For 50 years, Jubilee Housing has both fostered and benefited from the gifts of many exceptional leaders. This March, we are celebrating Women’s History Month at the same time we are celebrating five decades of mission. Many women leaders have shaped and fueled Jubilee’s work, and we are honored to share stories of three of those leaders this month — Carolyn Banker Cresswell, Patricia Sitar, and Jacqueline Conerly — with more stories to come in the year ahead.
50th Anniversary Stories
Special Interview with Jubilee Housing Co-Founder Carolyn Banker Cresswell
In honor of Women’s History Month, we feature a special in-depth interview with Jubilee Housing co-founder Carolyn Banker Cresswell conducted by Board Member Liz Wainger of the Wainger Group.
Carolyn came to Washington, DC, in the early 70s to work for Senator Mark Hatfield with hopes of stopping the Vietnam War. She joined the Church of The Saviour and became a part of a group of members that met every Thursday at the Potter’s House, a coffee house and bookstore started by the Church. Members were making connections with the local neighbors and seeking a way to make a difference in the community. She and Church of the Saviour founder Rev. Gordon Cosby formed a partnership and started renovating homes on L Street in Southwest. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, Rev. Cosby, and friend of the Church and famous developer Jim Rouse, the “Thursday night group” went on to act on their calling and buy two local dilapidated apartment buildings that were putting people’s lives at risk. During this time, Carolyn earned a real estate license and, along with co-founders Terry Flood and Barbara Moore, led the negotiations with H. Grady Gore of the political Gore family to buy the Mozart and Ritz apartment buildings and form Jubilee Housing.
Listen to the story of three young women at the height of the women’s movement who used their faith, friendship, and tenacity to help start an organization that is now 50 years old.
Video Production by Metamer Studios
Interview Transcript
Liz Wainger: Hi, I’m Liz Winger. I’m on the board of Jubilee Housing and it is my great pleasure to be talking today with Carolyn Banker Cresswell, who is one of Jubilee’s founders. And this is all part of a series that Jubilee Housing is doing to celebrate our history and our 50th anniversary, and particularly this month, to celebrate the women who have so shaped Jubilee Housing.
And I wanted to say personally, as a board member, it is a great honor to be able to meet you and talk with you, Carolyn, about your experience in shaping Jubilee Housing. So, welcome.
So, I guess my first question is, did you grow up in DC, or are you a D.C. native?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: No, I grew up in California. A California girl.
Liz Wainger: All right. And what brought you to DC?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Well, I came to work in the Senate for Senator Mark Hatfield. He was from Oregon, and it was at the height of the Vietnam War. And I was a very idealistic new… I wasn’t that new. I’d been out of school a couple of years, but I was a poli. sci. graduate and I wanted to change the world. So, I came to try to end the war.
Liz Wainger: All right. And how did you get involved with Jubilee Housing or the beginnings of Jubilee Housing before it even existed? And was that at the same time you were working for the Senator or did that come later? Or how did that happen?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Well, I was working for Senator Hatfield, and I started going to church at Church of the Savior. I got to know Gordon Cosby…joined the church. He was in a small group that met Thursday nights at a place called the Potter’s House up on Columbia Road. And we met every Thursday night. And that’s where it began. That’s where the friendships began.
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: That’s where the connection with the Church began. And that’s really where I believe, Jubilee Housing began.
Liz Wainger: So, you and Barbara Moore and Terri Flood are kind of the founding mothers, if you will, if we want to. We want to say that of Jubilee Housing. How did you all come up with…how did this begin? In other words, what prompted you? What need did you see, and why did you want to take this on?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Well, I believe that it was a call from God, ultimately, but it came to us in different ways. So there were three of us. Barbara and Terry were young mothers. I was going to work on Capitol Hill. Or I thought I’d work at something for years. I never considered, you know, having children. I just saw I was going to really be a career woman.
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: And I was just getting started and got to know them. But around that table on Thursday nights, we began to talk about what was happening in the neighborhood. And Barbara Moore was very connected and working with the children who went to the H.D. Cook School, which was right out the back door of the Potter’s House. And these children were living in just horrific conditions right out our back door.
