Maria Hegstad, The Examiner
2007-04-02 07:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

City consultants have finished surveying 1,600 buildings in Alexandria’s historic Parker-Gray District, part of the work necessary to apply for federal historical designation.

Although 24 blocks near Braddock Metro Station currently hold the distinction of a local historic district, they don’t have the protection of federal status.

“The most obvious benefit is the bragging rights,” said Rich Josephson, of the city’s planning and zoning department.

The city has to prove there is a large enough concentration of significant buildings to merit a federally-recognized district, he said. Federal designation also provides tax credits to residents seeking to renovate historic homes. The changing tax code makes it unclear exactly what the benefits will be, Josephson said.

The Parker-Gray neighborhood was one of several settlements of free blacks in Alexandria before the Civil War. Uptown, as it was then known, was the first black neighborhood settled north of King Street, the main retail area for whites.

Uptown was renamed Parker-Gray after the school that opened for black children on Wythe Street, operating from 1920 until Alexandria schools were desegregated in 1964.

Of the 1,600 homes surveyed, 400 are outside the boundaries of what the city has designated as the Parker-Gray district, Josephson said. A federal district likely will have different boundaries from the local one, he said.

Once the surveys are entered into a state database and an application is sent to Richmond, state officials must review it and nominate it to the Interior Department. Some 350 surveys still have to be entered into the database, Josephson said.

Josephson expects the city’s application will be sent to the state this month or next. The goal is to have the application before the federal Interior Department by this fall.

mhegstad@dcexaminer.com