The Palisades is a quiet, sleepy District neighborhood, tucked away on a high bluff above the Potomac a few miles upriver from Georgetown. Little, if anything, newsworthy comes from the neighborhood. (Unless of course you count a busload of protesters from Chicago’s South Side showing up on Karl Rove’s front lawn on Weaver Terrace earlier this year.)

But the neighborhood is in the news. According to Sunday’s Post, an abandoned house at 5136 Sherier Place (in the DCist photo pictured here) is causing quite a bit of debate over its worth. Some deem the 1926 Sears catalog “kit house,” which sits on National Park Service land, worthy of demolition so the Palisades recreation center and park can have an expanded driveway. Others want to save the “Jesse Baltimore House.” In a changing neighborhood, preservationists say “kit houses” in the Palisades are a link to the working-class roots of the neighborhood, where new construction and renovations are creating huge “McMansions.”

And such links to the origins of the community are increasingly rare, say those who want to save the house. Touring the neighborhood, [preservationist Mary] Rowse pointed to an address nearby on Potomac Avenue. The day before, a small bungalow sat on the lot; this day, it’s a pile of rubble.

Much of the lower Palisades developed along the old Route 20/Glen Echo trolley line, abandoned decades ago. While streets in the upper Palisades are lined with giant mansions, streets near Sherier Place are distinguished by small bungelows. Preservationists note that the neighborhood, house by house, is being transformed and the sleepy old character of the area is being lost. To see this up close, DCist suggests going to the corner of Chain Bridge Road and Sherier Place, where two giant new homes loom over the quiet former 19th century lane.