Joel Truitt

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Norton: It’s October 29th at approximately five minutes after nine in the morning. I am interviewing Joel Truitt at his business at 734 Seventh Street SE, Washington, D.C. Good morning. Truitt: Good morning, hi, welcome.
Norton: Thank you. Where are you originally from?
Truitt: Washington.
Norton: Really?
Truitt: Yes.
Norton: You’ve lived here your whole life?
Truitt: A whole life. Well, except school, the Navy and all that.
Norton: Where did you live when you were young?
Truitt: Northwest. Actually, I was born over the store [laughs]. My grandparents had a store on Georgia Avenue at Piney Branch Road. Upstairs was an apartment. When my parents got married my father’s parents had the store and his wife then moved in and I was born upstairs. A couple years later they bought a house not too far away in Shepard Park. So they moved there. Then World War II came along and they decided that house was difficult; it was heated with oil.
Norton: Which was something back then.
Truitt: Yeah, yeah. There was a fear that we would have a very, very short supply of oil. So they moved down 16th Street [NW] near Carter Barron, near Kennedy [Street] and bought a little, smaller house, only four bedrooms [laughs] and it had two fireplaces. I remember as a kid going to bed at night, then my brother came along and we had, quote, the warm bedroom.
Norton: The warm bedroom?
Truitt: Because the heat from downstairs came up. They kept the thermostat way down to preserve oil and heated it with a couple of fireplaces.
Norton: When were you born?
Truitt: 1936.
Norton: So you lived on 16th Street. Was it on 16th Street most of the time?
Truitt: Half a block off 16th Street, yeah, near Colorado Avenue.
Norton: What did your parents do, I mean for a living?
Truitt: My father’s parents had the store on Georgia Avenue and it sold kind of everything. My mother worked there. So I was kind of raised by housekeepers [laughs].
Norton: Because they were all, your parents, working at the store.
Truitt: That’s right. My grandfather; they came to Washington because my grandfather was working for the Southern Railroad. He had moved to various cities where their big terminals [were].
Norton: Depots and stuff, yeah.
Truitt: Yeah. My grandfather; they moved here because his job moved to Alexandria. It was the Southern Railroad. He was in charge of the maintenance department taking care of all the rolling stock and the engines and all the stuff. My father was a machinist designing tools and things and also, he got a job at the Navy Yard. In the Navy Yard is a concrete tower with windows all around. He worked in there building bomb sights and binoculars.
Norton: When did your dad work at the Navy Yard?
Truitt: Until about, oh I don’t know.
Norton: Did it start in the war, World War II or was it sometime before?
Truitt: Yeah. He was there prior to World War II and then through somewhere around 1946 he moved over to the Bureau of Engraving [and Printing] and helped to keep their presses rolling. Making money and stamps and stuff like that.
Norton: When did the store open?
Truitt: Oh, I don’t know, few as 1920s [laughs].
Norton: He was working for Southern Railroad and also the Navy Yard while the store was going on?
Truitt: No, no. My grandmother ran the store.
Norton: Okay.
Truitt: With the help of my mother.
Norton: What were their names so we get it for the record. Your grandmother and your mother. Truitt: Right, right. My grandmother was one of those go-getting women. She’s not going to sit around [laughs]. But my grandfather was very involved with the Southern Railroad and he was not involved in the store except to repair the front door or something. He was with the Southern Railroad. He’d been down at I think Rocky Mount, North Carolina and they needed more help here because this location was becoming very, very active. And my father got his degree in mechanical engineering with the Navy, working at the Navy Yard. After World War II was over that whole program scaled down and he went to the Bureau of Engraving. Yup, yeah, yeah,
Norton: Your grandfather, was he still working for the Southern Railroad at that point?
Truitt: He retired from there probably about right after the war, around 1946, something like that. They decided to close the store. They moved to Florida.
Norton: Your grandparents.
Truitt: Yes, yes, yes.
Norton: I asked you once before but I do; what’s your grandparents’ names so we’ve got it for the record?
Truitt: Okay. My grandfather was Joseph Truitt and my grandmother was from New Jersey, Irma. Norton: How did your parents meet?
Truitt: I don’t know. My father was one of those very gregarious guys. A weekend didn’t go by [that] they didn’t have to drink about a quart of whiskey [laughs] and go carousing. They probably met each other at a party or someplace. I don’t know. My mother’s family lived here in Washington. Actually lived on Capitol Hill.
Norton: Whereabouts?
Truitt: I’m not sure. I think somewhere around Ninth [Street] and Constitution {Avenue].
Norton: So I would have been in Northeast.
Truitt: Yeah, Northeast, yeah, yeah. My mother’s father was in charge of the Woodward and Lothrup [former department store in downtown DC] delivery system. He was in charge of making sure all the trucks ran. The garage, everything about.
Norton: That was quite a deal back then, I mean deliveries.
Truitt: They had a dozen or so trucks. They were everywhere. So he worked at Woodward and Lothrup Department Store.
Norton: Do you remember his name?
Truitt: Arthur and the last name was Irish, Boggs, B O G G S.
Norton: Going back to you. Where’d you go to school?
Truitt: I went to Coolidge High School up in Northwest. From there I went to the University of Maryland. When they [grandparents] moved to Florida, my parents bought a house in Takoma Park, Maryland. That gave me a cheaper access to the University of Maryland and we did that.
Norton: So it was about the time right after you graduated from high school that they moved to Maryland?
Truitt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I hated [the] University of Maryland. You sit in a lecture hall of 300 people as a freshman, sophomore. Anyway, I transferred to Washington College on the Eastern Shore. Chestertown {Maryland].
Norton: Okay. In Chestertown.
Truitt: Yes, you know it. Small college. I got a grant to study in Europe. It was a money grant. So I went to the University of Manchester in England.
Norton: Oh, that’s cool.
Truitt: For a year.
Norton: Do you remember which year that was or roughly?
Truitt: No. It was probably about late 50s.
Norton: What do you remember about that?
Truitt: It was fascinating. I enjoyed it. Totally different education system. You’re expected to know your subject. To dialogue with the structure. The tutorial is the same way. We would have; not only would we sit in classroom and talk about … I was a history minor and an English major; not only talk about the writer but also their techniques and their subject matter. And your dialogue was between the instructor and the students. The tutorial was a one-on-one. Tutorials were small groups of four to six people, actually meeting in the instructor’s office once a week to follow up and discuss the subject matter. So it’s very, very intense and very in depth. One of the interesting; the head of the English department was a… Norton: This was at Manchester, right?
Truitt: Manchester; was Kermode.
Norton: Do you know how to spell that?
Truitt: K E R M O D E was the head of it. He was a visiting instructor at Yale. We had some, a couple interesting discussions about the difference in the education systems because I was really like a fish out of water. I sat there listening, “Where’s the information?” It’s in you. You’re not there to get it, you’re there to give it [laughs].
Norton: And talk about it.
Truitt: And talk about it, yes totally different systems.
Norton: You were there for a year?
Truitt: Yeah, yeah, I was, yeah.
Norton: Was that your junior year?
Truitt: Yeah, roughly, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Norton: Then you came back. Did you graduate from Washington College?
Truitt: No. I came back and I couldn’t afford it [laughs] even though I had the grant, I still spent some more money. So I looked around and I said, “What’s an English major going to do with a history background?” And I said, “Wait a minute. American University offers a lot of diversity.” And I thought; so I went up there and talked to a counselor and decided journalism. So I enrolled in American University in the School of Communications which had everything. Not only journalism, but broadcast journalism. Television was just beginning. They had two radio studios, WAMU was what it was called. Their own station.
Norton: It’s still there.
Truitt: Yeah, yeah, more and more. It was quite a good program. In depth. So I graduated from American University with a degree in journalism and minor or master’s work in public relations. Norton: When was that, do you remember? It’s not critical but I’m just trying to get a little context. Truitt: I know. I’m trying to get the timeline.
Norton: Was Eisenhower still the president?
Truitt: Early 60s, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got a job editing a little newsletter for the shoe worker’s union. They put out a 10 or 15 page they called the newsletter, it was actually a magazine, monthly. I edited that and got it out for them.
Norton: You were in DC then?
