Views of Justice CLIFTON STREET WEST OF 13TH STREET nw
On the sou thwest co r ner of this intersection once stood Belmont, an impressive stone mansion built in 1 883 by entrepreneur Amzi L. Barber, “America’s Asphalt King.” Barber, who was white, headed the Education Department at Howard University at the time of its founding in 1 867. He soon bought land from the university to build the exclusive LeDroit Park neighborhood. Next he entered the asphalt paving business, and came to dominate it nationwide. Barber also helped develop the Columbia Heights subdivision. For years Belmont was a landmark that greeted streetcar riders cresting the 1 4th Street hill. Justice William R. Day was one of the powerful men who lived nearby. After Barber’s death, developer Harry Wardman bought Belmont, only to replace it in 1 9 51 with Wardman Courts, then the city’s largest luxury apartment complex. In 1 9 12 new owners named it Clifton Terrace. The once-glamorous complex did not age well, and succeeding owners deferred maintenance and crowded more tenants into the units. By the 1 96 0 s, the situation was so bad that, with help from Ch ange, Inc. and others, tenants organized and stopped paying rent. When the landlord tried to evict them, the tenants sued. In a landmark 1 97 0 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals, Javins v. First National Realty Corporation established the right of tenants to withhold rent payments when conditions violate housing codes. Social activist Rev. Channing Phillips’s Housing Development Corporation renovated Clifton Terrace in the late 1 96 0 s. In 2003 the complex, once again named Wardman Courts, reopened as condominiums and rental units.
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