success all around, as it was, according the Post of April 4, 1978, the first time that “a developer had agreed to preserve houses originally slated for demolition.”

While Linde today has retired, leaving his work to his son, his houses all across the Hill remain testament to a man who saw an opportunity in empty lots across the city that few did at the time.


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