Truitt: Yeah, I was in DC and we were, I was living at home in Takoma Park. So I worked there.
Norton: For the…
Truitt: At the shoe workers
Norton: The shoe workers union. Okay.
Truitt: Yeah, yeah. Even at the time they realized that their industry was dying. They were having trouble sustaining the union because the shoe industry was collapsing. It was moving overseas. Norton: Even in the 60s.
Truitt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we didn’t talk about it. We just kept trying to promote it [laughs] and then we were into the Vietnam War.
Norton: Okay. So that, we’re talking about mid-60s, right?
Truitt: Yeah. I had a draft deferment because I had been in school.
Norton: As long as you were in school, right?
Truitt: The feds realized I wasn’t in school [laughs]. I got a draft notice and my neighbor in Takoma Park said, and we were talking about this, and he said, “Wait a minute. I’m a captain in the Naval Reserve.” And he said, “Let’s get you out of the draft.”
Phone call interruption
Norton: We were talking about you had a friend or a neighbor who was a captain in the Naval Reserve. Truitt: So I did. I went down to the Navy Yard and met with the captain in charge of that unit and he said, “Okay, we get you out of the draft and you can sign up and belong to the Naval Reserve.” So I did. I spent two years in the Navy.
Norton: Where were you stationed?
Truitt: On the West Coast. And interesting, my assignment.
Phone call interruption
Norton: Back on after another phone call.
Truitt: I got assigned to an ice breaker in Seattle. We spent the summer in the Arctic seeing polar bears.
Norton: You saw polar bears and what [else] but I’m sure my cough is going to… [interviewer is coughing]
Truitt: Polar bears and caribou and some walrus. But the other thing, we were there to create a lake. We pushed ice away so there’s a big open space in the water. We were there for the rendezvous of the two submarines, one from the East Coast and one from West Coast, two nuclear submarines meeting in the Arctic for the first time ever.
Norton: Do you remember when that was?
Truitt: No, but we can look that up in the press because it was a big deal here. As a journalist, I wrote the press release. My partner was the photographer. I didn’t know it, but we were put together as a unit for this mission [laughs]. [An] icebreaker is an interesting ship. It’s built like a football. It has no sharp keel. It’s designed to roll in the ice and it breaks the ice by sheer weight. It had some powerful engines. It would push itself up on the ice and crack it down. We spent a day clearing ice for the two submarines to come up. We took the pictures of them both emerging from the water and sent it to the press worldwide. [It was1962 at the North Pole]
Norton: You wrote the story essentially, the release.
Truitt: Right, right. We had a lot of oceanographers, etc. on the ship. It was a research ship basically. Yeah. Then we cruised and did some charting of the area. Very little charting was done up there. So, we did zigzag across the top of Canada, across the top of Alaska and over to Alaska as far as we dared go because the Russian jets kept buzzing us. The captain decided we’d better turn around [laughs]. Then I came back to Seattle after that one-year trip of my two-year engagement with the Navy I got assigned to; of course they were going to go to the Antarctic.
Norton: The same icebreaker?
Truitt: Yeah.
Norton: Do you remember the name of the icebreaker?
Truitt: Burton Island. It was a Coast Guard icebreaker that was given to the Navy because of the war. Kind of a big ship. We had a crew of over 200, just basic crew. Then for the Arctic cruise we took on another 50 or 100 people, oceanographers and so on, so on.
Norton: They were going to go to Antarctica. What happened to you?
Truitt: Then I got assigned to San Diego to live out my term. I was assigned to the staff of the admiral in charge of the surface ships in the Pacific. We sat on this great big tender ship tied up to the pier.
Norton: Was that on North Island?
Truitt: Yeah. At the port there. Nothing very exciting. They were going to actually; we did one thing that was exciting. I got then assigned to a; they were going to go to Japan for their rotation.
Norton: The ship was?
Truitt: The ship was. I would get discharged prior to that. So I was assigned to a fleet tug by mistake. A fleet tug has a crew of about 100. But we did an interesting thing. We went to a shipyard in San Francisco, picked up a gigantic drydock, floating drydock and towed it to Panama. Yeah.
Norton: What was the reason for that?
Truitt: They had no facility down there to repair or take on the repair of Navy ships down there. It became part of their facility in Panama to increase their ability to do this. Yeah. While there I got a chance to go ashore and see a tiny bit of Panama. We also went a little bit further down South America and went into some port. I don’t remember which one it was now, I think in Peru, and then came all the back up to San Diego.
Norton: That’s still on the seagoing tug, right?
Truitt: On the sweet tug, yup. I was on that tug, we were out in the Pacific when all of a sudden, a teletype came through, Kennedy was shot. That documents that trip.
Norton: 1963 then.
Truitt: Yes. So I wrote the news releases. I would listen to the teletype and so on and wrote it for the ship’s information. Wrote newsletters for them talking about Kennedy and what’s going on. That was helpful to them.
Norton: When you got out of the service, what happened next?
Truitt: I came back to Washington. I needed a job [laughs]. I was hired by the Navy League. The Navy League is a civilian lobbyist group, support group for the Navy. They had a monthly magazine, about a 20-page magazine. And so I became the staff. The editor was a great man. He was the Sunday editor for the Washington Star, a well-known guy, Ed Prina, P R I N A. Very, very sociable guy who introduced me all around town. We would go to the Press Club for lunch because of things happening down there and so on. He would send me to the White House to pick up news releases. So I got introduced to the inner circles of journalism in Washington through him because he would send me to do this stuff. It was great fun.
Norton: How long did you work there?
Truitt: I worked there about three years until I had a call from a guy I met. He was working at the publishing house in Annapolis [Maryland] called the Naval Institute.
Norton: Oh right, sure.
Truitt: They produce, publish quite a bit of stuff. But they have their own monthly journal.
Norton: The Naval Institute Proceedings.
Truitt: Yes, yes. I edited, I was hired to edit half of that magazine. I was responsible for about 150 pages every month of two to 500-word articles and other things. My partner, we shared a room, he edited the longer essays. They always produced about two 2,000- to 5,000-word essays. So my partner, he did the bigger pieces and I did the smaller ones. I also; they produced an annual and a few other things. So, I sort of helped a guy in the next office edit those things. It was great fun.
Norton: You say that was about three years?
Truitt: I was there about three years.
Norton: Where were you living at that time?
Truitt: At that time, after about six months of that job, I said, “Wait a minute.” I was living in Northwest. I had just gotten married and thought, “This is crazy. I’m spending 45 minutes driving from Georgetown to the stadium [RFK] to get on [route] 295 to go to Annapolis.” So I said, “Let’s buy a house on Capitol Hill.” The house we could afford needed major work. On Lincoln Park a great three-story house which; so I bought it, chased out the pigeons, put new glass in the windows and started working on it.
Norton: You were doing all the work yourself.
Truitt: Not really. I hired an architect, a friend of mine, architect. He designed the changes and we hired a carpenter and I worked there on the weekends and evenings because I could drive, on the way back from Annapolis I could come right in there and stop to work on the house for a while.
Norton: How long were you working on it before you could actually move in?
Truitt: I was working on it during the ’68 riots. One of the interesting things, I had a yellow Volkswagen convertible. I had a knocking on the front door one evening, afternoon. I was working on the house. I had just come there all the way home from work. It was a policeman. He said, “What are you doing here.” I said, “I’m working on my house” [laughs]. He said, “Well.” I looked out the back window, I could see smoke. I said, “Is there a big fire.” He said, “Yes. It’s a huge riot going on. You need to get out of here.” I said, “Well why?” He said, “Because no one is safe unless you really have more security and you don’t have any security here.” And I said, “Okay.” So he said, “I’ll wait while you get out of here and lock up.” So I locked up and headed back to Georgetown.
Norton: Your house there. What was the number? Do you remember? Was it East Capitol Street?
Truitt: Yup. I think it was 1114. That was my beginning. So I worked there for over three years.
Norton: This is the Naval Institute?
Truitt: Commuting every day back and forth until the same guy who called me to work there got a job at Northrup. Northrup had a big office in Rosslyn, the top two floors of one of those tall buildings and it was the support unit for the Navy’s undersea program, supported by Duke University and so on. Anyway, he was leaving to be a full-time editor for Jane’s Fighting Ships, which is the compendium of ships and aircraft. They were going to expand. He was leaving to be basically full-time editor of that plus the U.S. version of all that stuff.
