File:"Buzzards Roost", 9th and E Streets, NW (demolished) (560800308) (2).jpg

"Buzzard Roost" or "Buzzard's Roost" at 9th and E Streets, NW as it appeared in the 12/10/04 "Washington Times". Two excerpts from the "Washington Post" give some idea of how it earned its reputation as a "plague spot":

Post, July 17, 1881

A RAID ON BUZZARDS’ ROOST. The Police Arrest Five of the Inmates of the Den

About 12:30 o’clock this morning, cries of “murder! help! police!” emanating from “Buzzards’ Roost,” at the corner of Ninth and E streets northwest, soon put the neighborhood in commotion. Heads popped out of windows, nightdresses were numerous, and those in the adjacent houses were calling to the men on the street to know who was killed. In the meantime Sergeant McHenry and Officers Smith and Shanks, had worked their way through a dark passage to the fourth story of the “Roost,” where the altercation was going on between two men and three women. Aided by some citizens, the entire party were pulled down stairs into the street, and all were conducted to the station on foot, excepting one woman, who refused to go. The men were about to take the woman bodily and bring her along, when a wheelbarrow was introduced. On this she was placed and ridden to the station house. Here they registered as Joseph Crouser, Nelson Sayers, Ruth Sayers, Mary Sayers and Mary Casey. It seems that Crouser, who is a married man with a family, lives at the “Roost” with another woman, and has been saying ugly things about the mother and sister of Nelson Sayers. The latter brought him to an account last night and a fight ensued in which the Sayers family were all pitted against Crouser. Mary Casey claims that she is a roomer in the den, came out to see the trouble and was merely a looker on when arrested. It is almost needless to say that the residents of that locality became pretty wide awake before the participants were removed from the “roost” to the station. The lace is one of the vilest in the city, gives the police a great deal of trouble, has been repeatedly complained against and still cannot be broken up because of ad defect in the law. There should be some way of protecting respectable citizens from such a disgrace existing in their midst. The whole house, containing some fifty rooms, is rented out in as many tenements.

Post, July 31, 1881

City Talk and Chatter

That delectable locality known as the “Buzzard’s Roost,” corner of Ninth and E streets, is the scene of nightly revels, that are as disgusting as they are disgraceful. The efforts of the police to put a stop to these orgies have not been crowned with brilliant success. Yet of late they have in a measure abated the nuisance. Last night Officers Hill and Shanks added Mary Moriarty and Charles Hill to the large list of offenders taken from this house and lodged them in the Fifth precinct station.