Eckington

Quick Answer

Eckington is a row house neighborhood in Northeast DC. North Capitol Street is its west edge, Rhode Island Avenue its north, Florida Avenue its south. The railroad tracks close the east side. Nine in ten of its row houses went up between 1901 and 1939, nearly all in brick. Two Red Line stations sit just outside the edges: NoMa-Gallaudet U to the south and Rhode Island Avenue-Brentwood across the tracks to the northeast.

How We Calculate $/sqft

$/sqft is calculated on above-grade finished square footage, the standard used by DC appraisers, MLS systems, and most market participants. Properties with finished below-grade space (English basements, rental units) carry that square footage as additive value, but appraisers typically apply a discount of 50 to 75 cents on the dollar relative to above-grade space. Blending the two into a single $/sqft figure would make a home with a finished basement look cheaper than it is and obscure the real comparison. When a property has significant finished below-grade square footage, both metrics are presented in context so you understand the full picture before the appraiser does.

The median row house sale in Eckington is $720K, against $949K in Bloomingdale across North Capitol Street. The median row house took 32 days to sell.

Eckington row houses look nearly identical from the sidewalk. Most of what separates them is below the first floor.

DC lists about 930 row houses in Eckington. About 775 are single-family houses, and the figures here are for them; the other 150 are recorded as converted to two units. Nine in ten went up between 1901 and 1939. Fewer than one in ten is recorded as built in 1900 or earlier. About one in fifty rises past two stories. The median lot is about 1,500 square feet. The typical house has about 2,100 square feet in total, about 1,400 of it above ground. Nearly every house has a basement, and about two in three have finished it. The converted houses run taller: about one in nine rises three stories or more.

So the house next door is a fair comp above ground and a poor one below it, where about a third of the house sits.

Here is what I do with that. I count the space above ground and the space below it separately. I compare finished lower levels with finished lower levels only. I ask the seller in writing when the lower level was finished, and whether it has its own entrance and an egress window.

Two houses that match from the street can be a floor apart.

From the Record

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  George Truesdell bought the Eckington estate in 1887 and subdivided it. The Eckington and Soldiers' Home Railway, his streetcar company and Washington's first electric line, began service on October 17, 1888.

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  After the B&O built a freight depot just north of Florida Avenue, warehouses and plants filled the west side of the tracks up to Rhode Island Avenue. The National Biscuit Company was at 4th and S Streets. The printer Judd and Detweiler was at Florida Avenue and Eckington Place.

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  In 1907 a bridge at 4th and T Streets NE crossed the tracks to Brentwood. Its trolley connection stopped in 1962, and the bridge came down in the late 1960s.

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  After the streetcar was removed in the 1950s, North Capitol Street was dug into a trench, and the work ended in 1963. It has divided Eckington from Bloomingdale since.

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  The name comes from Joseph Gales Jr., publisher of the National Intelligencer and mayor of Washington from 1827 to 1830. He named his estate here after his birthplace in England.