Norton: Jane’s is British, right?
Truitt: Yeah. That’s British. It primarily focused on European and British vessels but also worldwide. He became editor for the U.S. version which really concentrated on U.S. vessels including Navy and Merchant Marine. He said, “Joel, come on over here, come work for Northrup. I’m leaving. You can have my chair.” So I did. I went over and met with them and Norm Polmar, P O L M A R, yes that’s his name. He was a gregarious guy. If he walked into a room, he would shake everybody’s hand. What’s your biography kind of thing person and gregarious but also very detailed. He was a great editor. We enjoyed each other. I enjoyed editing his stuff because he hated commas. [Laughter.]
Norton: I see, okay. Did you go to work for Northrup?
Truitt: I did. I went to Northrup. Left the Naval Institute and drove to Rosslyn every day.
Norton: Which was not quite as far.
Truitt: Yeah, that’s right. There was one floor above us in Rosslyn which was then the corporate office for the East Coast office of the Northrup.
Norton: I see.
Truitt: They had two senior vice presidents up there, all the lobbyists. The guy who was the public relations guru, I got to know him because of talking about Navy stuff and so on. My boss was a very nice administrator but a shy guy. I said something about so and so upstairs said. He said, “You went upstairs?” [Norton laughs]. I said, “Yeah. We were talking about what Navy’s doing.” He didn’t know much about this and so on. I said, “Why, do you want me to tell him something?” He said, “No, I’m…” He couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe it.
Norton: That you had had the temerity to go up to the top floor.
Truitt: Yes, that’s right. Here are these VIPs appointed by the president of Northrup to be here. I was there and enjoyed it, doing what they were doing. The funny thing is, my brother who is three years younger than me, he got his degree in political science and so on. He got his doctorate from Columbia and he was teaching at the Air Force Academy.
Norton: In Colorado Springs.
Truitt: Yeah. Somewhere else and hating teaching. I said, “Well, you want to work for Northrup? Let me ask.” In one of my visits upstairs I asked the public relations guy, and told him about my brother who was talented. He said, “Would you believe it? The president wants someone with that kind of background to work with him to help him figure, make sure we are in the right places with the world as unstable as it is. Norton: This is your brother’s background that they said was ideal?
Truitt: Yeah, perfect. So I got his resume. Gave it upstairs. Three days later my brother has a pre-paid ticket to LA [Los Angeles] to meet with the president of Northrup. A week later he was working in Northrup [laughs].
Norton: But that was out in California at the point?
Truitt: California.
Norton: Yeah, okay.
Truitt: So [he] moved. He was really living nowhere. He was living, teaching at colleges, so that was great. So he moved to LA.
Norton: How long were you with Northrup.
Truitt: I was there until Nixon [President Nixon] said we couldn’t do this anymore. Norton: What do you mean?
Truitt: He cut all the subsidies for the underseas programs which meant we had 60, about 60 engineers in our office backing up the Navy’s program, making sure things were done right. They were auditing stuff that they were doing. We had aquanauts who were living in chambers undersea.
Norton: Under the ocean, yeah.
Truitt: Duke University had a huge undersea program too. The whole thing was a big collaboration. Nixon said, “I’m not going to support this anymore.” Not only that but he closed all the mental hospitals [laughs].
Norton: This was after he was elected which would have been, what ’69 or ’68?
Truitt: Something like that, ‘69 I think, maybe ’70.
Norton: Yeah, that’s when he took office, yeah.
Truitt: That office really is amazing. Once we got the news that they were going to close the office the engineers were looking for jobs somewhere else and I lost my job.
Norton: So where did you go? And you’re married at this time?
Truitt: I’m married living in the house that I remodeled [laughs].
Norton: That’s right, back there on, okay.
Truitt: And I just finished working on another house that we bought, around the corner. It was a terrible house when I bought it.
Norton: Where was that?
Truitt: On 12th Street NE.
Norton: Okay.
Truitt: All this sort of collapsed. So I was doing some freelance editing for a lot of organizations. There were a couple of other publications I did writing for that were sea oriented.
Norton: What oriented?
Truitt: Undersea, yeah. One was called Seaworld that was out of a publishing house in Rosslyn. There were a couple of others. Oh yeah, well see, all your major corporations including Reynolds Aluminum had undersea programs with self-propelled research vehicles that could go down pretty deep. All that was done. It was out of the picture. Nixon said, “No more. I’m not supporting any of this stuff.”
Norton: How long were you sort of being a freelance writer and editor?
Truitt: Until the rest of the sea world collapsed with Nixon. So the magazines were mostly one by one folded. I decided, okay. So I started remodeling fulltime.
Norton: Why did you pick remodeling fulltime.
Truitt: I kind of enjoyed it. I satisfied my nervous energy a little and creativity. I enjoyed it. A couple of us neighbors got together and put together a little partnership.
Norton: This is in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.
Truitt: In Lincoln Park, yeah, yeah.
Norton: Okay.
Truitt: We started buying some houses and restoring them. I also, sometimes I’d have a good deal. I’d buy it. Then the tenants would get moved out. Get it cleaned up and sell it. Make a little money. But the partnership wanted more money than this was bringing in.
Norton: How many partners were there?
Truitt: There’s four, four of us.
Norton: All neighbors.
Truitt: Not only that but one guy from New York. His family was in the insurance business. Extremely wealthy. But he wanted more money coming in than we could do. So anyway, that partnership kind of dissolved but I continued doing this. That’s where I started this business.
Norton: The business officially is Truitt Management and Truitt Building, right?
Truitt: At that time, I decided, “Okay I better get a real estate license.” So I did. The same time friends were going overseas on overseas assignments and they were, “Who’s going to manage my house while I’m gone?” So I said, “Okay.”
Norton: They were going to rent it out and they needed someone to manage it.
Truitt: Then the management was really a second fiddle situation. I mean a real estate agent might do it if they had time. It was really hit and miss.
Norton: So there weren’t a lot of people doing that kind of thing?
Truitt: No, no. It was really, really, really badly handled. Barbara Held had one person handling stuff. She didn’t like it. It was done poorly. Things weren’t kept up. Maintenance on the rental houses was infamous, terrible [laughs]. Anyway, I started managing property. I got my broker’s license and I thought, “Well, to be a salesman I’ll just go one more test and I get my broker’s license.” So I did. So I just kept going. I hated sales. I tried selling a couple of houses. The minute I got a contract the owner then wants more money and the whole negotiations fall apart. I wasted so much time, so I decided I’m not going to do sales, I’ll just specialize in management. I did.
Norton: What about the renovation part of it?
Truitt: That was also, I was doing that at the same time.
Norton: Had your partnership sort of dissolved by then?
Truitt: Dissolved and I was doing it myself.
Norton: It was you incorporated or whatever?
Truitt: That’s right, yeah, yeah. I did. I incorporated. I had a good group of about six workers. I decided to be very socialistic and I formed Truitt and Associates contractors. It’s a stock corporation. I gave them a part of some stock. That worked pretty well until about 1981, maybe ’82. They decided they would rather run things themselves.
Norton: These are the folks, the employees who…
Truitt: I brought in and gave them stock in the company.
Norton: Okay. So what happened then?
Truitt: As stockholders they have a voting right. So we had a palace coup. I left the business and I formed Joel Truitt Builders.
Norton: Then you were out of the management business at that point.
Truitt: No, no, no. That was totally separate.
Norton: Oh, okay. I see. So this was your building company.
Truitt: Yes. Only the building.
Norton: What was it called; do you remember?
Truitt: Truitt and Associates.
Norton: I see, I see. So now, it’s now after they essentially took over the company you then became… Truitt: Yeah, right. And they didn’t last very long. Maybe a year. When we moved in I was working out of my basement in my house.
Norton: Still on Lincoln Park?
Truitt: On the park. We bought a house across the street, remodeled that one. We moved in and then interesting, a house on the northeast side on the corner of 12th and East Capitol Street, the Farnsworth house. A magnificent Henry Hobson Richardson copy. The last niece of the Farnsworth family died and the uncle who lived up in New England came down and he said – and I knew him because of walking up and down and seeing them and talking to the sisters. Two sisters remaining in the family. Each of them taught school at Stanton Elementary School on Stanton Park.
