Baptist Alley and preservation

[L Verge]

Mike and I have already exchanged e-mails on his dream, and I'm afraid that I was pessimistic also. First of all, there has been a great deal of money spent on revitalizing Chinatown ever since the big Verizon Center arena went in down the street. That has driven up the real estate costs tremendously. And, with the wide push for cultural diversity now, there would be a definite fight to preserve the Oriental flavor (sorry, bad pun) of the building since it is surrounded by similar buildings and restaurants.

An investor would have a very difficult running the maze of D.C. government, which exists at the whim of the U.S. government. The acquisition process and permits alone would be a killer, IMO.

Finally, you would need the blessing of the NPS and the Interior Department to get it even on the National Registry of Historic Places. Surratt House has been on the Registry since 1976. However, twice in the past twenty years, we have tried to climb the ladder to be declared a National Landmark. Both times, we have been rejected with words that mainly said that Ford's Theatre and the Petersen House are all that are needed to remind people of the horrible assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

---

I forgot to add that it will take very deep pockets to maintain a museum without a broad-based support system. If privately run, it would require a hefty endowment of millions of dollars - and museums that are properly run do not touch their endowments; they operate off the interest that the endowments provide as well as grants and donations.

Frankly, I would not work for a museum that did not have a tax-based government organization behind it to pay salaries, maintenance, phone bills, electric bills, HVAC bills, security, real estate taxes, and the like.

---

Note to David - I almost screamed the day I walked out the back door of Ford's and found my beloved cobblestones were gone, along with the smell of an alley. Call me stupid, but the decay of Baptist Alley was part of the charm of the story. When you walked up those cobblestone pathways and smelled the filth, it gave you a great sense of what the alley was like in 1865. You know there had to be tobacco spittle and human waste out that back door in a time when cleanliness was not necessarily next to godliness.

History is not always just the printed word - it needs to play on the senses also. That's when the human element really kicks in and brings past events to light.

I also have to relate one story about the alley. About ten years ago, I was the last one out the stage door on a Surratt Booth Tour. I exited to see our group standing around the narrator, and out of the corner of my eye, I see four young "gentlemen" of the neighborhood conducting some kind of transaction off to the side. As we continued to talk to the group, these men started walking towards us. My school teacher instincts stepped in, and I quietly moved so that I was between the men and the group. Believe it or not, these four started listening to the narrator, and as the group walked up the alley, the young men started asking me questions. I answered as nicely as I could while slowly walking toward the group. At one point, I knew the group would make a left-hand turn, and I would be left alone in that alley with my new students. I finally excused myself and hustled to catch up. However, I truly felt like we had made a slight dent in those guys' tough exterior that day. I have often hoped that they did a little more educating of themselves on the story of Mr. Lincoln and his murder.