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An application to expand the boundaries of the Greater U Street Historic District will soon be submitted to the DC Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB) by staff from the DC Historic Preservation Office (HPO), with the formal support of CSNA.  CSNA was instrumental in leading the effort and creation of this historic district in 1998. 

Upon submission, HPRB will hold a public hearing on the on the proposed expansion of the Greater U Street Historic District.  A hearing had been tentativley scheduled for HPRB's October 23, 2008 meeting, but HPRB’s consideration of the proposed expansion has been deferred at the request of the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development (DMPED). 

 

DMPED is working with several of the affected commercial property owners to explore a possible project and to understand the potential impacts the designation might have, and have requested additional time to complete that discussion.

 

At the September meeting of CSNA , Kim Williams from HPO presented on this proposed expansion and CSNA voted to formally support the expansion of the U Street Historic District.  The proposed expansion of the U Street Historic District would increase the boundaries of the existing historic district (listed in the National Register in 1998) to the east and would include an important collection of twenty-one contributing commercial, industrial and residential buildings east of 7th Street in Square 441. 

 

Excerpts from the application, map of the expansion area, presentation on the expansion, and the complete application after the jump.

 

This expansion is the first phase in what will likely be incremental increases to the historic district as research is conducted, appropriate documentation is prepared, and preservation needs, and neighborhood desires warrant it.  

 

This proposed boundary increase would include all of those buildings in Square 441 that are fronting S and T Streets and that are not already included within the historic district, and all of those buildings located on Wiltberger Street and its flanking Wiltberger alleys.  

This includes several commercial and residential buildings along S and T Streets between 6th Street and Wiltberger Street (east of the Howard Theater); residential dwellings along Wiltberger Street; and the important collection of historic bakery buildings fronting S Street, Wiltberger Street and Wiltberger Alleys.  In addition, the proposed boundaries would encompass the vacant lot at 7th and S Streets, once the site of 19th-century commercial and residential buildings, for its archaeological potential. 

 

Excerpts from the application are provided below.  You can also review the complete application and presentation on the proposed expansion:

• Map - Greater U Street Historic District Expansion (PDF file) (216 KB)
• Presentation - Greater U Street Historic District Expansion (PDF file) (2 MB)
• Complete Application - Greater U Street Historic District Expansion(PDF file) (184 KB)

Boundary Expansion Rationale: 
The original historic district documentation drew as its eastern boundary Wiltberger Street due to the loss of urban fabric along 7th Street at S Street, NW.  The existing historic district also appears to have been drawn to capture significant, stand-alone African American resources, such as the Howard and Dunbar Theaters, but omitted adjacent historic fabric that perhaps lacked individual distinction.   

Despite this loss of urban fabric at the corner of 7th and S Streets, the surviving buildings east of these vacant lots are intact and lend support to our understanding of the socio-economic evolution of the U Street Historic District.  In particular, the proposed boundary increase provides significant information on the rise of competing bakeries and thus on the commercial/industrial development of this part of the 7th Street commercial corridor within the larger historic district.  Historically, 7th Street was an important commercial and transportation corridor that connected downtown to the city limits, and that serviced the well-established and recognized African American U Street corridor.  Small neighborhood stores and other commercial concerns grew up along 7th Street—home to many German and other Eastern European merchant immigrants—while rows of dwellings catering to a mixed-race and predominantly working-to middle-class demographic filled the neighboring streets.  Minor streets and alleys, located mid-block in the large city squares, generally offered light industrial concerns, and smaller dwellings that were occupied by the poorer and often exclusively African American populations.  

The buildings in the proposed boundary increase, including those along Wiltberger Street and its alleys, are firmly planted in the context of the important 7th Street commercial/transportation corridor within the U Street Historic District.  The Howard Theater (1910), one of the most significant cultural institutions of the U Street corridor, faces T Street, while the former White Cross Bakery, a significant example of the city’s commercial/industrial heritage, stands sentinel at the southern end.  A number of single-family dwellings, including a row of alley-like dwellings in Wiltberger Street, and commercial concerns along T Street occupy the remaining lots.  Together, these buildings represent several different phases in the evolution of the U Street Historic District. 

