Overbeck Lecture: Kim Hoagland, “Comfort and Conveniences in Capitol Hill Row Houses”

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Heating, lighting, and plumbing provide comfort and convenience to the modern home. How did the historic row houses of Capitol Hill accommodate these modern interventions? On Monday, November 10, at 7 pm, during the Overbeck History Lecture at Hill Center, Old Naval Hospital, architectural historian and author Alison K. (Kim) Hoagland will highlight how people’s houses and lives changed in the decades after the Civil War. As fireplaces evolved into central heating, lamps became electrified, and outdoor privies moved indoors, new designs of row houses were called for, influenced by changing ideas about sanitation and the germ theory. While these conveniences became perceived as necessities, they were not distributed evenly across economic class and geography. This examination of heating, lighting, and plumbing will look at the broader ideas concerning public health as well as the specifics of introducing new facilities into row houses with an emphasis on Capitol Hill.

Alison K. (Kim) Hoagland is the author of The Row House in Washington, DC: A History (University of Virginia Press, 2023), recently released in paperback, as well as The Bathroom: A Social History of Cleanliness and the Body (Greenwood Press, 2018). Ms. Hoagland first moved to Capitol Hill in 1977 and has lived here for a majority of the years since then. She was the Senior Architectural Historian for the Historic American Buildings Survey of the National Park Service, and then taught History and Historic Preservation at Michigan Technological University, where she is now Professor Emerita. She has written four other books on various aspects of the
vernacular architecture of the U.S.