The DC Historic Alley Buildings Survey

Williams, Kim; Elliott, Kim

Project overview: "The D.C. Historic Alley Buildings Survey is an extensive and on-going survey of the city's historic alley buildings that began in the Spring of 2011. The survey is being conducted by the D.C. Historic Preservation Office (HPO) with the assistance of volunteers and student interns. The boundaries of the survey were defined to include all of the alleys within the city's designated historic districts, located within and just beyond the original L'Enfant Plan (the 'Old City'). Phase 1 of the survey comprises all of those alleys located in the city's northwest quadrant historic districts, including Georgetown, while Phase 2 of the survey consists of the Capitol Hill Historic District. Subsequent phases will expand the survey work to other historic districts outside of the original city limits and to areas not designated as historic districts known to have notable collections of alley buildings. Although the survey project is still on-going, Phase 1 and 2 have been substantially completed and its findings have been compiled in this report. The Alley Buildings Survey is a basic-level survey designed to identify extant alley buildings determined to be 50 years or older. The goal of the project has been to provide an inventory of these alley buildings, record basic information about them, research and develop an historic context for better understanding and evaluating alley buildings, and to make recommendations for future preservation action. Using methodology developed by the Historic Preservation Office, a team of volunteers and student interns collected on-site and archival information, photographed the surveyed alley buildings and entered the historical and architectural information about the buildings into the city's historic buildings survey database (DCHPS) for recordation and analysis. The following report is a record of the survey efforts to date. It describes the purpose of the survey, details its methodology, provides historical background information for understanding the evolution of the city's alleyways and alley buildings, and relates and analyzes the findings from the survey. Based upon these findings, this report also proposes recommendations and strategies to guide the Historic Preservation Office and the Office of Planning in the preservation of and urban planning for the city's historic alleyways and its buildings." Funding for this project was provided in part through a fiscal year 2014 Historic Preservation Fund grant to the D.C. Historic Preservation Office (project number DC-14-025, grant number P14AF00180) administered by the State, Tribal, and Local Plans and Grants Division, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

The DC Historic Alley Buildings Survey

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