 

Description of site and resources being added to the U Street Historic District:
The U Street Historic District expansion is likely the first phase of a larger future expansion area.  It is a partial-block expansion to the east of the existing U Street Historic District and includes the 600 blocks of S Street (north side) and T Street (south side), 1800 block of 7th Street (west side); and the 1800 block of Wiltberger Street.  

The expansion area includes 18 contributing buildings and one non-contributing building.  The area includes several large vernacular industrial and commercial structures related to the bakery complexes that were centered at S and Wiltberger Streets and that were in operation for much of the 20th century, as well as a collection of residential buildings that represent the various phases of the area’s evolution and that are consistent with those found in the existing historic district boundaries.  Of particular note is the fine row of seven alley-type dwellings on Wiltberger Street—a remnant of the predominantly residential street that existed prior to the expansion of the bakery buildings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  In addition, the expanded area includes several small commercial concerns on T Street that are consistent with other small-scale commercial enterprises along U Street.  

In addition to the buildings aligning the minor Wiltberger Street and its alleys, the expansion area would include the network of streets themselves, including the cross alleys between Wiltberger Alley East and West.  The proposed eastern edge of this expansion area (east of 623 S Street) is a “soft” edge that will likely be pushed further east based upon future preservation need and community desires.  The area east of the proposed boundary includes intact streets of modest residential building that is consistent with the dwelling forms of the larger historic district. 

 

General Description

600 Block of S Street: 
The southern edge of the boundary increase consists of several buildings on the north side of the 600 block of S Street, from 623 to 631 S Street.  This block is principally defined by the imposing four-part Whitecross Bakery building filling the lots between Wiltberger Alley (West) and Wiltberger Street and built in phases between 1913 and 1922.  The original section, built in 1913, is a vernacular brick building located at the rear of the lot and fronted by a 1915 addition facing S Street.  This 1915 section of the bakery building is the lower, two-story western section of the building facing S Street.  Designed by the architectural firm of Simmons and Cooper, the building is a rectangular-shaped brick structure with a long two-story brick industrial wing buttressed on the S Street façade by an architecturally more formal “implied temple-form” elevation. This three-bay façade presents a glazed brick finish ornamented with terra cotta, while the wing of the building extends along the side alley to the rear of the lot, exposing only common brickwork and irregularly arranged industrial windows.  The façade is divided into three bays by double-story, brick pilasters, which together visually support a brick freize adorned with decorative glazed tiles and blue and red porcelain signage (not original) with a broad and overhanging cornice above.  A brick parapet wall with a central pediment surmounts the cornice, completing the temple-form allusion.  The three large bay areas formed by the brick pilasters are filled with banks of original steel sash windows, with doors located in either end bay.  Glazed white tiles are used decoratively on the surface, namely in the pediment and at the ends, with tiles forming a white cross for the White Cross Bakery.  

Attached to this western section is a taller, three-story addition to the building following the same design as the 1915 section, but executed by the architectural firm of A.B. Mullett & Company.  Built in 1922, this addition uses the same proportions, materials and detailing as the original, including the decorative glazed white tiles in the form of crosses.   

To the east of the bakery buildings on S Street is a collection of row houses and small apartment buildings.  Only the pair of row houses at 623 and 625 S Street is included within the proposed boundaries for its important presence at the intersection with Wiltberger Street.   Built in 1904, towards the tail end of the neighborhood’s Victorian-era “building boom” these relatively modest sized and speculatively built dwellings have a substantial quality to them.  This is largely due to their raised basements, double-height projecting bays, and to the decorative treatment of the brickwork of the façade, as well as with the ornate iron stairs.  Attached to this pair of 19th-century brick dwellings on the east are two later 20th-century residential buildings constructed on the site of older frame buildings and thus not included within the expansion area boundaries.  

