Neighborhood Notes - Foxhall: 14 November 2001

Foxhall Village is quite unique in having relatively narrow streets with landscaped medians - as in the Palisades all these medians are entirely cared for by our residents. But the narrowness also presents problems with large trucks navigating these streets and equally narrow alleys. DC now has smaller trucks, thanks to leadership of DPW’s Leslie Hotaling, but the contractor for our weekly recycling collection still brings in full-size dump trucks. This week one of them tore down power and utility lines in the alley between Volta Place and P St, and didn't even stop! This creates unnecessary expense for PEPCO, DC Cable, StarPower and Verizon: we trust that Waste Management, Inc will switch to smaller trucks for our narrow alleys.

Not many people know that the area immediately around Foxhall Rd and MacArthur intersection, when homes were first built near the end of the 19th century, was originally named Harlem, after the same town in Holland as its more famous New York counterpart. Even less might know that homeowners in the 1400 block of Foxhall Rd now find themselves 100 years later victim of a bureaucratic Catch-22. In just this block, all street trees were placed between the house and sidewalk, not between the sidewalk and street. Therefore DC has consistently refused to do any maintenance on them, and homeowners have laid out thousands of dollars to have the now giant trees privately trimmed, or incurred tens of thousands of roof damage from falling limbs.

This section of Foxhall Rd has a much wider right-of-way than the street width, even though it is plenty wide enough for drivers and local parking. If DC refuses to be responsible for the street trees, then it should consider relinquishing its public space claim on resident’s front yards.

© Bob Andrew, Foxhall