Norton: Wow.
Truitt: Yeah.
Norton: Was that the Peabody that we all knew later?
Truitt: No. It’s still Stanton, still the same school. [Peabody School was built in 1879 named after George Peabody. It was first called L’Enfant School but the neighborhood renamed it Peabody before it even opened. The name has never been Stanton School.]
Norton: Okay.
Truitt: It faces Fifth Street and Stanton Park.
Norton: At least when my kids went there it was called Peabody.
Truitt: Yeah, yeah. No, no.
Norton: Alright. But that’s where they were teaching?
Truitt: They were teaching, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they got too old and so one sister died and the other one was way up in age. I knew Virginia wasn’t doing very well and this uncle came down. She was living in the house by herself and wasn’t able to take care of herself. Anyway, he got her into a nursing home and told me; he said, “Well, Virginia’s in a nursing home. She’s better off.” I said, “Okay. You going to live here now?” He said, “No, I got to sell it.” I said, “I’ll buy it” [laughs].
Norton: And you did huh.
Truitt: We did.
Norton: Okay. This would have been roughly when?
Truitt: About eighty…
Norton: Early ‘80s. Late ‘70s.
Truitt: No, no. It was about, around 1977, ’76, ’77.
Norton: All right, okay.
Truitt: Just before we became an historic district.
Norton: All right. That’s because that was, yes that was shortly after we moved in in ’75 on Independence Avenue and there was the, the district was right before that.
Truitt: I think it was ’78 it began. Yeah, yeah.
Norton: Something, yeah.
Truitt: That was great fun. Helped that program. We bought that house, 1126 East Capitol Street. As a person who really likes architecture, it was like my wife says, “My dream house.” The whole thing was incredible.
Norton: How big was it? How many stories and all that sort of thing.
Truitt: Well it’s a full three stories. Even though it had a mansard roof the mansard roof was in the attic above the third story. So we had like six bedrooms, two bathrooms. They had remodeled it in the mid-20s and added the third-floor bathroom [Norton laughs].
Norton: But that was the only remodeling that had been done before you got there.
Truitt: That was it, yeah, yeah. The kitchen was a room that was like 12 by 14 [feet] in the back of the house. My wife loved it. It had a massive stove, gas stove, six burners, two ovens. The thing was like a catering stove.
Norton: Yeah, commercial stove almost, yeah.
Truitt: Yeah, yeah.
Norton: Do you know why it had such an elaborate stove?
Truitt: No. That was, I mean the kitchen had its own chimney because those days; the house was built in 1896. The guy who built the house built only about six houses in that same area. He built the one next door. Guy Martin lives there now. He bought it from Drew Scallan.
Norton: Guy bought it from Drew Scallan.
Truitt: Before that was the senator, what’s his name, from Alaska. He lived there one year and moved to Vienna [laughs].
Norton: Vienna, Virginia.
Truitt: Yeah, yeah. I can’t think of his name, the architect. He worked for the Navy in the map, cartographic department which was then in a carriage house off of Third Street and F [Street] NE. When the carriage house had the stables for the Capitol. When they went out, the cartographic department, I guess, moved in.
Norton: So when the horses in the Capitol moved out, okay.
Truitt: Automobiles.
Norton: Right.
Truitt: He worked there making maps and charts but also, he freelanced designing and building these houses. That’s 1890. The house was built I think 1897. He only lived there about three years and, unfortunately, he died. The Farnsworth family bought it from him.
Norton: When you bought that house, you were living not far away, right.
Truitt: Across the street [Lincoln Park] in another house.
Norton: Okay. So you would have been; when you say across the street, which street?
Truitt: It was on the corner of Kentucky Avenue and East Capitol Street.
Norton: So you were on the southeast corner.
Truitt: Yeah, southeast side. There’s a corner house that has a round porch on the front. I was next door. And the house I bought had been a quote, ‘tourist home’. They rented rooms by the hour. Norton: I remember that. I’m glad to hear you say that because I remember that in that it said, you know, ‘Exact change only’ and had signs like that, yes, okay.
Truitt: There was actually two of them. The house I bought and then one…
Norton: That was sort of attached to it, right?
Truitt: Next door and they continued to operate despite me [laughs]. We cleaned it out. We moved in and we lived in it; it was four stories. The official kitchen and dining room was in the basement.
Norton: This is now on the southeast side.
Truitt: Southeast side. It was like 12; I can look it up [1208 East Capitol Street]. The corner house with the round porch on the front and we were right next door to it.
Norton: When you bought the Farnsworth house, did you move over there?
Truitt: We did, yes we did. We moved over there. The Farnsworth family had been there since 1903, I think.
Norton: They are not quite the original owners but almost.
Truitt: Almost. The guy who built it only lived in it three years and then the Farnsworths bought it. Apparently, Farnsworths, they were, if you remember, there was a men’s clothing store downtown like Brooks Brothers.
Norton: Raleigh’s?
Truitt: It was one store. Farnsworth Clothing.
Norton: Okay.
Truitt: They were on G Street near the White House. They sold British woolens and all the beautifully made things. A men’s store. Because, apparently a brother was a commodore in the Merchant Marine. Norton: This is the Farnsworths’ brother. Okay
Truitt: Yeah. He [made] multiple trips back and forth to England. He would go over and do shopping for them.
Norton: To buy clothing for their store. Ah.
Truitt: And brought it back and his brother would run the store and sell the British goods.
Norton: How did you find out all this stuff about the Farnsworths?
Truitt: From this nephew. Yeah, Tom.
Norton: Okay. And he was the one that basically finally sold it?
Truitt: Yeah, yes, yes, yes. He did. Eunice was her name. Virginia and Eunice. Virginia’s the last…
Norton: The sisters. right?
Truitt: Yeah, the two sisters, yeah. She had to sign the sale agreement but Tom was instrumental in getting her to; ‘Here’s where you sign my dear,” kind of thing. He was a blowhard, ne’er-do-well, I think living on the Farnsworth family money somewhere in Connecticut, probably near the Wyatt Preserve near Danbury, Connecticut.
Norton: But he filled you in on all the family history then.
Truitt: Yeah. He also was a retired army colonel. Anyway, an interesting house. Moving in it was like going into the 1920s. The house was a real proper house. On the first floor you had glass, curtains. You had the blackout shades for World War II, the green shades. On top of that were very fancy, elaborate draperies. All through the house was the same thing. It was just beautifully done if you were like you were in 1935. The closets all had combination locks on the closets, built in, originally. You turned a little dial and you could unlock the closet door before you turned the knob.
Norton: This was originally in the house in the late 1800s then. Okay.
Truitt: Yeah, yeah.
Norton: Do you know why?
Truitt: Well, keep people safe. Keeping their clothing from, I don’t know. But that’s the way they did things. Open each closet, what’s in there? Designer ball gowns, yes.
Norton: Still there when you moved in?
Truitt: Still there, hanging there. Incredible. Beautiful blankets and things like that for the house in the closets. There was a row in the hall of cedar closets. These things were in those cedar closets. Norton: Sure. They would prevent them from moths.
Truitt: Right, right, yes.
Norton: How much did you do on the Farnsworth house and were you still living across the street, across the park?
Truitt: We moved into it and made do. I started working on the house to clean it, basically. I mean, nothing had been done in 58 years. There was wallpaper falling off the walls. I stripped the wallpaper off the dining room and the living room and the front room. There were three rooms, formal rooms on the first floor. Down to plaster and I repaired the plaster and painted it.
Norton: The plaster was still in pretty good shape after all that time?
Truitt: Yeah, pretty good shape, yeah. Around the windows a little damage but not much. Yeah, in good shape. We changed the furnace, was the original coal furnace. This great big coal furnace, round thing.
Norton: Was that down in the basement?
Truitt: Down in the basement and heated the house very well. But it was converted to gas.
Norton: Had it been converted before you bought the house?
Truitt: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. We lived there one winter and the gas bill was enormous because of that furnace. So I changed the furnace. Put a new efficient gas furnace in. We did some wiring so we could plug in air conditioners.
