The Kingman Park Historic District is a little bigger now

Earlier this fall, DC’s Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB) approved an expansion of the Kingman Park Historic District, granting a victory to the applicants who were disappointed with the Board’s decision to reduce their desired boundaries in the initial designation process two years ago.

The 2018 designation hearings were fairly controversial at the time, highlighting the difficulties of defining and quantifying community engagement in a process that legally isn’t supposed to consider it at all.

But that public conflict overshadowed an additional controversy that was happening behind the scenes: a tussle between the applicants and the Historic Preservation Office (HPO) over the scope of their application. Before the application even came before the Board, HPO staff had significantly revised the size of the proposed district, shrinking it from the expansive boundaries the applicants preferred, to a smaller area HPO felt would best meet the criteria of the law.

HPOs reasoning: in order to justify a historic designation, the law asks an application to identify what makes a neighborhood unique and to focus on the specific group of properties from a specific time period that tell that unique story. The case that HPO and the applicants made together in the original nomination was that Kingman Park was a rare example of a neighborhood specifically built for African-Americans in the period of de jure segregation. Largely speaking, the properties in the expansion blocks were not a part of that initial core, but rather were initially white-occupied homes (most with racial covenants) that only became incorporated into Kingman Park’s Black community in a later wave as African-Americans eventually moved in.

The applicants were displeased with the more limited size at the time, and made a point during the hearings of noting their continued hope that the Board would still designate their original boundaries. While the Board actually did approve a larger area than HPO staff had recommended, the concession ultimately proved insufficient, and the applicants returned to the Board this year with a new application to expand it further.

You can read a more in-depth review of their arguments for expansion here, but the gist is that the applicants maintain that the designated boundaries did not reflect the totality of the Kingman Park community. To them, the 2018 lines have left certain blocks (and thus the neighbors that have lived there past and present) excluded from both the symbolic recognition the historic district provides as well as the material restrictions on development that come with it. HPOs insistence on leaving them out struck the applicants as capricious at best and offensive at worst.

Responding to the application in their staff report, HPO held firm in their recommendation and pointed out that the amended application did not provide any substantially new historical evidence.

At the initial hearing in July, however, the Board honed in on some new details about specific notable people who lived in the expanded blocks. They asked the applicants and HPO to provide consolidated information about those people and a map specifically identifying where they had lived.

Returning to the Board in September, HPO staff presented the below map highlighting six of those people. (Note: the applicants submitted a slightly larger list of individuals from these blocks)

Theodore R. Hagans, Jr - A developer and businessman, he built a residential community at Fort Lincoln, helped construct the Metro Center, owned the parking franchise at Dulles Airport and was former general manager of the Dunbar Hotel.

James Finley - Established Finley’s Athletic Gym on Capitol Hill which coached several world boxing champions including Mark “Too Sharp” Johnson and Sharmba Mitchell.

Reverend Reginald Blaxton - Served as Mayor Marion Barry’s second ministerial. advisor

Lynwood Cundiff - Former vice-president and treasurer of the Kingman Park Civic Association, he received a Steam Engineer’s License from DC in the early 60s.

Clarence Harvey - Served as a cook for President Eisenhower.

William H. Maultsby - Served in the U.S. Army and DC National Guard and attained the rank of Master-Sergeant. Served as president of the Kingman Park Civic Association.

For HPO staff, the additional focus on these individuals didn’t change their recommendation to maintain the original boundaries for two more technical reasons.

1. The original nomination actually was not designated under the criterion for significant persons (National Register Criterion B) at all. The boundaries that were selected were for distinctive architecture (Criterion C) and historic events (Criterion A), not people. So, while important and worth recognizing, the stories of people who lived in these additional blocks did not present an argument for expanding the boundaries to HPO.
2. Even if it were designated under that criterion, the cited people would not necessarily qualify because, as HPO staffer Kim Williams testified at the hearing, “Criterion B is generally restricted to those properties that illustrate rather than commemorate a person’s important achievement. And they’re also associated with the productive life of that person; it should reflect the time period when that person achieved their significance. When it comes to historic districts, if you check Criterion B, you usually have to show that one or two individuals in particular were exceptionally important to the relevant history of that historic district and partly responsible for the significance of that historic district.”

In their deliberations, the Board found themselves conflicted between these legal limitations and a strong desire to memorialize these important stories of African-American history. Board member Linda Greene summarized their challenge:

“I understand what guidelines we’re supposed to follow, and given all of that, which I’ve always said guidelines are guidelines, they are not written in stone. We should follow them as much as possible, but in a situation like this, in a city like the District of Columbia, which was one of the center pieces for Civil Rights history, but in addition to that we have just an extraordinary amount of African-American history and contributors to African-American history in our city, our country and our world. In this situation, I do believe that we, I’m also leaning towards extending the boundaries. I think a fantastic, factual case was presented by the community, and this has been a long battle I know, but If we don’t document it now, if we don’t recognize it now, we can’t turn it back.”

Ultimately, when HPO staff indicated that they could probably “massage” the information from the amended application to qualify under National Register Criterion A for association with significant historical events, Board members seemed to feel they had found the solution they were looking for. They voted unanimously to approve the expanded boundaries at the Southern edge of the district (they did not vote to expand an additional requested section along Benning Road, as Board members had issues with the current integrity of the buildings there and there was no testimony of notable individuals who had lived in that block).

For now it seems like the final size of the Kingman Park Historic District is settled, but the precedents of this case will likely re-emerge in future historic applications.