Truxton Circle

Quick Answer

Truxton Circle is a row house neighborhood in Northwest DC. New Jersey Avenue is its west edge and Florida Avenue its north. North Capitol Street is its east edge, New York Avenue its south. Nearly all of its row houses are brick, and nine in ten were built in 1939 or earlier. Shaw-Howard U (Green and Yellow Lines) is a few blocks west. NoMa-Gallaudet U (Red Line) is just east of North Capitol Street.

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 here took 40 days to sell. In Shaw it was 20, and in Bloomingdale 24.

The median row house sale here is $755K. Shaw's is $1.1M and Bloomingdale's is $949K. A gap between medians is not a discount on the same house: compare the price per square foot, $466 here, and the condition.

In Truxton Circle, four in ten row houses carry a build year the city does not actually know.

DC lists about 720 row houses in Truxton Circle. About 570 are single-family houses, and the figures here are for them; the other 150 are recorded as converted to two units. Four in ten are recorded as built in 1900 or earlier. The city enters 1900 when it does not have the true year, so many are older. Most of the rest went up between 1901 and 1939. The typical house has about 1,900 square feet in total, about 1,500 of it above ground. About one in sixteen rises three stories or more. Six in ten have a basement, and about a third have finished one. The converted houses run taller: about one in five rises three stories or more.

So two houses on one block can share a listed year and sit decades and a finished floor apart.

Here is what I do with that. I set the build year aside when it reads 1900. I compare on what I can measure: the stories, the space above ground, and whether the lower level is finished. I ask the seller in writing what work was done, and when.

A year the city guessed is not a fact about the house.

From the Record

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  Truxton Circle is named for a traffic circle built around 1900 at Florida Avenue and North Capitol Street. The circle honored Commodore Thomas Truxtun, one of the first six commanders President George Washington appointed to the new U.S. Navy.

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  A fountain was moved to the circle in 1901 from Pennsylvania Avenue and M Street NW. The circle was demolished in 1947 after years of traffic jams and accidents, and the fountain was removed at the same time. Neither remains.

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  Four school buildings here are listed on the National Register of Historic Places: Armstrong Manual Training School, the John Mercer Langston School, the John Fox Slater Elementary School and the Margaret Murray Washington School.

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  Shaw-Howard U (Green and Yellow Lines) is a few blocks west of New Jersey Avenue. NoMa-Gallaudet U (Red Line) is just east of North Capitol Street, near New York and Florida Avenues. Union Station is south, past NoMa.