Norton: That’s right. None of the old Capitol Hill houses had air-conditioning, yes, right
Truitt: Nothing, nothing. In those days we had two plugs per room. Pull chained the lights. But this house had, you walked, each bedroom had a push button switch to turn on the light. But there was also a pull chain light over where a woman would have a dressing table with an elaborate glass shade on it. But two plugs. It was really fun living there. Beautiful stuff, I mean, the mantles downstairs were elaborate. The one in the living room was very elaborate. It reminds me of being right out of Art Deco Paris. Whimsical leaf type of columns on the sides. Beautiful wood.
Norton: So you pretty much left that kind of stuff as it was.
Truitt: Yeah, I cleaned it, restored it. The only fireplace we used was the one in the front room downstairs. That had some built-in bookshelves. It had pocket doors that worked beautifully. Norton: Well that’s rare [laughs].
Truitt: Yeah. It was very much a copy of Henry Hobson Richardson, inside too.
Norton: Henry Hobson Richardson was who just so we’re; he was a famous architect, yes.
Truitt: Yes, yes.
Norton: This was not actually designed by him. It was designed by the fellow who worked for the Navy.
Truitt: He liked Richardson’s style.
Norton: I see.
Truitt: This house he built for himself was a copy of Richardson. Even to; to go up the stairs from the first; the very generous front hall coming in the front door. Probably 12 feet back to start the stairs. Then there was a landing. So you could come down the stairs and stand on a landing before you turned left to come down the last two steps.
Norton: So, the stairs turned as you went up, turned to the right, yeah.
Truitt: Would turn, yeah, yeah. Like a little balcony so you could come down the stairs and say hello to a few [laughs]. Very pretentious. Beautifully carved wood. There was fret screens with carvings separating the stairs from the hall overhead. A little further down the hall was a; oh, yeah, of course there was a door
from the dining room to the kitchen down the hall. In the dining room there was a beautifully built-in china closet with oak drawers and glass doors and so on. There was a little window to pass things to the butler’s pantry.
Norton: Back to the kitchen and all that, yeah, yeah.
Truitt: Yeah, yeah. The butler’s pantry was an area maybe eight feet wide, the width of the house between the dining room and the kitchen were built-ins for all of the dishes.
Norton: Wow.
Truitt: Yes. The kitchen had nothing in it except a couple of bottom shelves.
Norton: What did you all do to the kitchen?
Truitt: I added some shelves and cabinets [laughs]. But the butler’s pantry was a place where you put the food on the plates and bowls and things. Yeah. Then we had; a daughter came along. Norton: Was that Alexis?
Truitt: Alexis, yes.
Norton: I remember her.
Truitt: Yes. She enjoyed the house riding her tricycle all around the place.
Norton: Were you still doing work on it when she arrived?
Truitt: Not much.
Norton: You’re pretty much done?
Truitt: I was doing some on the third floor. The last vestige. Mainly washing trim because it was so cruddy. When I washed it, literally it came back to life. It got rid of the soot and the dirt of the ages on the trim. Beautifully varnished underneath that. Sometimes they had did; they say the mid-1920s, they did a major remodeling. That’s when they put the third floor; there the bathroom in, the second bathroom. They also did, I think, revarnishing of the trim and wallpapering. So all that came off very easily. It was falling anyway, to return to plaster. I repaired it. By washing the trim, it took off the last layer of varnish they put on, so it showed the beautiful wood and the original varnish work which was extraordinary. Yeah, beautiful wood.
Norton: Did you have to strip paint off to get to the…
Truitt: No.
Norton: They hadn’t painted it?
Truitt: They had not painted it. It was all varnished. Yes, everything was varnished.
Norton: That’s great.
Truitt: On the third floor there was some painted woodwork and we left it alone. Otherwise, it was all varnished trim.
Norton: Are you still there?
Truitt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joe Molina bought it from us.
Norton: I remember Joe.
Truitt: Yeah. I saw him Saturday at the expo and he said, “Well to update you on your old house” he said, “We just had to have all the – I replaced the gutters and the flashings.” I said, “Oh, they were not new when we bought the house’ [laughs]. He said, “Yeah it held up pretty well but I put copper in.” Norton: When Joe moved in, where did you all live?
Truitt: We bought a house on Fifth, 124 Fifth Street SE. It was owned by the crazy lawyer McCarthy. His group lived in the house. It was bought for him, by a lawyer, legal group in New York that he actually worked for, as his residence in DC. They only owned it for about three years and they got rid of him. But he wouldn’t sell the house because he wouldn’t sign any release. Somehow, they managed to get him out of the picture and they were able to put the house on the market. They listed it with Barbara Held Real Estate. I can’t think of her name. She’s a really nice person. The agent lived on A Street SE who showed us the house. We had a two-hour window to see the house while they weren’t in there. She said, “You got to come over here, you’ve only got two hours, I’ve only got two hours today.” So we went over and looked at it.
Norton: This is while McCarthy and friends were away for a little bit.
Truitt: Kind of. Yeah. Part of it was still controlled by them because the tenants didn’t want to do anything. Didn’t want to move. It was really messy. Anyway, we didn’t have to deal with them thank goodness but it was difficult. They had listed the house for like $500,000. Because they couldn’t show it, and the house was very expensive then. This is 1984. It just sat there because they couldn’t show it. The tenants wouldn’t give permission for anybody to come in and it was expensive. Finally, they lowered the price and this lady got this two-hour window to show it. We were the first ones she called because she knew we were looking for a house that faced to east-west for the light and I wanted something with some yard because I like to garden. Having a big corner house on East Capitol Street before spoiled me. We had a 25-foot-wide side yard [laughs].
Norton: Which is unusual as we all know, yes.
Truitt: Yes. We were able to see it and bought it for half the price.
Norton: Even the $500,000 by today’s standards looks like a heck of a steal, but in any event [Truitt laughs]. This is like ’84 give or take. So you moved?
Truitt: Yeah. We moved in the house in ’83, something like that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Norton: And sold your old East Capitol house to Joe Molina.
Truitt: Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s right. Sold it to Joe. That house needed some work.
Norton: The new house you bought?
Truitt: Yeah, yeah. We wanted to put in central air-conditioning and remodel the kitchen and so on. So we bought a small house on C Street SE, 12-foot-wide house and lived…
Norton: Do you remember what block it was on C Street?
Truitt: 1100 block, yeah, yeah. The back of it faced Gessford Court which is perfect for Alexis because she was really on a three-wheeler bike, so it was perfect. She could ride up and down Gessford Court [laughs] and she knew all the neighbors.
Norton: Right. God bless the alleys, you know, I have to say that you know.
Truitt: It was great. Our backyard opened right into Gessford Court so it was like one big family back there. She enjoyed that. We lived there for I think a year and a half, then we moved into our house.
Norton: Okay. You lived there while fixing up the…
Truitt: Yup, that’s right, that’s right, yeah while we were fixing it up, yeah. We did some things like; the previous owners had been there; they had lived in that house for over 30 years. The Hoitsmers. Norton: How sd you spell that, do you know?
Truitt: I think it’s H O I T S M E R. He was probably a banker. They’d lived in that well over 30 years. The neighbors tell us he died and then she bought an apartment in Watergate.
Norton: This is his wife?
Truitt: His wife, yeah. Muriel Hoitsmer. He drove one of those gigantic 1950 Cadillacs because we had a garage.
Norton: Ooh.
Truitt: Yes. Amazing.
Norton: You could fit the Cadillac in it, huh?
Truitt: That’s right. He actually extended the garage another four feet to accommodate his Cadillac. Our neighbor, two doors down, tells us that he and his uncle built the garage and other garages for people in the neighborhood.
Norton: Did they build it from scratch or did they extend carriage houses?
Truitt: No, from scratch. These were wood garages with tin coverings. When cars came in vogue people wanted a garage. As a kid he worked with his uncle to build the garages for people. Norton: This is your other neighbor, not…
Truitt: He lived two doors down.
Norton: Do you remember his name?