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: And then Jim Rouse, who was a friend of the Church of the Savior, spoke about his vision for the city and the need for housing. And so, we were kind of mulling these things over but not committed to any particular course of action until Jim Rouse said one day, “If anybody can figure out something to do, you know, bring it to me.”
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: So, we said, let’s figure it out! And at the same time, there was a very exciting project going on up in Baltimore, renovating a row of houses under what we had then—
which is during the Nixon administration—we had something called the 235 program, which was essentially the government subsidizing a mortgage. If you could renovate homes, you could get mortgages for low-income people and put them in these homes.
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: And Gordon said, Well, why don’t we try that here? So, at the same time, Gordon and I had created this little partnership where we were renovating houses in Northeast D.C. up on L Street and trying to figure out how all these things work. I mean, we knew nothing. We were total novices…no experience, just trying to renovate one little house and finding out how overwhelmingly difficult it was.
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: So, we had these little tentacles out in the community trying different things because we were aware that since the riots, which had been several years before following Martin Luther King’s death, nothing had happened. There were vast empty buildings. No, nobody wanted to invest in the city and things were really going downhill rapidly. And it was particularly bad for the children that Barbara kept us very connected with.
So that’s where it all began. Just talking around that table and seeking a way that we could be useful. And thinking, well, what do we have to offer? Not much, we didn’t think.
Liz Wainger: So. the early buildings were the Ritz and the Mozart. So. Right.
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Great names!
Liz Wainger: Yes, they were. Were they originally called that?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: They were fancy buildings when they were built. They really were the Ritz and the Mozart. I have the original brochure years from when they were built and it’s incredible. They were the nation’s capital’s best of the best. There was that ground level and both buildings had little shops, had a cleaners, had a beauty shop, had a little kind of grocery store.
I mean, you could get anything….live in those buildings….and ride the bus right down to work at the White House or the Capitol Hill. They were a wonderful place to live. And they were…they were well named for the time. But by the time we saw them, they were overcrowded, and they were built. The Ritz, I’ll never forget, was built around a courtyard and trash had been thrown out of windows from up above. So, the first level, you couldn’t even look at the windows. Trash and in those tunnels where the rats ran through a pile of trash that was at least one story thick.
Liz Wainger: So, how did…you all decide to buy these buildings? Yes. And did you create Jubilee Housing or did you buy the buildings first?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: No, no….we didn’t do anything in proper order. We did it all backward.We just knew that those were the buildings that would give us the best entree into the lives of people because we already had people that we knew in those buildings. People came into the Potter’s House; people worked in the Potter’s House. And we knew that block. We didn’t know other buildings, and we knew that things were pretty desperate. But we didn’t know who owned them.They were very….they were registered to a Delaware corporation. And back then, there were no computer searches. So, to find out what that corporation, you know, who that was involved going through years of paper records in Delaware. So that was the first thing to figure out, who the people were. And it turned out that the buildings were owned by H. Grady Gore, who was the uncle [Editor’s note: he was a cousin] of Albert Gore, who was in the Senate at the time, not our current Al Gore, but his father. So, we had H. Grady Gore, and he was operating out of the Fairmont [Editor’s note: it was the Fairfax] Hotel directly across the street from the Church of the Savior. And that’s where the rents ended up. We found that out by following the rent collectors who came and collected rent in a big paper bag.They would go door to door and knock and ask for the rent. They’d write it all down by pencil, and then they went around to the kitchen door. That was a little sketchy following them. And my 19…, my nice red Volvo, it was a little too, but we would follow them a little bit, kind of see where they were, and they were going to the back door of the Jockey Club there.
The [Fairfax] Hotel right across from the Church of the Savior, and then we confirmed, yep, that’s probably where those checks were going. So, we needed to go talk to Grady Gore and tell him we wanted to buy his buildings. And we hadn’t done anything about raising money at that point. We just wanted the buildings. But our intent, the original intent, was, well, we have this…. There was a program called 236, which was for rebuilding the cities, and it was the same thing that they were doing single-family houses only for multifamily. It was called 236 and this was the fall, late summer and fall of 1973, and the day that we actually got those buildings under contract with all our projections, and I had great ideas. Nixon froze the 236 program. So, you know, and that didn’t deter Terry or Barbara….so we just kept moving.
