The View From a Friend's Back Porch: Ninety Years on V Street
Sometimes the most interesting stories are not found in the places we have traveled to see, but in the buildings standing quietly beside us.
By HH Prince DeAndre, Duke of Hanumanteshwar
H1927LLC Intellectual Property Library
Washington, DC | October 17, 2026
If you were sitting with me on a friend's back porch this afternoon, I would probably ask you to look across the way.
Not at the beautiful October sky, although Washington has given us a particularly lovely one today. Not at the passing traffic or the neighboring homes, but at a collection of apartment buildings standing just beyond the parking lot.
Do you see them?
Two stories, long stretches of windows, a fenced yard, and what appears to be a small children's playground. There is even a colorful slide still standing outside.
Now look a little closer.
Plywood covers many of the windows and doors. The grounds are enclosed, the buildings are quiet, and something about the entire property suggests that whatever life once took place there has been interrupted.
I first noticed these buildings while spending time with a friend who is moving into a condominium here in Southeast Washington, DC.
There is a certain pleasure in discovering a neighborhood through a friend's new home. You begin learning the streets, noticing the architecture, and becoming familiar with the surroundings. Eventually, something catches your attention that makes you curious enough to ask a question.
For me, it was these buildings.
What happened here?
Had there been a fire? Was there mold? Had the apartments become unsafe? Or had someone simply decided they were no longer worth maintaining?
I didn't know.
So I began looking.
What I found was considerably more interesting than I had expected.
The buildings are located at 1701–1711 V Street SE, and according to the property records, they were constructed in 1936.
Ninety years ago.
That was enough to make me sit with the discovery for a moment.
1936 was a very different America. Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. The country was still living through the Great Depression. Washington was growing, and communities east of the Anacostia River were developing their own residential character within a city whose social and economic boundaries were often sharply defined.
These buildings have been standing through nearly a century of that history.
I began wondering who had lived there.
Not in a sentimental way, but out of genuine curiosity about how many people might have passed through those entrances during the last ninety years. What had the surrounding neighborhood looked like when the buildings were new? Who were the early residents? How had the property changed as Washington changed around it?
The records I found could not answer all those questions.
But they revealed something about the buildings' more recent life that genuinely surprised me.
In 2011, when the property was already seventy-five years old, it underwent a substantial rehabilitation through a project known as V Apartments.
The developer's project history describes the rehabilitation of fourteen two-bedroom apartments, including three accessible units.
And here is where the story became especially interesting.
The District of Columbia's Department of Human Services acquired the property to provide housing for single mothers.
Think about that for a moment.
An apartment community built during the Great Depression was given another purpose seventy-five years later, this time connected to a government program serving women and families who needed housing.
It was a practical use of an existing residential property, restoring older buildings and returning them to a role in the community.
Looking again at the photographs I took today, I began noticing details I might otherwise have overlooked.
The mailboxes beside the front entrances. The accessibility ramps leading to the doors. The fenced grounds behind the buildings. And, of course, that playground.
These are ordinary features of residential life. Yet once you understand the property's history, they take on a different significance.
They are physical reminders of what this place was designed to accommodate.
And that is when another date caught my attention.
February 2024.
By then, according to District government records, the V Street Shelter buildings were listed as vacant.
I went back over the timeline.
Rehabilitation in 2011.
Vacant by 2024.
Thirteen years separated those two points in the record.
I found that extraordinary, particularly because the buildings themselves had already survived seventy-five years before the rehabilitation.
Of course, a renovation does not make an old building new. Depending on the scope of the work, portions of the original infrastructure may remain, and mechanical systems can require extensive maintenance even after other improvements have been completed.
Still, I had not expected to discover that a property boarded up in 2026 had been rehabilitated for public use as recently as 2011.
Naturally, I wanted to know what had happened in between.
An October 2023 environmental safety report from the District's Department of General Services documented water intrusion and pest activity at the V Street Shelter, along with corrective work.
Those findings offered some insight into the maintenance challenges the property had experienced. They did not, however, establish that those conditions caused its closure.
I also found no confirmation that a fire or mold infestation had been responsible for the boarding I was seeing.
So the exact circumstances surrounding the property's departure from service remain unclear to me.
But the research led to another discovery.
The buildings had not only changed their use over the years. They had also changed the government institution responsible for them.
The Department of Human Services, commonly called DHS, had been associated with the buildings' role in providing housing and shelter services.
Then, during an October 2025 meeting of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8A, a representative of DHS confirmed that the properties had transitioned to the District's Department of General Services, or DGS.
That department has a different institutional responsibility. Its work includes managing public facilities, maintaining government properties, and overseeing construction and real estate functions.
I thought that was an interesting development.
The buildings that once provided housing through an agency dedicated to human services were now under the care of an agency principally responsible for the government's physical properties.
There may be perfectly ordinary administrative reasons for such a transfer. A government department operating a service does not necessarily remain responsible for a building once that service is no longer operating there.
But consider the journey of this particular property.
It began as residential housing in 1936. Decades later, it was rehabilitated and became part of a public program providing accommodation for mothers and families. It subsequently entered the District's family shelter system, was documented as vacant, and eventually passed into the responsibility of another government agency.
All while standing on the same piece of land.
I find that fascinating.
We often talk about buildings as though they have one history, one purpose, or one identity.
Yet here is a residential property that has existed through several generations of Washington life, responding at different times to different needs and institutions.
And today, from my friend's back porch, you might never know any of it.
After photographing the rear of the buildings, I walked around to V Street to see the other side.
The difference was striking.
From the street, the red-brick facades have a familiar Washington appearance. There are steps leading to individual entrances, accessibility ramps with black railings, and architectural details that still give the buildings the character of an established residential community.
The boarding is unmistakable, but so is the residential design.
The buildings have not disappeared. They have not been demolished. They are still standing in the middle of a neighborhood where people are living, arriving, departing, and making plans for their own futures.
That contrast stayed with me as I returned to the other side of the property.
My friend is beginning a new chapter in life here, while just beyond this new home stands a property whose own next chapter has not yet become clear.
I know who now has institutional responsibility for the buildings. I know something of their history and the purpose of their rehabilitation in 2011.
What I do not know is precisely when or why their residential and shelter use ended, or what the District ultimately intends for them.
And perhaps that is where I should leave the story.
Because sometimes the value of discovering a place is not in arriving at a conclusion. It is in understanding that something you initially dismissed as ordinary contains a history worth knowing.
I had come to spend time with a friend who was moving into a new home.
Instead, I found myself looking across a backyard at ninety years of Washington residential history, a second life dedicated to housing mothers and families, and a property that now belongs to another chapter of the District government's responsibilities.
I took photographs because I wanted to remember what I had seen.
But it was the history that changed what I was looking at.
And now, sitting here, with the afternoon sun stretching across the buildings and the old playground still visible beyond the fence, I find myself looking at them a little differently.
They were homes once.
They were given a renewed purpose.
And whatever comes next, their history remains part of this neighborhood.
Sometimes, that is what happens when you spend an afternoon on a friend's back porch.
You arrive to enjoy the company.
And leave having discovered a story.
Author's Note
This essay is based on my personal observations and original photographs taken October 17, 2026, together with publicly available property records, the 2011 V Apartments development history, District government environmental reports, and Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8A documentation from October 2025.
The original cause and precise date of the property's closure, as well as its future use, have not been independently established.
Original photography © 2026 HH Prince DeAndre, Duke of Hanumanteshwar | H1927LLC.