Defying the Restrictive Covenants

Defying the Restrictive Covenants. Village in the City. , In 1948 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of houses to individuals of certain races could not be enforced. Two years later, Dr. Robert Deane became the first African American to purchase a house in Mount Pleasant that carried the old covenant. But it wasn't easy. , , The Deanes bought 1841 Park Road from Lillian Kraemer Curry. Curry had inherited the house, built in 1909, from her father Charles Kraemer, a German immigrant wine and spirits merchant. In the 1920s the all-white Mount Pleasant Citizens Associations began circulating a covenant binding homeowners never to sell their houses to "negroes." Kraemer and most of his neighbors signed it. Even though the Supreme Court had outlawed this practice, when Kraemer's daughter sold the hose to the prominent black gynecologist in 1950, a small group of neighbors sued to stop the sale based on the old covenant. The neighbors lost in court, and Dr. Deane owned the house until his death in 2001. , , Although 1841 remained a single-family home, beginning in the 1930s housing shortages and tight budgets led some families to take in boarders. During the 1950s, Malvina Brown's Armenian-born parents rented rooms in their Park Road home to newcomers from Greece, Mexico, Turkey, and Venezuela. , , As you continue to Sign 12, notice the stone walls in front of 1833 and 1827 Park Road. The wall at 1833 is made of Kensington tonalite, and 1827 has a wall of Potomac bluestone. Both locally quarried stones are found throughout the city.