Truitt: Oh god, yes…
Norton: That’s all right, I’m just…
Truitt: It’ll come to me. He was a very nice old guy. He would sit on the front porch, front stoop and smoke his cigars and chat with all the kids and told me stories about the neighborhood. Our house now ironically has a private driveway. We enter the back of our house from Sixth Street to our garage and there are two garages next door that belong to another house on Sixth Street.
Norton: Okay. But you’re on Fifth, right?
Truitt: We’re on Fifth so we go all the way through to Sixth Street. Because we had; when we lived on the south side of Lincoln Park we had no parking and it was always a problem, “Where’s the car?” Whenever the last person drove it we left the keys on the radiator and said, “It’s down Kentucky Avenue. It’s down 12th Street or it’s on 12th Place or whatever.” Where’s the car so the next person who needed it knew where it was.
Norton: But sometimes you’d forget, right?
Truitt: Yes. Oh yes. If you’re walking around trying to find the car. When we bought the Farnsworth house it had a little garage in the back and perfect. And a little driveway off 12th Street in the alley. We had our own parking. We got very spoiled about that. So we’re looking for our next house, my wife says, “I really, really want parking somehow.” We wanted an east-west house. We only need two stories, three bedrooms, four bedrooms and parking. So the house we bought satisfied all those wants. Norton: Are you still living there?
Truitt: We’re still living there, yeah.
Norton: This is the Fifth Street house?
Truitt: Yeah. We enjoy it very much, yeah, yeah, yeah. In remodeling I’ve done a little archeology of the house. Was originally built according to photographs from the Capitol that were taken in the Civil War, down East Capitol Street and I can see our house and the house next door, which is owned by the Driscol family and four houses on Independence Avenue. It’s around 1855, ’60.
Norton: This is your Fifth Street house was that early?
Truitt: Yeah, yeah.
Norton: A lot earlier than the Farnsworth house.
Truitt: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Pause for a phone call
Norton: We’re back on the record after a brief phone call interruption. Let me shift gears a little bit on you. Meanwhile you’re running your businesses.
Truitt: Yes, yes. We’re remodeling and restoration. Yeah, yeah.
Norton: Also doing management as well?
Truitt: Yes, yes, doing both as a broker.
Norton: What was it like when you started, well of course you told me when you started, but when you set up your own company. How did that work?
Truitt: Well, it’s always tough. Every penny counts. It’s just one thing leads to another. In remodeling we rented a garage off of Walter Houp Court behind our Farnsworth house. They were actually carriage houses, two of them together. Drew Scallan remodeled them into houses later. They were just bulky garages where the carriage was kept and horse was kept and so on. We rented that from somebody and that was where my first shop [was]. We’d work in there and because we had no heat, we had bought some kerosene heaters. We could run them while we were in there but at night, we had to turn them all down. If we had to glue something we glued things in the morning.
Norton: So it would be warm enough.
Truitt: When it’s warm and the glue would set up because at night it would freeze. So we’d come in the morning our bottle of glue was frozen.
Norton: So how; oh, go ahead, sorry.
Truitt: We’d sit it in front of the heater and start again.
Norton: How long were these carriage houses your shop?
Truitt: I was there for about two years. I worked out of my basement.
Norton: Roughly when?
Truitt: We then rented space on Eighth Street which was part of the furniture store that was closed up in the ‘68 riots.
Norton: Miller Furniture or something like that?
Truitt: Yeah, yeah.
Norton: So it’s right there at 8th and Pennsylvania, so it’s where the store is, yeah.
Truitt: Right here actually behind us, yeah. [Clarified by Mr. Truitt: he was not on the corner of 8th and Pennsylvania in the Miller Building. It was farther down 8th Street in the 700 block.]
Norton: Okay, yeah.
Truitt: Right now there’s a restaurant in one of the buildings and Sasha Bruce. In fact the front doors; we rented a space in the front. Actually, it was a barber shop. Charlie Verbeck had bought the buildings from the furniture company when they collapsed.
Norton: Okay, V E R B E C K?
Truitt: Yeah. He was real estate poor. He owned stuff and no money, so he was glad to get my check every month. The front door was non-existent. There was cinder block. We measured it and in one day we took down the old cinder block and put in double front doors and a front door so we could move in. We worked out of there before we moved to this building; we’ve been in this building 30 years. Norton: This building being 734 Seventh Street.
Truitt: 734, yeah. This was a carryout. Behind that glass block there was a kitchen, the stainless-steel stuff and it was a mess. It had not been used in probably three or four years.
Norton: When did you move in here, your business move in here? You say 35 years, 34 years? Late 80s I guess, something like that, yeah assuming my math is right.
Truitt: I think it was ’85, ’86, something like that, yeah, yeah.
Norton: Okay. Just so we’re clear. When did you first open up the shop here that’s not far from here which was part of the Miller Furniture store? [They were not in the Miller Furniture store.]
Truitt: Well, we actually moved from across the alley [ between 7th and 8th Streets]. We moved into the building on Eighth Street from Charlie Verbeck. We were there for about 10 years. The back was the loading dock for the furniture company. Had a big 12-, 14-foot rollup door in the back. You could drive trucks in. We created that as our shop.
Norton: That would have been 70s sometime then.
Truitt: Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, mid-70s to; and then all of a sudden real estate was picking up. I wanted to buy the building but he owned the five buildings in a row and he said, “I’ve got to sell three, I can’t sell one.” I said, “So if you want three of them, I couldn’t afford three buildings.” Miles Doherty bought. Miles was a lawyer then with the government and he was buying real estate, so as it turns out, he bought all five buildings and sold off two of them except I was part of the three he kept [laughs] and we were given notice to move. “Uh oh, what do we do?” [Laughs].
Norton: Just so we’re clear, was your building on Eight Street?
Truitt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Norton: Okay.
Truitt: Almost across from the front door are the Marines, the front gate down there.
Norton: Okay.
Truitt: The Sasha Bruce building now was the last of the three facing east. They were boarded up. Next to us was the building that Barbara Charles remodeled behind us. That was a carpet company. That was not part of the three. We were two doors down from that, yeah.
Norton: In any event you’re now essentially being evicted so you need to find some place to go, so what happened?
Truitt: We did, so we looked down and the building further up which is now the Sherman Willians paint store, that building was for sale.
Norton: Was that the How Mac store?
Truitt: It was Sherwin Williams. Before them was somebody else. Oh, yeah, yeah, the printers. Printers were in there. So, I thought, “Wait a minute. This is great because if they have the printing presses in this place it will hold my equipment.” [Laughter]. And it had a second floor. I put a contract in with him that we would take it over. It was vacant in 30 days. Perfect. With him, Charlie Verbeck. Well, halfway through that contract he comes to me and says, “I’m not going to sell it.” “What?” “Yeah, I just decided I’m not going to sell it, I’m not going to sell it. No, no.” I said, “This is a problem because I got to get out of here and I planned on moving in there, it’s vacant and it was…” Nope, he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to sell it. I had a lawyer friend contact him. No movement. He wouldn’t budge. This was for sale. Norton: This is the 734 where we are now.
Truitt: Yes, yeah.
Norton: Right, okay.
Truitt: The for-sale signs were hand lettered across the front, falling off. So I called the number. Some guy answered and said, “Oh yeah, I’ll sell it to you.” Okay. So we bought it, this one and I got a little bit of extension on the time, so in 30 days we [laughs] heated and air-conditioned this place. New wiring, new everything and moved in here.
Norton: Okay and you’ve been here ever since.
Truitt: Ever since, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Norton: In general sort of, how has the business or your business changed over the, I guess it’s close to 50 years or more than 50 years that you’ve been doing it.
Truitt: Yeah, yeah. It really is kind of whimsical. It depends on interest rates, being able to borrow money. Until recently it has been very, very slow because people weren’t borrowing money.
Norton: This is after the interest rates went up?
Truitt: Yeah, yeah. Eight percent, who wants to borrow eight percent to remodel their house? When they’re living in it they’re okay. So the remodeling really until, I would say, the last four to six months it’s been very difficult.
Norton: Since the interest rates went up.
Truitt: Interest rates, yeah.
Norton: So, you’re saying the interest rates is sort of, it sort of depends on the interest rates?
Truitt: A lot of it.
Norton: Any other changes in the business over those years?
