Building age from HistoryQuest

If you’re interested in learning about a building or parcel of land in D.C., you don’t have to go it alone. The city has a lot of online maps and tools that give free access to public data. You can find out historical information about buildings, ownership, the permit situation, and even if the building is considered vacant or blighted. The suite of tools can be a useful way to research a neighborhood eyesore or just a fun way to learn more about where you live.

The city’s Office of Historic Preservation recently came out with a neat tool called HistoryQuest that lets you find out the history of any building in the city, like when it was built, the architect and builder, what it’s made out of, and more information taken from the city’s records.

For example, the entry for the White House includes the architect’s name, James Hoban (the namesake of the former Irish bar in Dupont), information about the cornerstone and construction, and a lot more: “Cornerstone laid in 1792. First whitewashed in 1797. Burned by British troops in 1814.”

Other buildings, like the Corcoran, include the original cost ($400,000 in 1893) and information like where the building materials came from. For example, the Senate and House wings of the Capitol are made of marble from Lee, Massachusetts.

The site lets you find information on a specific building (how old is your house?), but also gives an overview of the whole city: buildings range in color from yellow for new to dark brown for old. Southwest appears as mostly orange and yellow, reflecting the “urban renewal” of the area starting in the 1950s that removed the historic and mostly African-American-occupied buildings, in contrast with the area just across the Southwest Freeway that’s full of dark brown: townhouses from the early days of the city. Only a few old buildings remain in the quadrant, like the Wheat Row of townhouses from 1794 on 4th Street SW.

The site has a few quirks, too: some buildings are missing at the Navy Yard and Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, presumably because they’re owned by the military, and some buildings that were renovated only show that date, not the date of the original construction.

But aside from history, there are a few other sites from the city worth a look. The DC Atlas Plus from DCGIS is a map that lets you browse the city’s geospatial data, with various layers like property ownership, business data, aerial photography, transportation, utilities, recreation, and more. The site has hundreds of data layers that you can turn on and off to browse.

The Cuban Embassy via DC Atlas Plus

Let’s say you want to figure out who owns a problem property. On the right side of Atlas Plus, the DC Property Basemap allows you to browse the city’s ownership data, so you can see who owns what parcels of land, the value of the land, the buildings on it, and more.

Another site, the Property Information Verification System, lets you see construction and occupancy permits, inspection reports, violations, and more. The system lets you search by address or the parcel’s Square-Suffix-Lot, which is how the city organizes land parcels. (You can find the Square-Suffix-Lot of a parcel on the DC Atlas Plus site, too.) Another related tool lets you find the status of building permits.

The city’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs also has a site for vacant buildings, including a list of them, ways to report them, and more. When a building is considered vacant or blighted, it is taxed at a higher rate: $5 per $100 of assessed value and $10 per $100, respectively, to encourage owners to do something with them.

The sites can be a little daunting but, with a little looking and clicking, there’s a wealth of data at your fingertips.