Liz Wainger: So how….what was it like to negotiate with Grady Gore…H. Grady Gore? Especially given that women didn’t usually buy buildings back then.
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: You didn’t buy buildings…and people with no money didn’t buy buildings. You know, especially the Ritz and the Mozart. You didn’t just go to Grady Gore and tell him that you wanted to buy his buildings, and you have no money. And so, it was kind of strange. He had a little…you went in on a diagonal corner. I don’t know if it’s still that way, but you go to the Jockey Club or the Fairmont [Fairfax] Hotel the entrance is right on the corner. And you went in, and his office was to the right.
So, we decided we needed to go see him. And I was elected. I don’t know why. But I went to see him, and he wouldn’t see me, you know? Well, who is this person? What do they want?I said, tell him I want to buy his apartment houses. And he said, “they’re not for sale…pass the word on.”
Well, I went and said, I just would like to speak to him about it. I went and sat there for… I don’t know how many days, but quite a few days…till I just wore him out. Every day, I’d go in and tell the receptionist I wanted to see him, and I’d sit there for a while.And then the word would come back, he won’t see you.
And we had a little group that would always know when we were going, and they were praying either across the street or over at the Potter’s House. And eventually, we’d get a hearing with him. And one day, he just said, “show her in.”
And I went in and talked to him and he just….he was…. unimpressed with me. He was….he called me “little girl,” teased me.
He said, “Well, what would you do with these buildings?”
And I said, “Well, we would make them habitable for the people.” And I started talking to him that day about who lived in apartment 209.
And he says, “I know who lives there…I’ve got it right here.”
He had all his records handwritten on yellow pieces of paper with pencil. And I said, “Well, do you know that she has three children and this and this and this? And her stove has been out for six months or whatever it was. And we’re very concerned about the conditions these people are living in. That’s why we want to buy it.”
“Well, you wouldn’t want it. You don’t know how hard it is” [Gore said]. He was trying to tell me that I didn’t know what we were doing, so I finally came to him with a contract and a price.
And then we needed a deposit and this is where…this is where Gordon Cosby is a pretty amazing person. [Gordon asked,] “What do you need for a deposit on buildings like that?”
And you need you need a little bit of a deposit. And that’s all we had among us was a little bit of money that I had been given when my grandfather died. And Gordon, as you know, would take it all. And I’m about to get married. This was right before George and I got married. And we were kind of planning to use that for this and this. And Gordon said, “Well, I reckon you either want to do this or you want to do that. You know, you don’t have to do it. But I think things work better if you give 100% rather than if you give 10% or 20%.” So, I went back and decided it’d be fun to start our marriage kind of where we both were….with a little bit of debt and no money at all. So, we gave 100% and put it down as a deposit and took it to him to H. Grady Gore, and he began to think we were serious.
Louise Gore [She was the daughter of H. Grady Gore] was running for the governor….running to be governor of Maryland. And then I saw Louise Gore on all the paperwork that he dug up in Delaware. So, I thought, hey, at some point I might mention that to H. Grady Gore.
And the point, you know, when the time came, I did. And that I think that might have turned the negotiations a little bit one day when he was being ornery. And I said, well, you know, I know people at The Washington Post would be very interested to write a little exposé on Louise Gore as a slumlord, because this is a slum building.
Grady Gore hated that term. He said he was always saying he wasn’t a slumlord. And I was asking, saying, well, it looks like it to me. I’m just a kid, but it looks like it to me. And it would look like it to a lot of people. They heard these stories of people in the building. It wouldn’t be good for Louise’s campaign.
Liz Wainger: And that helped turn the tide?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Oh, yeah, I think we had it under contract within a week after that. But I don’t. You don’t? 50 years ago, it happened quickly, but he didn’t like that, and he wasn’t willing for that to get out.
