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# 6-12 14th Street SE, part of an 1886 development of 8 rental houses, including 4 house immediately behind, in Fitzhugh Court.

Lizzie Johnson was looking forward to a pleasant Saturday on March 18, 1899 and enjoying a beer with her friend, John Sherman. She lived in a house in Guethler’s Court, an alley next to a brewery (where the Capitol Hill Safeway is today). Lizzie Johnson had not had an easy life. She was African-American, born in Maryland in 1860. She married, but her husband died. Now 38 years old, she boarded with a family on Guethler’s Court and supported herself by doing general housework. Her day ended badly. Noise from her house apparently attracted the police. A policeman arrived and tried to arrest John Sherman. Sherman ran upstairs and the policeman followed. They started fighting and rolled downstairs. Sherman ran out the back door into the yard. Neighbors urged Sherman to give up, but he refused. Sherman threw something at the policeman, who then shot him. He was arrested for disorderly conduct and sent to a hospital; Lizzie Johnson was arrested for “profanity.” Sherman survived and returned to live in Guethler’s Court, as did Lizzie Johnson. 

Guethler’s Court was likely named for John Guethler, the proprietor of the Navy Yard Brewery. In the early 1900s, the brewery employed nearby alley residents as brewers, helpers, and wagon drivers, including African-Americans who lived on Harrison Alley, SE (between C, D, 13th Streets, and Kentucky Avenue, SE) and whites who lived on 15 ½ Street, SE (between D, E, 15th, and 16th Streets, SE). The brewery was also a recreational resource. The brewery advertised in 1889 that it was “specially adapted for pic-nics, festivals and out-door amusements” and encouraged people to hold events there. Enterprising Guethler’s Court residents also sometimes purchased beer for resale. In 1906, Edward Henson and Emma Carroll were caught selling beer without a license. They were arrested and their keg of beer was confiscated.

Lizzie Johnson was one of many African-Americans who lived in rented dwellings in Hill East alleys in the late 19th- and early 20th century. Speculators built alley dwellings in Hill East between 1886 and 1892. We know that the alley dwellings in Guethler’s Court were two-story frame (wood) buildings, 12 feet wide and 24 feet deep, typical alley dwelling dimensions. They were on the west side of the alley behind Safeway, near International Graduate University, halfway between E and D Streets, SE. The last alley dwelling in Guethler’s Court disappeared by1938. No drawings or photographs of the Guethler’s Court houses have been found so far.

However, we can make an educated guess about the appearance of the alley dwellings at 9-15 Fitzhugh Court, behind 6-12 14th Street, SE. In 1886, Mrs. M. B. Fitzhugh built eight rental houses, four fronting on the unit block of 14th Street, SE (numbers 6-12), and four immediately behind them, on the alley, Fitzhugh Court. These were frame houses, two stories, 13 feet wide by 26 feet deep. There was a four-foot walkway running between the rear yards of the two sets of houses. Although the alley houses on Fitzhugh Court disappeared between 1956 and 1960, their companion houses, at 6-12 14th Street, SE remain. 

The largest group of alley dwellings was in Harrison Alley, between C, D, 13th and 14th Streets, SE. Sixteen brick two-story houses were built here between 1889 and1891. For several years in the early 1900s, a storekeeper operated a grocery store out of one house. Most of these houses survived into the 1960s and the last ones were demolished by the National Capital Housing Authority to build the Kentucky Courts Seniors dwellings.

Starting in the late 19th century, reformers worried about living conditions in alleys. They wanted to eliminate “blind alleys” “spreading crime and disease.” Alley dwellers as a group did suffer from poorer health. In 1910, the city’s death rate per 1,000 inhabitants for all ages was 18 for residents living in street-fronting houses and 30 per 1,000 for alley residents. For children under one year, the death rate for children in street-fronting houses was 159 per 1,000, similar to the county as a whole. (In 1900, the census shows that 165 of 1,000 live births in the U.S. died before age one. In 2001, 6.8 children per 1,000 died before age one.) The death rate for infants living in alleys in 1910 was much higher: 373 per 1,000 died. Hill East alley families suffered. In 1902, tragedy struck the Whitaker family in Fitzhugh Court when their daughter Elsie died at age nine months. The cause of her death was listed as “teething.”

The reformers attributed differences in health to blind alleys and “seclusion from the helpful criticism of the passer-by” and from police and building inspectors. They failed to consider other possible causes for the difference in health outcomes, including crowding, poverty, and access to health care. Members of a reform group ventured into the alleys in 1912 to report on conditions and count the houses: Guethler’s Court: 6 houses; Harrison Court: 16 houses, Fitzhugh Court: 4 houses, Kings Court: 9 houses. They missed the six houses on 15 ½ Street, SE. The group noted some favorable alley dwelling conditions for the city as a whole, for example that some dwellings were brick; had running water and sewer service, and that many alleys were paved. (Hill East alleys had water and sewer service by 1903.) The reformers probably frowned on eight alley dwellings in Kings Court. These were frame duplexes, only one story, located approximately where 29 Kings Court is today. In the early1900s, an army officer owned these houses and rented them to African-American families. By 1928, these houses had disappeared.

Congress responded to reform efforts by enacting restrictions on alley dwelling construction in 1892. No new Hill East alleys were constructed after 1892. In 1906, rules for inspecting and repairing alley dwellings were added and deteriorated buildings were to be demolished. Alley dwellings through the city gradually began to disappear. In 1921, four alley houses in Guethler’s Court were demolished and replaced with brick garages (which are also gone). None of the 19th century Hill East alley dwellings remain.

Most Hill East alley residents were African-Americans. Between 1900 and 1930 census records show most men worked at occupations such as laborers or wagon drivers. Most women worked as cooks, laundresses, or domestics.  Some families lived in crowded conditions in these small houses – multiple families and boarders were common.