Page 84 - ArchDC Spring_2017

ArchDC Spring 2017.qxp_Spring 2017 2/22/17 2:55 PM Page 82

Entry area of the
Fifth and S House.

Making Room
Making Room Photo © Colleen Healey

Front yard of the renovated
Fifth and S House.
Two Modest Houses Take Differing Paths

to Greater Living Space by Denise Liebowitz

Young urbanites have been flocking to the rapidly gentrifying Shaw Shaw contains quite a few wood-frame row houses, which are
neighborhood for its generous supply of small and often neglected relatively rare in DC, having been outlawed in the 1870s in an effort
row houses, which provide opportunities to break into Washington’s to minimize the risk of spreading fires. The two historic houses
expensive real estate market. Emerging from freed slave encampments featured in this article—both modestly sized wood-frame dwellings
following the Civil War, Shaw began modestly. Unlike other areas of set back from the building lines of adjacent brick structures—were
the city such as Logan or Dupont circles that boasted grand residences recently renovated to suit their owners’ need for greater and more
of the city’s elite, Shaw’s smaller homes originally often sheltered useful space. One was expanded through an enclosed addition,
poor or working class African Americans. Today, young families while the other gained breathing room primarily through the
and single professionals are bringing new life to the unassuming integration of outdoor space.
dwellings that have survived decades of hard times.

82 MAKING ROOM