I went to a meeting about zoning, and this is what I heard.

This week, I went to a community meeting in Ward 3 on DC's zoning rewrite process. I was dismayed both by what I heard and by what I didn't hear. Before I lay out the specifics, I should lay my cards on the table. I am, personally, wholly sympathetic to the goals of the zoning rewrite as I understand them. I would describe myself as a heritage urbanist. I grew up in DC complaining to whoever would listen that the city – much as I loved it – was far too compartmentalized, long before I had a vocabulary of land-use zoning to diagnose what I was experiencing in my home town. I spent formative years of my adulthood in Toronto, so I have an informed sense of how a city might function differently. My views are not those that predominate in the organization I work for, and I do not represent that organization when I write here. Some of my best friends are Ward 3 densiphobes of a certain age – really – and I understand many of their concerns, even if I think a lot of them are misplaced. So here's what I heard at the meeting: neither side doing itself justice.

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I was wrong about my bungalow

Oh look, it's been months and months since I last posted! What have I been up to? Well, dear reader, remember the Ardmore model bungalow that was for sale in Shepherd Park? I bought it. I spent late summer and fall engaged in new-old-house work, from updating systems to dealing with gutters and an old, rusted metal roof in the breaks between deluge and earthquake. Meanwhile, I've been keeping an eye out for other houses of the same model around the area. One oddity a friend pointed out: In the catalogue page for this model, there is a disconnect between the way the porch steps are drawn on the plan and the way they're depicted in the sketch of the house. In the plan, the steps are centered on the porch; in the sketch, they're offset, not directly in front of the door, but to the right of center, with the model's distinctive porch railing appearing only to the left of the steps.

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What might have been: 1896 article on plans for the Washington National Cathedral

Did you know that plans originally called for a Renaissance-style design for the National Cathedral? Ernest Flagg, architect of the Corcoran, was originally hired to design the Cathedral and associated complex of buildings. This 1896 article on the proposed plans appeared just as relations between Flagg and the Cathedral trustees were deteriorating, and elicited a sharply-worded rebuttal from Bp. Satterlee denying that the design had been accepted, as the picture caption asserts.

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Show us your Ardmore model bungalow

I've been househunting in bungalow-rich neighborhoods of NW DC and close-in Maryland suburbs...

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Gleanings from the Cathedral archives

This term I've been doing some research for a course in architectural documentation on Hearst Hall, the original building of National Cathedral School. When I was at NCS in the 1970s, Hearst was leased out to another school; we ate lunch in its basement, but did not otherwise use the building. Today, this splendid building is once again NCS's flagship.

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