Alison K. Hoagland – Interview with a Washington DC History Author – “The Row House in Washington, DC: A History”

Alison K. Hoagland. The Row House in Washington, DC: A History. Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 2023. https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5375/

1. Tell us about the book. 
The Row House in Washington, DC: A History is about our most common type of housing: why it developed the way it did, why it looks the way it does, who built it, and who lived in it. I particularly concentrate on speculative row housing (not that built for a specific client), because I am interested in the most universal experience. One aspect of row houses that fascinates me is their limitations: bounded on two sides, they have only two walls (front and back) from which to get light and air, as well as architectural expression. So I organized my book around floor plans, which show the various attempts to deal with this problem.

2. What’s your thesis? Story arc?
Washington’s row houses are different from those in other cities. We don’t look like Baltimore or Philadelphia, for a number of reasons. Part of it is time (they were developed earlier than DC) and economy (they had more working-class residents), but DC’s urban plan, building regulations, and other factors contributed to row houses that are distinctly DC.
To get at this story, I started with six typical floor plans, then discussed the city’s history and building regulations, which placed constraints on what could be built and what it would look like. The next chapter examines facades and architectural modes (the “Old English” designs vs. the front-porch “Colonials” is a particularly interesting struggle). Then I examine systems inside the house for comfort and convenience, such as heating, water, ventilation, electricity, and how they reflect ideas about sanitation and health. The final two chapters focus on people: first, builders and developers, and then owners and renters. To understand the latter, I did a micro-study of four disparate squares, examining everyone who lived there, in what kinds of row houses.

3. What are the most important influences on your telling of this story? 
Architecture and landscape are the lenses through which I look at history. I am particularly interested in everyday, common houses, reflected in my decades-long participation in the Vernacular Architecture Forum. That is a group of scholars who are more interested in how buildings work than in who designed them. I have previously written books about company houses, log cabins, and army buildings, so I tend to explore the more modest end of architectural production in order to understand how people interacted with these buildings.

4. What are the myths or misconceptions you’d like to dispel about this subject.
One interesting myth, which I’m sure has some truth in it, is that row houses flourished in Washington when the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 went into effect, making government clerks secure enough in their jobs to buy their own homes. Washington’s homeownership rates were only marginally above the national average and never approached that of Baltimore or Philadelphia, so I’m not sure that government employees explain row houses. Row houses flourished when the city’s population doubled between 1870 and 1900, and kept on burgeoning.
 
5. What are the classics in the field (if any)?  
Not much has been written on the non-monumental, non-federal buildings of Washington. James Goode wrote two: one on buildings that no longer stand (Capital Losses) and one on apartment buildings (Best Addresses). Plus there are two collections: Richard Longstreth’s Housing
Washington and Kathryn Schneider Smith’s Washington at Home. All of these are excellent but there is so much more to be written about the city’s architecture!
 
6. What challenges did you face in this research? 
Because I’m interested in floor plans and how houses are arranged, it is necessary for me to get inside houses. That is always hard in a city, where people tend to be suspicious of strangers, but even more so during Covid, when I was doing much of the fieldwork. Thank heavens for real estate open houses! I was able to get inside many, many row houses to verify my assumptions (with apologies for the false pretenses!). But to get enough time inside a house to make measured
drawings takes more than an open house—it took some extremely generous homeowners, and I am very grateful to them.
 
7. What were the most important resources you found (and where)?  
The buildings themselves were of course critical to my work; this is not a book that could be written in a (virtual) library! Also, DC is fortunate in its collection of building permits, which offers vital information (such as building date, architect, builder, size, cost, and more) not available in other cities. Some of this information has been put in a database and is available through HistoryQuest
(https://dcgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2ab24bc3b6da4314b9f2c74b6919
0333), thanks to the DC Historic Preservation Office. Brian Kraft, who did much of that work, also ran reports in response to various queries I had (thank you, Brian!). The complete building permits, which I encourage everyone to consult, are available on microfilm at the DC Public Library and at the National Archives.

8. Are there sources you wish (still) existed but don’t? 
Historic photographs of modest interiors are very hard to come by. Elegant houses get photographed, as do tenements, but not middle-class row houses. I wish I’d found a collection of those!
 
11. What inspired you to write this book?
In 1981, The Peale (Baltimore’s history museum) had a wonderful exhibit on Baltimore’s row houses, curated by Mary Ellen Hayward. I still have the brochure from that exhibit! But of course it made me ask: what about Washington’s row houses? It’s a question that nagged at me over the years.
 
12. What’s unique about your perspective?  
I have spent my career looking at vernacular architecture in various places across the country, and I have a deep commitment to Washington-the-city, not Washington-the-federal-enclave. I bring a vernacular-architecture lens to my work, in which I look at buildings as more than a product of their designers, but also as the product of time, place, builders, residents, regulations, so forth. I also look at row houses through time, not just when they are created, which captures racial change, economic variabilities, and the life cycle of a building.

9. Who’s your audience? 
This book should appeal to anyone in DC who’s interested in where they live! Additionally, scholars who are examining row houses in their own cities, or anyone who is looking at urban vernacular housing, should find value in this book.
 
10. Tell us about you.  
I came to Washington in 1977 to attend grad school at GWU (M.A. in American Studies with a concentration in Historic Preservation). For fifteen years I worked for the Historic American Buildings Survey of the National Park Service, where I was senior historian. I then taught for fifteen years at Michigan Technological University. I am now retired and writing books.
 
13. What’s your favorite DC history book?
Book whose jacket has been shredded over time: James Good’s Capital Losses. Book with most post-it notes sticking out: Constance Green’s Washington. Book about architecture that’s been overlooked: Cameron Logan’s Historic Capital. Book I’m glad was written: Frederick Gutheim’s Worthy of a Nation.
  
14. What’s next for you? What are you working on? 
Working on a lot, but not sure what my next book project will be.