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District Provides 900 Thousand Dollars in Preservation Grants in Historic Anacostia

Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Press Advisory for Immediate Release

(Washington, DC) Mayor Adrian M. Fenty on Tuesday presented the first of 53 grants totaling almost $900,000 to homeowners in the Anacostia Historic District. The grants will be used to restore and repair houses in one of the District’s oldest historic districts.

“It is fitting that we begin this grant program with homeowners in Anacostia, as it is it one of our oldest historic neighborhoods,” Mayor Fenty said. “Our historic homes and buildings are an important part of what makes the District a unique and beautiful city. So it is important that we take care of these irreplaceable assets in all of our neighborhoods.”

The grant program was enacted by the Mayor and Council and is managed by the District of Columbia Historic Preservation Office. It targets low- and moderate-income homeowners in 12 historic districts. Eligible households met criteria based on income, location within a historic district, and the type of preservation work proposed. Grants were selected by an advisory committee of notable historic preservation specialists and architects appointed by the chairman of the Historic Preservation Review Board and the Director of the Office of Planning.

Projects include roof repair, restored porches, major structural repairs, window replacements and other types of restoration. Grants range in size from $35,000 to as little as $1,300 per household. The average grant size is $16,856. Construction projects will start this spring and the largest projects will run through the end of 2008.

The grant program is authorized to receive up to $1.25 million annually and the first round of grants concentrates exclusively on the Anacostia Historic District. The District will also make future funding available to residents in the Blagden Alley/Naylor Court; Capitol Hill; Greater Fourteenth Street; Greater U Street; LeDroit Park; Mount Pleasant; Mount Vernon Square; Mount Vernon Triangle; Shaw; Strivers’ Section and Takoma. Applications can be requested from the Historic Preservation Office by phone, in person or from the Historic Preservation Office website.

The Anacostia Historic District was one of the first historic districts established in the District when it was created in 1978. A large proportion of the district consists of turn of the century, wood-frame houses, in a wide variety of conditions. Its SE boundaries are roughly Good Hope Road, Fendall Street, Maple View Place, Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, and includes the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

For more information on this grant program, please call Brendan Meyer, Historic Preservation Office, at (202) 741-5248 or email [email protected].