Truitt: That affects it a lot because people aren’t buying or selling houses or anything. We’ve diversified as much as possible to work on smaller projects rather than whole houses. I created a, taught myself how to do drawings so marketed design/build. I would do the drawings, remodeling and so on for people. If we needed a permit, I found a person who would put those design drawings into architectural acceptable drawings to get permits with all the pages necessary and to get the whole thing through. The past ten years or so we’ve been doing that. So, one-stop shopping and do the work for them. This works pretty well. But interest rates were the real problem the past year. And COVID of course. Actually, believe it or not, in COVID we were very busy.
Norton: Interesting.
Truitt: Yeah, yeah.
Norton: Do you know why?
Truitt: I don’t know. Every case was a little different. Some people were leaving the area and going back to home, wherever that was. The parents were out of…
Norton: Well that’s true. There’s a lot of people that aren’t originally from here, so they…
Truitt: They’re not here. Yeah, yeah. They had bought a house and were going back, wanted us to manage it, but they said, “Well, while we’re gone, let’s make the changes we want to make in it.” It created a strange kind of market, but that’s okay, we’ll do it [laughs].
Norton: Exactly. What sort of community activities have you been involved with? I know Alexis was in tons of Arts Workshop shows and that sort of thing.
Truitt: Yup, yeah. Yeah, she’s very involved in theater.
Norton: She’s still?
Truitt: Yeah. She is running now an association of theaters that are involved in outreach education. American Association of something or another. She worked at the Kennedy Center and then she worked for this organization. A lady out of Annapolis is running it out of an office in Bethesda. This lady from Annapolis was not doing a very good job and she retired. Alexis took it over. She has built it up. They only had like 50 members and now they have over 300.
Norton: Oh, good for her.
Truitt: Yeah. Arena Stage and you name it. Any theater that has an outreach or educational arm is a member of her association.
Norton: Great.
Truitt: All around the country. She just came back from Seattle actually for a weekend conference there. She was in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago. Then she’s going to, I think, a meeting in New York the weekend after Thanksgiving. Yeah. So, she has members all over the country and a board all over the country. So, they meet by Zoom. She’s very involved in that. She’s educated as a singer. Boston Conservatory, for voice. So, she likes musical theater. She’s been at St. Mark’s in different plays, so yeah. We help. If they need scenery or something built, they know where to come [laughs]. Yeah, yeah. Norton: That’s been the case for quite a while too when CHAW was around and all that sort of things. Truitt: Sally would call me for [to] build something for them.
Norton: That’s Sally Crowell, yes.
Truitt: Yeah, yeah, exactly right. I was on the board of CHAW. They went in some tough times in the ‘60s and I became president of the board and unfortunately, they figured they needed to do things differently from the way Sally was running it. It was a nasty divorce. Sally got very angry and moved to her house in Connecticut and the board took over. But they’re doing pretty well. Hired a full-time administrator to run it.
Norton: Are you still involved with the Arts Workshop?
Truitt: No, I’m not, yeah;
Norton: What other sort of community organizations if any you’ve been…
Truitt: Back in, I was on the board of Congressional Cemetery for about ten years. That started; I was not on the first board the Christ Church formed, but on the second one.
Norton: This is after the association was formed right?
Truitt: Right after. The first board was, I know Frank Kramer was involved there and some others. He called me to be on the board because he was leaving it. He wanted to sort of not leave a vacancy. So I was on the board for the next 10 years. In my stay there they wanted me to be a president and I didn’t have time. So I was treasurer and vice-president, different officers. But we also had a lady on the board who worked in the Architect of the Capitol’s office as one of the historical gurus.
Norton: Do you remember her name?
Truitt: Florien Thane T H A N E. Really a knowledgeable woman. She was very helpful. We discussed the needs of the cemetery. She got a grant, $250,000 from Congress for the cemetery. With that we made repairs to the fence, got the gates working and locking. We dug ditches and put in water. The water system was all rotted away. And we got electric to the chapel. It was all kerosene lamps. In doing that we discovered the chapel was riddled with termites. It’s amazing it stood. It’s a frame building with stucco on the outside and wood wainscoting on the inside. You pull off the wainscotting and there’s nothing there. Dust. It’s all hanging there because it’s been there for so long [laughs]. Amazing.
Norton: What did you all do when you found out about the termites?
Truitt: A lady on the board said, “Okay, what’s it going to cost?” I said, “I can do it but I don’t know what it’s going to cost because we don’t know what we’re doing. We’re going to go inch by inch.” Norton: Right, because you need to find out how much is involved, right?
Truitt: Right, yeah. So, she funded the restoration and my company remodeled and restored the chapel.
Norton: Do you remember what her name was?
Truitt: No I don’t. She lives in Maryland now.
Norton: But she was on the board of the cemetery?
Truitt: Yeah, yeah, sure.
Norton: When you’re 10 years on the board of the cemetery, roughly, when was that? Truitt: A good question [laughs]. When did it become an association, what was the date?
Norton: ’75, ’76, something like that. I think it was ’76 maybe.
Truitt: It was probably ’77, ’78 I was on the board for 10 years.
Norton: Okay, okay. Going into the mid to later 1980s.
Truitt: Yes, that’s right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We hired a young couple who lives in the gate house. He was there as the full-time administrator. Cutting grass himself and keeping things fixed up, fixing up stuff. We could not afford to hire a grass cutting crew. But he did some grass cutting so people could get to their sites.
Norton: Were you around when they got the goats in to…
Truitt: At the end of my time, yes, that was one of my last years. Yes, yes. That was a great idea.
Norton: What do you remember about that?
Truitt: Somebody had the idea and I said, “Why not. It’s fast. These guys eat anything. It’s great, so bring in goats. Let them cut the grass for us.”
Norton: Any other community organizations that you were involved in?
Truitt: I was on the board of the Capitol Hill Restoration Society early on when it became an historic district.
Norton: Okay. So it would have been mid-70s give or take.
Truitt: We were meeting in Barbara Held’s office because she had this big table and talking about things. We needed to decide where the district would be. What’s the architecture here. Barbara held the maps, so took them and divided it up into, everybody takes three or four or five blocks and tries to figure out what architecture that is so we pull it together. I was involved in that.
Norton: Were you involved in deciding where the boundaries were of the district, the historic district?
Truitt: We had sort of [laughs] big discussions about that. Voting and so on where to go. Yeah, yeah.
Norton: Do you remember any back and forth on that?
Truitt: That’s what it was, back and forth. I mean people; we felt the model we were looking at was Georgetown. As an historic district that works pretty well. The regulations don’t. So we looked at the territory, how big and that’s where we came up. I wanted to go all the way to M Street. Norton: M Street SE?
Truitt: Southeast, yeah, yeah.
Norton: Across from the Navy Yard, yes.
Truitt: Yeah. And stop at the Navy Yard wall. I thought that all needed to be preserved because the Navy Yard was essentially the raison d’etre for the Capitol Hill to be here. The Capitol and the Navy Yard, so. Which came first, the chicken or the egg. The main gate was the thoroughfare to come in and out of the Navy Yard. Reading the history of the area you came out of the main gate, you go up Eighth Street, a dirt road, and they would go to East Capitol Street, turn left and take the cart down to the Capitol. Norton: This was back in the day, right?
Truitt: Yeah, 1798, 1805, all that. Yeah. People stopped at the freeway, the great wall. Now we have extended it to the Navy Yard.
Norton: Is the district extended to the Navy Yard now?
Truitt: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. Margot Kelly and I got together and formed Eighth Street Main Street. Norton: Okay, you were part of that then?
Truitt: Yes, so the two of us and maybe somebody else, we sat right here month after month talking about this and organizing it.
Norton: When was that?
Truitt: It’s been now at least 10 years ago. Gee, don’t know.
Norton: Anyway, that’s fine.
Truitt: We were looking at forming a Main Street because we looked at other Main Streets and there wasn’t anything in DC.
Norton: Just so we’re clear, the Main Street concept was what?
Truitt: Essentially, it’s a spot preservation program where you adopt a street and you get extra city services to restore and improve everything from the paving to the sidewalks to landscaping and preserving the architecture of the buildings. So we did form a Main Street. I remember we got the mayor over here to walk the Eighth Street. They were appalled at the way it was.
Norton: Which mayor was it; do you remember?
