The long, slow death of 3324 Dent
Place, NW, is over.
This morning, a bulldozer moved onto
the property, owned by Deyi Awadallah of
Falls Church, Va., to finish off the 19thcentury
wooden frame house.
In Georgetown, where such a move is
extremely rare, the neighbors on Dent Place
are no doubt pleased, as the structure was seen
as a site for vermin and an eyesore. Even, the
Georgetown-Burleith Advisory Neighborhood
Commission approved a raze permit in October
2012.
Last year, the ANC chair Ron Lewis said
that such an approval to raze a structure was
no something to be taken lightly. Today, when
Lewis learned of the razing, he said, the owner
and others had tried to save it but “we could not
even save the material.”
A spokesperson for the D.C. Department
of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs – which
has oversight of such a demolition – told the
Georgetowner Nov. 12 that due process had
been followed and that the razing had been on
the schedule.
After being declared vacant, the dilapidated
house was struck by a falling tree in August 2011
during Hurricane Irene, crushing its second floor.
According to many, including the ANC’s Lewis,
that was its “deathblow.”
One of the property’s highlights is that it
was owned by Yarrow Mamout, a freed slave in
Georgetown. Mamout died in 1823 before the
current house was built. A beloved portrait
of Mamout hangs in the Peabody Room of
the Georgetown Public Library, not far from
Dent Place.