600 Block of T Street: 
The northern boundary of the expansion area is that part of the south side of the 600 block of T Street that is not already included within the existing U Street historic district.  Currently, along this street, the historic district includes the culturally significant Howard Theater at the corner of T Street and Wiltberger Street and the two former small stores to the theater’s west.  Included in the expansion area are those buildings east of the Howard Theater along T Street between Wiltberger Street and 6th Street.  These buildings—small residential and commercial brick buildings from various periods of construction—are consistent with what is found elsewhere along U Street and within the historic district.  Here, two-story, 19th-century vernacular Queen Anne-style residences sit side-by-side with later one- and two-story commercial buildings from the first half of the 20th century.  With the Howard Theater, these buildings clearly mark U Street’s evolution from a residential neighborhood street in the late 19th century, to the “city within the city,” that was filled with entertainment venues, small stores and businesses that catered to a predominantly African American clientele.  

Of particular social note here, however, is the two-story buff brick building at 614 T Street with stores on the first floor and flats above.  Using German architect Julius Wenig, local baker and entrepreneur Michael Holzbeirelein built these “flats” (as well as another on 6th Street) to house ten families and workers of his Wiltberger Street bakery.  

Wiltberger Street and Wiltberger Alleys (East and West):

Wiltberger Street is a narrow 30-foot-wide north-south street that bisects Square 441.  The 15-foot-wide Wiltberger Alleys (East and West) run parallel to the street and to either side of it, with smaller cross alleys running east and west at the southern and northern ends of the block.  The street and its alleys were laid out in 1857 when C.W. Wiltberger subdivided the square for development.  During the third quarter of the 19th century, Wiltberger Street developed as a residential street with several rows of alley-type row houses flanking the 30-foot-wide road.  The alleys themselves were primarily service lanes, with private stables, wood sheds, and other outbuildings, though a number of modest dwellings, including two longish rows, also stood on Wiltberger Alley West.  Beginning in the late 19th century, an industrial character emerged in both alleys and grew to include several bake ovens, grain storage facilities, stables and other resources associated with a growing bakery industry.  Eventually, the competing bakeries, Holzbeierlein’s Bakery and Dorsch’s White Cross Bakery, expanded into Wiltberger Street, prompting the demolition of most of the residential row houses on the street and transforming it from a residential to a commercial/industrial street.  

The row of dwellings at 1801-1813 Wiltberger Street, built in 1889, survives as the street’s only remaining residential buildings.  The modest dwellings, effectively alley dwellings, are narrow two-story, two-bay brick structures located on the east side of the street and fronting directly onto the street with small door stoops leading to the sidewalk.  Architecturally, the modest houses are well detailed with corbelled brick cornices, brick string courses and raised brick jack arch lintels above the doors and windows.  These row houses are a remnant of and provide an example of what the full length of this minor street, Wiltberger Street, looked like prior to its late 19th-early 20th-century industrial growth.  

Immediately north of the dwellings along the east side of the street and continuing to the cross alley before T Street, are vernacular industrial brick buildings associated with the street’s mid-20th-century bakery complex.  Just north of the lower cross alley from the dwellings is the Holzbeierlein Bakery building at 1817 Wiltberger Street.  Constructed in 1913 and designed by architect Julius Wenig, it is a seven-bay long, two-story brick building with raised window openings located on the first story and equally spaced window openings on the second story.  The southeast corner of the building has smaller, higher window openings that, according to the maps, are located where the actual ovens once operated.  A two-story, three-bay brick addition to the bakery abuts the original 1913 building to the north.  This addition was originally constructed as a one-story wing, but later was raised to two stories.  

