Parker-Gray Undergoes Gentrification - washingtonpost.com - search nation, world, technology and Washington area news archives. Parker-Gray Undergoes Gentrification [FINAL Edition] The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext) - Washington, D.C. Author:Paige Williams Date:Jul 30, 1988 Start Page:e.01 Section:REAL ESTATE Text Word Count:900 Full Text (900 words) Copyright The Washington Post Company Jul 30, 1988 Congregation and choir bellow glorious gospel songs each Sunday morning at Russell Temple CME Church on North Alfred Street in Alexandria's Parker-Gray neighborhood, where one block over, Ann Scumard listens with appreciative ears. The weekly music, Scumard said, is but part of the charm of the Parker-Gray district-one of Alexandria's oldest black neighborhoods that now is becoming an increasingly popular area for whites. "It's a nice mix of people, not all yuppies," said Scumard, 34, a white resident who lives with her husband in a town home in the 800 block of Oronoco Street. Recent improvements in the 3,700-resident neighborhood-designated by the City Council in 1984 as a special preservation district-have renewed its appeal for many longtime residents and have generated an influx of home buyers seeking a quiet area accessible to nearby Old Town. Parker-Gray is located between Old Town and the Braddock Road Metro station. Rows of town homes have been renovated in past years, improving numerous deteriorating residences that suffered through decades of neglect. Dark alleys, formerly havens for prowlers, now are lit. Row houses in the neighborhood now sell for $75,000 to $200,000. Tracy Beyl, who has shared a town home with her husband in the 500 block of North Alfred Street for more than three years, said the change has been gradual. "A lot of people used to just hang out in the alleys and around," said Beyl, 25. In the late 19th century, the Parker-Gray district was known as Uptown, said Kristie Struble of the Alexandria Board of Architectural Review. The area primarily consists of buildings dating back to the mid- to late-19th century. Two former Alexandria educators, John Parker and Sarah Gray, are the neighborhood's namesakes. Parker was principal of the Snowden School for Boys, which was established in 1867 and burned in 1915. Located in the 600 block of South Pitt Street, Snowden was the sister school to the Hallowell School for Girls, where Gray was principal, said Eugene Thompson, curator of the Alexandria Black History Resource Center. After Snowden burned and Hallowell closed, neighborhood children began attending Parker-Gray School, which was constructed in 1920. In 1979, the Parker-Gray School closed, despite objections from many residents who sought to preserve the predominantly black institution. About $300,000 from the school's sale was set aside for use in the black community, Thompson said. The Society for the Preservation of Black Heritage joined with the Alumni Association of Parker-Gray and proposed that the money be used to renovate the city's first black library and develop it into the Alexandria Black History Resource Center. Now under city management, the center is being renovated to add a lobby and an exhibition room, and will open next spring to preserve memorabilia and information on the district, Thompson said. Longtime residents of the area remember the Parker-Gray community as having a family atmosphere, where "everybody knew everybody ... and, in reality, there was no reason to want to live anywhere else," said John A. Stanton, who has lived in the neighborhood for 60 years. Now, some careers are taking precedence over families, Stanton said. "Alexandria is becoming a bedroom for those who don't intend to raise families," he said. "Most live here just long enough to find better-paying jobs. That's the pattern now." In recent years, some of Parker-Gray's residents have objected to changes brought by development and city decisions, including the closing of the school; the selection of the site for the adjacent Braddock Road Metro station, which increased real estate values and led to higher property taxes; the city's sanctioning of the Virginia highway department's expansion of Rte. 1, which passes through the neighborhood; and the city council's 1984 decision to name the district as a special preservation area of town, which also has tended to push property taxes upward. Property values in Parker-Gray increased an average of 9 percent to 12 percent from 1987 to 1988, said Richard L. Sanderson, Alexandria's director of real estate assessments. But tax rates dropped during that period, from $1.34 per $100 of assessment in 1987 to $1.25 this year, he said. Residents joined with the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1985 to file a discrimination suit alleging the city, in declaring the community an historic district, engaged in discriminatory housing policies in that the action would tend to promote the displacement of black families. But federal officials in January dropped their effort to resolve the dispute. Many of the residents objected to the city's actions because they felt the neighborhood should "be left as a district, just as it is," Stanton said. Alexandria's assistant city manager, J. Thomas Brannan, said that declaring the area a preservation district was an effort to protect the neighborhood's residential nature. "Some {residents} wanted to be able to use the investment and withdraw it at some point to market their property commercially to get the greatest financial return," Brannan said. Nonetheless, some residents said their links to the community are longstanding. Parker-Gray resident Patricia A. Miller graduated from the Parker-Gray School in 1964 and has lived in the neighborhood's 800 block of Pendleton Street every since. "Most of the people in this area are homesteaders; they aren't going to move away," said Miller. "They struggled hard for their homes, and that's a good reason for them staying." [Illustration] PHOTO,,William A. Mathews; Map,,Twp CAPTION:Charlie and Tracy Beyl, with their dog Daisy, at their Parker-Gray row house. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.