Liz Wainger: Well, the other thing that is interesting to me is how much of a detective you had to be, because as you did, you have to go to Delaware to actually look up the records?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Oh, yes, we had to go to Delaware. He had to go to the archives in the state capital. I think I’m not remembering the year because I’m not where I have my files. But I had to go and by hand through microfilm copies of the registration of a new LLC. And that’s how you found it….year by year.
Liz Wainger: So he had no idea….H. Grady Gore had no idea just who those “little girls” were that he was up against.
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: No, he didn’t know who we were. We didn’t know who he was either. We just knew he had that building, and those people needed to be free. And we felt that we had a very clear mandate to try to work right there where we already were. We weren’t looking to build a housing corporation.We were looking to build a community. And we had a toehold. It was it had already begun at the Potter’s House, and we wanted to build on that. And the people that lived right there were who we cared about. And he took our signed our contract and said, “Well, don’t expect me to give you your money back. If you can’t raise that big amount you need from the government.”
Well, we signed the contract and the next day we couldn’t raise it big amount for the government and we had 30 days to close and I had just a few more days and that till our wedding. So we were was a it was kind of an adventure.
And we went back to see Jim Rouse and said, “Okay, we’ve got this building under contract.” One thing I did make sure of in the contract was that the contract was assignable, meaning that Jim Ross could buy that contract from us if he wanted to. And we said, “We’ve got a building, we’ve got an opportunity, we’ve got people that are interested, we don’t have any money.”
And he put up the money to buy the buildings Well, from us, we closed on the buildings and then he bought them from us. Actually, he bought it personally from my name was on there so I bought it. I had it under contract. He bought it. We immediately sold it to at the same table to Jim Rouse and which was a good thing because we couldn’t handle one day of it.
And that was how it began.
Liz Wainger: That’s an amazing story and I don’t think I ever knew. I knew bits and pieces of it, but it’s an amazing story….and that you had the tenacity. And I think it goes back to something you said at the very beginning that it was almost like a calling for you.
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: It was a calling, yeah, it was a calling, and it was for Terry, and it was for Barbara, and it was for Gordon. It was for all of us around that table. And I would say not just around that table, you know, dozens more within the Church of the Savior who had this vision for the city of Washington, DC, this vision for people being cared for, and this vision of that place being sacred and belonging to the people that lived there, not the people that might come in and redevelop it.
Liz Wainger: Yeah. And what do you think? I mean, you, Terry and Barbara, have a certain fortitude. You have a certain tolerance for risk, a certain tenacity. I mean, what were your where do you think that comes from? Aside from I understand that it’s….it’s a it’s a calling. But not everybody with a calling is necessarily able to do what you were able to do.
So where do you think that why do you think that made it so possible? What about you…the three of you?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: What do you think? It had a whole lot to do with who we were because together we didn’t have just there was nothing that we could do to make this happen. But I think one thing that we shared was a faith in the power of God to accomplish his purposes and a real conviction that God is all about freeing captives and restoring what’s broken.And our city then was badly broken and the people in those buildings were captive. They were….they had no other options. They had no choices about where they lived or how they how they you know, how they lived. They were in a desperate situation. And it was God’s intention, we believed, to free them. And we just got to go along for the ride. If we were willing and able to stand it. It was a pretty wild ride.
Liz Wainger: Yeah. Yeah. Did you have other women kind of role models at that time that inspired you or made you believe that you could do this?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: You know, I didn’t have many women role models growing up. Ah, that would have inspired me to do this particular thing. There were a few women, one woman who worked in San Francisco that I knew whose husband had been killed, leaving her three little boys. And she was the first woman to ever really make a name for herself in real estate.It was in residential real estate, but not commercial. But she was the first woman to ever make $1,000,000 in real estate. So she was well known and her name was Margaret Wilson, and she was…she was just a brave lady who went and did something nobody else had done before. And I liked her and knew her, but not well.But. And I was not a really a real estate person during this whole process to try to equip myself. I went and got a DC real estate license and pass that test and studied so I wouldn’t be, you know, just quite as ignorant as I started out. But I was not….that was not my business. I was working on the Hill, right? And I was doing this on the side.