Abutting the north end of the bakery and its addition is the Holzbeierlein Garage building, also designed by Julius Wenig and constructed in 1914 to house the bakery’s fleet of delivery trucks.  It is a two-story, eight-bay-long brick structure with two large garage door openings on the first floor and a range of eight single window openings with jack-arched brick lintels, wood sills and several original 6/6 wood sash on the second story.  Abutting the garage to the north, and located at the corner of the cross alley, is a contemporary, non-contributing cinder block structure that replaced two 19th-century alley dwellings on the site. On the other side of the cross alley, a long, rear wing of the 1946 store building that fronts T Street extends down the alley.  

The west side of Wiltberger Street consists exclusively of bakery-related buildings.  Immediately across from the alley dwellings is the 1922 section of the White Cross Bakery building facing S Street, and an earlier 1917 wing which was itself an addition to the original 1913 bakery building to its east.  The 1922 building rises a full four stories along the alleyway, beyond the three-story S Street façade.  On this alley side, the building has an unadorned common brick vernacular industrial appearance with large roll-up doors on the first story and rows of punched window openings with industrial metal sash on the second, third and fourth stories.  Brick additions to the bakery complex extend the building north along Wiltberger Street to the northern cross-alley.  

Wiltberger Alleys:

Historically, Wiltberger Alley West was filled with a combination of small, one- and two-story alley dwellings, stables, and bake ovens.  The bake ovens—the first phase of the bakery complexes to evolve on the block—were located at the rear of the stores numbered 1811 7th Street (demolished) and 1849 7th Street (contributing resource within existing historic district).  The bake oven and stable behind 1811 7th Street was constructed in 1893, by then-owner Charles Specht, but shortly thereafter owned and operated by baker Peter M. Dorsch who later built the White Cross Bakery complex at S and Wiltberger Streets.  The store and dwelling at 1849 7th Street was built in 1878 , including its two-story brick stable at the rear of the lot.  In the 1890s, the property was enhanced by a bake oven, operated by Michael Holzbeierlein where he began operation of his large bakery business 

Wiltberger Alley East was historically much more of a service alley to the properties facing 6th Street, offering one-story stables, sheds and later garages along the east side of the alley.   Similarly, on the west side, the alley provided service buildings for the alley-type dwellings lining Wiltberger Street.  However, after the establishment of the first bakeries within the system of alleys, there emerged a two-story grain storage facility, and by 1928, the Holzbeierlein Bakery complex had expanded, having frontage on the west side of Wiltberger Alley East.  

Today, several of the brick bakery buildings survive along both alleys, giving the alleys the same industrial commercial feeling as Wiltberger Street.  Wiltberger Alley West is defined at its southern end by the side wall of the 1922 White Cross Bakery Building, along with the side wall of the original 1913 bakery and later additions.  At its northern end, the alley is bordered by the end wall of the 1912 stable-cum 1931 apartment building and by the side wall of the Howard Theater.  The rear buildings of 1849 7th Street are also intact, though vacant, and abut Wiltberger Alley West, though they are included within the existing U Street Historic District. The stable building, located on the alley is a two-story brick structure with a large opening now filled in with concrete block.  This stable is attached to a two-story brick structure that was the former bake oven, while a one-story brick wing and the former “bake house” connects the 7th Street store to its rear wings. 

The west side of the East alley contains three separate, but attached brick buildings that were historically associated with Holzbeierlein’s bakery.  Each of these buildings is an unadorned industrial brick structure with irregularly arranged window openings, many of which have been filled in with concrete block and brick.  The corner building, like the one it abuts on Wiltberger Street, has two raised window openings apparently located where the actual ovens operated.   The east side of Wiltberger Alley primarily consists of rear garages belonging to the dwellings facing 6th Street and would thus form the edge of the historic district.  

This network of minor streets and alleys together with the residential and commercial/industrial buildings lining them offer a palpable sense of the city’s early residential roots and its rare, industrial heritage.  Although currently vacant, the vernacular industrial buildings that historically made up the bakery complexes are viable architectural resources worthy of preservation recognition and protection.