Change Is Clear

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Down First Street, a woman is sitting, barefoot, on her porch. She has lived here 35 years and watched all kinds of change come and go. "The neighborhood is all right," says Cornelia Felder. She went to Windows before it was Windows and goes there now after its change. "All I do is run in and get a few items and that is that. A little variety of things you want to pick up in a hurry. It's a nice store."

What kinds of things do you buy?

"That's my business," she says.

Lawanda Johnson, 16, a junior at Cardozo, rides by on an orange bike. "I go to the store sometimes," she says. "But they only sell coffee." She is next door at the Chinese-Dragon restaurant. She has just bought a jumbo cheeseburger, french fries and sweet iced tea. She pushes the door open, climbs aboard the big orange bike, clutches the plastic bag containing the cheeseburger and rides up First Street, passing the corner house, owned by Samuel McLemore, 40, and James Brathwaite, 43.

On a recent evening, McLemore and Brathwaite are sitting outside the grand, meticulously restored mansion they have now made home. Restored with the kind of care that can put other houses on the block to shame. They paid contractors a pretty penny to scrape off old red paint and power-wash the house, allowing the original brick to reappear. McLemore, who is black, grew up in Boston. Brathwaite, who is black, in Trinidad and Tobago. They moved to this house from Capitol Hill in 1991. "We wanted to adopt a kid and we wanted a bigger house," McLemore says.

McLemore says the kind of change the neighborhood has undergone is evolutionary.

The evening sun is setting. The block is peppered with houses that are rundown and houses that are splendid. "How have we made this home?" McLemore asks. "I think the most obvious thing to augment a home is to not only make it livable but to do things to make it beautiful." They have recently upgraded their landscaping. "We took up the dirt that looked like that," he says pointing across the street to weeds. "We changed that to this." Tiny rows of green plants lined up perfectly.

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A black man in gray polyester and gray shiny shoes enters: "Y'all don't sell cigarettes, do you? The counter girl motions to the back. He disappears. Returns. Speaks: "Y'all got matches?"