Developing the Race Track Site
The Army had left behind a large, flat open lot. Set in the middle of the growing Town of Potomac, this was prime real estate. The former titans of the property, however, were gone. The Scotsman Alexander McKerichar, a widower since 1875, had died in June 1902. The family, living in DC, apparently had little interest in a property across the river that was constantly embroiled in controversy. They wasted little time and in January 1903 sold most of it to JM Hill, giving him ownership of about three-quarters of the racetrack land. They shrewdly held onto the western portion of the land, that is the east side of Mt Vernon Avenue from Mt Ida north to half-way between Randolph and Raymond, and back 300 feet.
JM Hill lived another fourteen years, dying in April 1916 at 64 after a long battle with brain cancer. A widower by then, he had put his house in order. He sold his original racetrack plot, acquired from Patterson in 1894, to his son Frank in June 1914, and the former McKerichar property in December. Thus, when the Army left in 1918 FM Hill owned the former racetrack property except for the McKerichars’ 300 foot wide strip on the eastern side, bordering Mt Vernon Avenue.
The surviving McKerichar children, Margaret, Robert and John McKerichar, and Mary Halley and Elizabeth Bonar, were the first to act, platting out their parcel as the Mt Vernon Subdivision in January 1922. They sold their first lot , now 106 Stewart Ave, to Inez Miller in February. Earlier developments had offered lots approximating 25 feet of road frontage and 105 feet of depth. Since buyers often purchased two lots side-by-side, the McKerichars decided to divide their development into lots 47 feet wide by 110 feet deep.
FM Hill was not far behind In April 1922 he sold his much larger holdings to a partnership of L Morgan Johnston, Henry Terrett, BM Smith, CS Taylor Burke and Robert Barrett, with those gentlemen giving Hill a lien to secure a note for $10,000 due in three years with with 6% interest to be paid semi-annually. Howard Smith took over as trustee for the partners in June and divided up the land into roughly standardized lots 25 feet wide and 120-150 feet deep as the subdivision of Abingdon. He then reached an agreement whereby Hill would release his lien in increments, one lot for each $75 paid, with payments to be at least $1,000. Howard Smith sold the first Abingdon lot, now 2307 Burke Avenue, on June 1 to Elmer and Hulda Finley.
The two racetrack developments, Mt Vernon and Abingdon, followed the template of the earlier developments in that they simply laid out streets and some improvements, and sold bare lots on which the owners would build their own houses.
They differed from those earlier ones in one notable and nasty aspect, however. By 1922 the poison of the second-generation KKK had reached up into northern Virginia. The earlier developments, St Elmo (1894), Del Ray (1894), Del Ray Section 2 (1911) and St Elmo Section 2 (1920) did not include racial restrictions in their deeds; indeed, the Del Ray developers sold lots to at least two African Americans. The racetrack subdivisions of 1922, however, did include clauses in the deeds restricting ownership to caucasians. Those lasted 26 years, being finally rendered unenforceable by the US Supreme Court in 1948.