Is This The Smallest House in Washington, DC?

Have we stumbled onto the smallest house in Washington, DC?  Measuring just ten feet wide by sixteen feet deep, and only one story in height, we certainly think so - it's a mere 160 square feet!

The one room house on Capitol Hill, now an apartment under renovation, is located at 302 12^th Street, SE.  At first glance, it appears connected to a house next door, but it is an independent structure.  Intrigued, I located the original building permit that was issued to J. A. Clark in 1912 for a “coal office.”  It provided the measurements and the cost to construct – only $150!

Researching a bit further, the 1914 City Directory listed Bernard A. McDonnell living in the adjacent house at 300 12^th Street, a coal merchant.  It had been built in 1895 by Richard Rothwell, who rented it out.  McDonnell was new to the coal business.  In 1910, according to the census, he worked as a bartender in a saloon while he rented 510 B Street, SE.  He lived there with his second wife, Florence, whom he had married in 1903.  Both of his parents had been born in Ireland.   

Earlier, he worked as a clerk, and according to the 1891 City Directory, he operated a restaurant at 1102 8^th Street, SE.  It still exists today and was most recently home to Taco City DC (left).  In 1899, he was a bartender at 507 E Street, SW, a building since demolished.   

McDonnell had been born on June 15, 1856 in Alexandria, Virginia.  He died in Washington DC on May 10, 1924 at the age of 67 and was interred in Mount Olivet Cemetery in that city.    

                                                            Copyright Paul K. Williams

DC Building Permits: the Rare Original Facade and Floor Plans

Over the twenty years that I’ve been researching historic houses in Washington, DC, I find that in only about 15% of the cases do we discover the original blueprints have been retained with the building permit: some are the coveted façade drawings, and some are the even more rare floor plans. 

We recently discovered and even more rare occurrence: both façade and floor plans for a client in the 1500 block of E Street, SE.  They were thrilled to discover how their first floor had originally appeared.  It solved many mysteries for them.    

  

The owners of the vacant lots where 1502 to 1518 E Street, SE were to be constructed, Wilhelm Schmidt and Frederick D. Brandt, received their building permit on May 17, 1906. 

They listed architect B.Frank Meyers on the application as responsible for their design, and their own construction company, Schmidt & Brandt, as responsible for their erection.  They estimated the cost of building all nine houses as $18,000, or approximately $2,000 each.

You might recall that we composed a blog entry for grocer Wilhelm Schmidt here, who ran a grocery at the corner of 18th and T Street, NW, today home to Rosemary’s Thyme restaurant.

The floor plans revealed that a Latrobe Stove was inserted into both the front parlor and the dining room fireplaces, and that the kitchen featured a coal range, sink with cabinet overhead, and a built in wall cabinet with upper glass doors and lower wood doors and drawers on the party wall.  

BF Meyers, Washington Post

Architect Benjamin Franklin Meyers (1865-1940), known as B. Frank or BF Meyers, contributed many row houses and theaters to the Washington, D.C., area.  Meyers was born in 1865 in Nazareth, Pennsylvania.  He moved with his family to Washington, D.C., as a child and attended school here.  He also received his architectural training in Washington, D.C., not through an educational institution, but likely through his father, John Granville Meyers, a local builder and architect. 

Copyright Paul K. Williams