Truitt: No. It wasn’t Vincent Gray, it was prior to him. I don’t remember what mayor it was.
Norton: I don’t either.
Truitt: The streetcar used to come down Eighth Street to the Navy Yard. The blue castle at the corner of Eighth and M [streets] was the terminus of a couple different streetcar lines. All that adds up to being a monumental reason to have Eighth Street as well as the main gate to the Navy Yard as a Main Street restoration.
Norton: You say this was the first one in DC.
Truitt: Yes, yeah, yes, that’s right. We looked at other cities around the country. We got a fellow who worked in the Main Street office at the National Trust to work with us. He met with us two or three times to discuss this. What to look for. How to do it and so on, which was great help.
Norton: This was meeting with you and Margot then?
Truitt: Yeah. And what’s her name who ran Frame of Mine was involved. I want to say Kitty, but I’m not sure what her name was.
Norton: Cissy. I’m pretty sure but I’m trying to remember her last name too. It’s something if either of us think about it we can probably put it in brackets in the transcript
Truitt: She was also involved here. We had the enthusiasm, we met with the merchants. Margot had a program of trying to get merchants to do a better job for years.
Norton: What do you mean, do a better job?
Truitt: Sweep the sidewalks. Pick up the trash. Make your front of your building more attractive. Things like that. It’s very simple, but it’s very difficult. Once we had a concept of what we wanted to do we thought we needed to have the support of the neighborhood. We had tacit support by hearsay and so on. So we had a big reception at the Shakespeare rehearsal hall. Believe it or not, we had some VIPs come. The mayor stopped in and so on. Eleanor Holmes Norton stopped in one evening to introduce her to what we’re doing. Everybody came, even neighbors because we wanted them. We didn’t want neighbors on neighboring streets to sabotage this thing because they thought oh they didn’t want it.
Norton: This is residential neighbors not just businesses.
Truitt: Yeah, residential neighbors on G Street and you name it.
Norton: Yup,
Truitt: Everyone was really enthusiastic about it. We got everyone’s endorsement and they spoke about it, so we got all that kind of stuff on our record at the time. So we went ahead with the Main Street. And we had great support from the city. They had a deputy mayor assigned to us as our contact who was really active. He would come to our board meetings. We met at National Capital Bank.
Norton: Do you remember his name?
Truitt: No, I don’t.
Norton: That’s all right.
Truitt: Now he got all the city services. There was the trash service. The highways and so on because Eighth Street was a mess. It needed paving and street lighting and new trees. So we got the whole list done. Amazing. I remember a neighbor of mine walked down there after they had turned on the new street lights and told me, he said, “Did you guys want it bright, make Eighth Street that bright?” He said, “I got to walk down there with sunglasses on Eighth to go to a restaurant.” [Laughs]. I said, “Good, great.” [laughs]. It turned the whole place around from being a hangout for drug dealing and prostitution and robberies. All that turned around, yeah, yeah. We tried to get the people at Seventh Street at Eastern Market involved in the same way. But they felt they wanted to form their own association because they felt they were too distant from here. We felt the connection of zig zag. Seventh Street comes down to Pennsylvania Avenue, it zig zags across the Metro Park and Eighth Street would make a great contiguous historic district thing. But they wanted to do it separately with themselves which they eventually did.
Norton: Any other community activities?
Truitt: I can’t think of it. Umm.
Norton: That’s fine. It’s not a test in school or anything. Just do want to cover as much as I can while I have you here.
Truitt: Oh yes, yes indeed. In real estate we had a monthly meeting. We call it the Real Estate Council. We would meet at one of the local restaurants for breakfast. There’d be 20 or 30 realtors coming in for this, just as a get together, know each other, communicate, what’s the latest thing, what’s the latest problem. What to look for. It was very, very handy too. That was in the ‘80s, ‘90s. We met there until … so it was about 10 years ago. It was a very handy communication, knowing each other in real estate. Yeah. I was involved in that very much. I think I was an officer. Yeah. Let’s see what else. I’m also a member of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City.
Norton: When did you first become a member of that group?
Truitt: And the National Trust.
Norton: The Committee of 100, what do they do.
Truitt: Again, they are sort of a citizen watchdog for the city of Washington making sure that it’s maintained and kept up in terms of architecture and planning. Like right now there’s a big discussion about extending the Mall to the Kennedy Center and how that would happen.
Norton: When did you first become involved with that? When did you first become involved with the Committee of 100?
Truitt: Oh, gosh I’ve been a member for about 20 years, yeah, yeah. They used to have mid-day meetings at the school at 17th and M Streets NW. Stuart School or something?
Norton: Sumner School.
Truitt: Sumner, yeah that’s it. Used to have noon-time meetings there. But now they moved it to evening, which is difficult for me. I keep up on it, but I don’t attend very many meetings. I get the newsletter if we contribute. I was on the preservation committee for a couple of years when I was more active.
Norton: When you say the preservation committee.
Truitt: When things came up for review like somebody wants to build a new office building in the historic area, that would be our job to look at those plans and make recommendations to the committee itself.
Norton: Were you associated with the city or was this part of the Restoration Society? Truitt: No, no, the city through the Committee of 100. No. For example, I remember one we looked at over at the McMillan Reservoir. That was a big discussion, what to do there. We spent a couple, three meetings looking at that and how the plans are going to impact the neighborhood. Is it appropriate? What’s the neighborhood need? All that kind of thing.
Norton: Seems like they’re doing whatever they’re doing up there now.
Truitt: We said that they need to preserve some of the concrete towers as history of the city.
Norton: It was all part of the filtering system, I guess.
Truitt: That’s right. That was the filtration system. Very simple, but it worked. I remember as a kid seeing; because my mother’s parents lived down here and we would drive from our house in Northwest to see them and my father came down North Capitol Street and we’d see these giant towers and what’s going on. I was very curious what this thing is all about. Finally, I would ride my bike down, ride my bike through [the] Soldiers Home and a great view of the city from there and you could overlook McMillan Reservoir from the Soldiers Home. So I’d ride my bike all over that area. Fort Totten. That got me interested in the architecture and planning of the city because then I could ride my bike to Fort Totten and then also Fort Stevens as well. “These are two, where’s the rest of them?” I started researching [laughs]. Norton: All those Civil War forts, yes.
Truitt: Yeah, yes, yes, exactly right, yeah.
Norton: I’m running out of questions here but I do want to ask you if there’s any other sort of events or things that you remember, particularly with respect to the Hill that you think I’ve left out.
Truitt: No, I think the historic district of Capitol Hill has worked very well. It was sensible I think the way we did it which was preserving the architecture, but not getting us so nitty, gritty as to the front light that you can have or the paint color.
Norton: I’m sure there are a lot of homeowners that are grateful for that decision.
Truitt: Yes, yes, yes, yes and it’s worked very well. I get a lot of calls from people, just got one, wanting to change their front door or something, so [laughs] I do a little research and help them figure out what’s appropriate, if that one is appropriate or not. But no, historic district here has worked very well. I’m glad it’s been enlarged. It Swampoodled down to H [Street NE].
Norton: Swampoodle is up there, what, Northeast sort of? [historically it straddled North Capitol Street bounded by F and K Streets NE/NW and Second Streets NE/NW].
Truitt: Northeast. It [the historic district] stopped at F Street and now it’s been extended two more blocks north. The name is very appropriate because as you look at the topography of Capitol Hill it was a swamp. [Norton laughs]. I mean [a] major stream went down there in front of the Capitol. Tiber Creek and so on.
Norton: Which I gather is still there just underground, right?
Truitt: Underground. That’s right, that’s right. I remember looking down when they were building the Rayburn Building. I rode my bike down there one time and looked at; that hole was like 10 stories down and water was running, a river. That hole was so big, they had pickup trucks down there carrying supplies back and forth building the Rayburn Building.
Norton: That’s a huge building.
Truitt: Hugh building, yeah.
Norton: This your last chance to chip in any memories that you want, [Truitt laughs] otherwise I think we’ll wrap it up.
Truitt: Thank you. I enjoyed it.
Norton: You’re welcome. This has been fun.
END OF INTERVIEW

Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project
Joel Truitt Interview, October 29, 2024

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