Marshall Heights is a residential neighborhood in Southeast Washington, D.C. It is bounded by East Capitol Street, Central Avenue SE, Southern Avenue, Fitch Street SE, and Benning Road SE. It was an undeveloped rural area occupied by extensive African American shanty towns, but the neighborhood received nationwide attention after a visit by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1934, which led to extensive infrastructure improvements and development for the first time. In the 1950s, Marshall Heights residents defeated national legislation designed to raze and redevelop the neighborhood. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom visited the area in 1991, at a time when Marshall Heights was in the throes of a violent crack cocaine epidemic. Limited redevelopment has occurred in the neighborhood, which was the site of two notorious child murders in 1973.
History of Marshall Heights Origins
The geography of Marshall Heights is hilly, with some hills quite steep. Only one natural valley exists in the area, between what is now 53rd and 54th Streets SE.
Marshall Heights draws its name from the Marshall family, a prominent landowning family in Prince George's County, Maryland. The neighborhood was initially part of the "Marshall tract", an extensive parcel of land in both the District of Columbia and Prince George's County which had not been subdivided. The Marshall family sold the tract to Charles A. McEwen, and his subdivision of the tract into Marshall Heights was approved by the city on April 22, 1886.
A narrow grid system of streets was approved by the district government for undeveloped areas in 1886 and imposed on the Marshall Heights area, ignoring the steep hills rather than going around them. Street names originally reflected major cities in the United States (Atlanta, Baltimore, Columbus, Charleston, Mobile, Newark, Trenton, Raleigh, Richmond, St. Louis, Wilmington), with a few named for trees (Beech, Mulberry, Palm, Sycamore, Walnut). Except for the new Central Avenue and St. Louis Street, every new road in the area would later be renamed.
One major landmark was incorporated into the new subdivision of Marshall Heights: Payne's Cemetery. John Payne was a free African American man who owned a farm east of Benning Road between what would later be C and E Streets SE. Payne's primary occupation was as a carpenter, however, so he used of his land to establish a cemetery for African Americans in 1851.
Development
Marshall Heights was slow to develop. Much of the neighborhood remained forested countryside in 1900, with only a few dirt tracks providing access to it. There was no city-provided drinking water; the neighborhood's few residents used a local stream for drinking, cooking, and cleaning water. Most streets were not actually graded by the city until 1918, with District engineers using heavy cuts through hilly areas and extensive, deep fills in valleys to complete the street grid. The grid-like street design created significant problems for homebuilders here: Some homes were constructed on the edge of steep banks in order to have access to the street, while others were as much as below street level. By 1915, much of the area had been illegally settled by poor African Americans, who built shacks out of scavenged and discarded building materials. This led the area to be nicknamed "Shantytown" by D.C. residents. After World War I, the real estate developers who had inherited or purchased various blocks of land in Marshall Heights began selling it off at low prices. Since there were no housing covenants excluding blacks from owning property there, large numbers of African Americans began purchasing lots in Marshall Heights.
Land sales remained sporadic and low, however. By the late 1920s, Marshall Heights still lacked a city drinking water system and sewers, and the area was completely without streetlights. As late as 1927, only two houses had received permission from the city to be built in Marshall Heights. Illegally built homes were far more numerous, and many residents were so poor that they grew the food they ate. Drinking water was obtained from a spring near Central Avenue. In the early 1930s, developers began actively marketing lots in Marshall Heights to African Americans. African Americans fleeing the Deep South, which had been particularly hard-hit by the Great Depression, were able to buy lots in Marshall Heights and erect shacks there. Many of these families were so poor, they were forced to camp on the land they purchased until they could scrape together a combination of money and building materials to build a home.
On February 2, 1935, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt made a visit to several poor areas of the District of Columbia, including Marshall Heights. She had long been concerned with substandard housing, and visited areas of the city with large numbers of alley dwellings and people displaced from their homes by the Great Depression. Roosevelt found dwellings in Marshall Heights to be almost all sheds, and city relief workers began to encourage people to leave the neighborhood and move into better housing elsewhere. At Roosevelt's urging, the District of Columbia Emergency Works Administration (established in early 1934) acted swiftly to improve living conditions in Marshall Heights. By mid-March, the agency had laid of drinking water pipelines in an area bounded by St. Louis Street SE, Central Avenue SE, Fitch Street SE, and 49th and 54th Streets SE. Although only hydrants were supplied, more than 700 people (in 80 families) now received drinking water from city's water supply system.
