BeamBlog

When the late Queen Elizabeth II visited Washington, D.C. in 1991, her most memorable stop was to the Southeast neighborhood of Marshall Heights, where resident Alice Frazier made history by breaking protocol and greeting the monarch with an effusive hug.

Today, signs along the neighborhood’s Drake Place SE still mark “The Queen’s Stroll,” the three-block stretch she walked to inspect homes, including Frazier’s, built for low-income home buyers. More than three decades later, Marshall Heights remains a neighborhood struggling for resources and contending with poverty and its social effects. But with a recently revived civic association planning events and advocating for residents, and a task force dedicated to opening a new economic center in the neighborhood, Marshall Heights is drawing fresh attention from those hunting for a D.C. home.

“I know that this is one of the last affordable areas in D.C.,” said Oni Jordan, a neighborhood resident and real estate agent with RLAH Real Estate. “So I’m starting to see house prices jump up … When I first came in [in 2018], I paid $279,000 for my house. [Now], I could easily put it up for about $450,000.”

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In the last year, Jordan said, 52 properties were sold in Marshall Heights. The highest price, a four-bedroom, four-bathroom townhouse, sold for $590,000; the lowest, a 1,200-square-foot, three-bedroom “fixer-upper,” went for $189,250. There are now 34 properties on the market, with listings ranging from $750,000 to $285,000. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,200, Jordan said.

A New York City transplant, Jordan took advantage of a program for employees of the District to purchase her four-floor “cube” with a basement and finished attic. While she loved her house and quickly got to work renovating it, she was immediately apprehensive about the safety of her neighborhood and disruptive behavior by other residents. That’s been changing, though, she said. In the last few years, Jordan said she’s seen home buyers replacing less-committed renters in her area and undertaking home renovation projects like her own. She now sees more families out on neighborhood walks as well, a small but key indicator of the more attractive and stable place Marshall Heights is becoming.

Originating as a sort of shantytown settled largely by Black Americans, Marshall Heights didn’t even have fire hydrants until first lady Eleanor Roosevelt paid a visit to the neighborhood in 1934. It would later become the site of housing developments for Black veterans returning from World War II. The queen’s visit, six decades after Roosevelt’s, as poverty and drug use remained rampant, underscored how much still needed to be done to help the neighborhood thrive.

Today, the central points of Marshall Heights are the Capitol View Library, freshly renovated in 2019 with art installations out front and community rooms within for local events; and the Woody Ward Recreation Center, reopened in 2021 after an $11 million renovation that included a large outdoor pool, indoor boxing ring and dance room, and a new playground. Local organizations and officials are lobbying for another major renovation project, one that would turn the defunct and abandoned Fletcher-Johnson Middle School and Recreation Center, on one of the neighborhood’s largest green spaces, into a mixed-use development with space for retail, housing and community activities.

Among the top champions for the Fletcher-Johnson project and other neighborhood development initiatives is Keith Hasan-Towery, chief executive of the Marshall Heights Civic Association. A Los Angeles transplant, Hasan-Towery was drawn to Marshall Heights both for the larger backyards many of its homes feature and for the history: A Marine Corps veteran, he loved its history as a haven for Black World War II vets. He revived the then-dormant civic association in 2017 and has since thrown himself into his role as neighborhood advocate. While taking a reporter on a recent tour, he was also on his phone, ordering sandwiches for an upcoming schoolteacher appreciation event.

Since the civic association came back to life, Hasan-Towery said he has seen greater interest in neighborhood advocacy and involvement, particularly around the proposed Fletcher-Johnson development project. He also loves seeing residents come together for the annual Marshall Heights Day in June, featuring free food and entertainment, as well as presentations from local government agencies and services.

“You see people just being more aware and having hope that, you know, you could be the change you want to see,” he said.

While neighborhood development and a surge of interest from new would-be residents speak to what Marshall Heights is becoming, long-term residents also maintain ties to its historic past. Deborah Thomas was born in her Marshall Heights duplex in 1951, which she’d eventually purchase from her father, a World War II veteran who bought the house in a development built for vets like him in 1947. For her, the neighborhood is home, and she’s never considered leaving, even after her 19-year-old son Christopher was shot and killed in front of her house in 2000 by a man who mistook him for someone else.

Despite the devastation of that loss, she said she has always found the neighborhood overall to be a safe place, supported by a tight network of caring neighbors. In recent years, she has thrown herself into projects to make it more welcoming, including helping to organize Marshall Heights Day and turning a vacant lot into a pop-up Christmas festival, with decorations, hot chocolate and caroling. Thomas also said she’s sensed a recent change in Marshall Heights.

“You can look now and see where some of the newer families [have moved] in,” she said. “People are caring for their homes … the neighborhood, this block, it has a vibe to it again.”

Boundaries: Marshall Heights is a triangle, bounded by Benning Road SE to the west, Capitol Street SE and Central Avenue SE to the north and the D.C./Maryland border (Southern Avenue SE) to the east.

Schools: C.W. Harris Elementary School; Kelly Miller Middle School; H.D. Woodson High School.

Transit: The Blue and Silver lines serve the Benning Road and Capitol Heights Metro stations, just north of neighborhood boundaries. The V7, V8 and W4 buses make stops along Benning Road Southeast; the U5 and U6 buses stop on 51st Street Southeast.

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