Slum clearance fight By the late 1930s, development in Marshall Heights, marked by professional construction of bungalows, was well underway. The city made some improvements, such as grading of new streets, regrading of older dirt streets, and paving of some streets, prior to 1945. But the city used inferior materials and construction in these efforts, justifying the "temporary" nature of the improvements by arguing that area would soon undergo a "complete redevelopment".
Makeshift housing still dominated Marshall Heights in 1945, and federal and city officials characterized it as a "shantytown". That year, Congress enacted the District of Columbia Redevelopment Act of 1945. This act established the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA) and a $20 million trust fund. The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), an existing independent federal agency, was charged with developing plans to redevelop slum areas of the District of Columbia. The RLA was charged with implementing these plans, buying land and leasing or selling it to developers—replenishing the trust fund and allowing RLA to move on to new projects. Marshall Heights was picked as the NCPC's first redevelopment project. Unfortunately, no actual monies were appropriated for the RLA trust fund, and no redevelopment occurred. But because the RLA and the city were pledged to implement the NCPC's plans, they refused to permit private developers to make improvements as well. Moreover, when residents of Marshall Heights asked the city to install water and sewer lines in the neighborhood, the city refused, arguing that this would be a waste of money since all the infrastructure improvement would be removed once the NCPC's redevelopment plan went into effect. The federal government did, however, build a large number of red brick duplexes for sale to African American veterans on 54th Street SE between C Street and Central Avenue.
Funds for clearing Marshall Heights were deleted from the 1948 housing bill by the United States House of Representatives after protests by Marshall Heights residents and by John Ihlder, executive director of the National Capital Housing Authority.; In 1949, President Harry S. Truman proposed spending $2 million to purchase land and raze all structures in Marshall Heights.; The NCPC reported that just 30 percent of the homes in Marshall Heights had running water and sewer service, and that 86 percent of the homes in the neighborhood were so substandard that they should be razed. The agency proposed building 350 detached houses and 950 semi-detached houses, which would triple the number of people living in Marshall Heights to 6,000. Marshall Heights residents opposed the plan, arguing that they would be unable to afford the new homes being built for them. In early May, city officials approved the NCPC's redevelopment plan. In an attempt to support the redevelopment initiative, on May 17, 1949, the NCPC and the city both imposed a freeze on construction permits for the Marshall Heights area. No new construction, major improvements, or even repairs could be made by private or public entities to any structure in the neighborhood. Marshall Heights residents were outraged, and lobbied Congress for an end to the redevelopment program. On June 23, the House Appropriations Committee stripped money for the project from the housing bill. The Senate supported the House two weeks later. Marshall Heights residents had won their battle.
The Washington Post later blamed "resident apathy" on the failure of the redevelopment plan. J. Ross McKeever, redevelopment planner at the NCPC, claimed that Marshall Heights residents were ignorant and didn't want to be "redeveloped". But many redevelopment planners felt that the real cause was the failure to include residents in planning.
Infrastructure in Marshall Heights
In the late 1940s, Marshall Heights still lacked most modern infrastructure. Nearly all residents used backyard bucket toilet, and paid a "night soil" service to remove the excrement once a month. Roads were few and generally unpaved, and the few dirt roads that existed were in extremely poor condition. Residents found it difficult just to get in or out of the neighborhood.
With the collapse of the redevelopment plan, Marshall Heights residents began to demand in August 1949 that the freeze on improvements be lifted. City officials refused, arguing that with half of all homes in the neighborhood facing condemnation for safety reasons, redevelopment was the only option. The city also argued that it would be too expensive to build water and sewer lines along the existing street plan, and that residents would be unable to afford the hookup and frontage fees. In September 1949, District engineers staked out sewer, water, and natural gas lines along two streets in Marshall Heights to demonstrate the difficulties in construction and prove how costly the effect would be to residents. From this example, the city claimed that laying water and sewer lines in Marshall Heights would cost $1.2 million more than in any other neighborhood, and said that razing all the homes in the area, realigning streets around hills, regrading streets, and filling in valleys was the only feasible and cost-effective option.
The improvement freeze lasted into early 1950. Once more Marshall Heights citizens complained to Congress, and in March 1950 the House Appropriations Committee threatened to cut off all funding for the NCPC if it did not lift the freeze. The NCPC lifted the freeze the next day, and the city followed suit on April 27.