Liz Wainger: So, you so after you acquired the building and so on, did you continue to work on the Hill? What happened after? How long were you involved with….did you stay involved with Jubilee or as my understanding.
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Was long as I was in DC, I was involved with Jubilee and with housing through connecting with Jim Rouse. I ended up being nominated by Jim, nominated me to be a member of the staff in something called the Urban Reinvestment Task Force. It was housed in the Federal Home Loan Bank Board building right at the bottom of the hill, but it was to address the situation of redlining and neighborhood improvement, and it ended up being something that ended up in the National Neighborhood Housing Corporation.
At that time, it was the Urban Reinvestment Task Force. And so I work there under James Lynn, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. And then I went on to do other things like move to Colorado and raise a family and do other things in Colorado.
Liz Wainger: And did you did so were some of those other things housing related or were they totally different?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Well, they weren’t totally different, but my passion really and this is for Jubilee housing as well as the things I did later on, it’s always been home and the need for every human person, everybody to have a home. And to me, home housing’s good at it’s you need a place. But home and developing a community and a sense of belonging.Everything I’ve done since then has had to do with home and belonging for people and facilitating that. And that’s what was exciting to me about Jubilee Housing. I kind of regretted at times that we call it Jubilee Housing because it wasn’t just a housing corporation. From day one, you had people connecting people and trying to build a community.
There was a church, there was a children’s program, there was, you know, a vision for health care and all the things that make life work. And that was what Jubilee was about. It was about getting the resources and the connections, person to person that make life work for everybody.
Liz Wainger: And it’s great. What advice would you give to women today, young women that might be interested in real estate or just in general to make their way in the world? That isn’t always… It’s a lot friendlier to women, I think, now, certainly than it was in the seventies. I don’t know that anybody would still call you a little girl. They might call you other things. But what advice would you give to two young women who may want to make a difference in the way that you did or pursue something? What did you learn from this experience?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Well, this was this was the most exciting start. I just felt so grateful to have been there. It was like, Whoa, look what’s happening all around. And I really believe it was because it was based in a real biblical vision of setting people free to be who God created them to be. And I think that’s really what I would…it’s not just what I would.It’s what I’ve said to my own daughter, two daughters, and granddaughter, and then young women. I’ve known that just, you know, who are you and, what’s inside of you and what gets you excited. And, I would help people understand how God had put them together and what it is they have to give and encourage him to give it, whether anybody else sees it or affirms it right away or not.
But get a couple of friends. Don’t, don’t go it alone. And I think that had it not been for Terry and Barbara, I would just….I was just a couple of years younger than they were, but they were the great encouragement and great friends and, well, I was a single woman working ridiculous hours and trying to do this on the side. And I had no real connections in DC other than my job. So don’t go it alone. Have at least a friend or two, listen to who you are, and listen to God.
Liz Wainger: Do you think, you know, we’re doing this at the time of Women’s History Month? What does that mean to you? That there actually is a Women’s History Month in terms of maybe elevating women or focusing on women. Just be curious from your perspective what you think of it.
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Well, you know, it’s kind of fun. When I moved from DC, was the beginning of the women’s movement….was really at about that same time. And when I moved to Colorado Springs from DC, I felt like I’d gone back in time. I was like, whoa, nobody here knows who I am. And that was really discouraging to me. And what I see has happened in the 50 years since is incredible, really.
I have a daughter who is a full professor….Ph.D. I have another daughter who’s just about to be a nurse practitioner in a field that didn’t even exist, in which women are making a huge difference. So, I just am grateful for the time I’ve lived when I can see a new opportunity and new hope for a lot of women. But….I guess looking back is the only way to see it, because I’m always kind of picky. I don’t. I still see a lot of work to be done. And so, yeah, I bet it’s fun. Look back and see. We have made huge progress.
Liz Wainger: One of the things that you mentioned earlier when you talked about the people who were living in these buildings, the Mozart and the Ritz and, you know, the struggles that they were having. How do you think that Jubilee Housing helps women be their best self to live the life that that God intended to be their best?How do you think….what is it that Jubilee does? What’s that special sauce, do you think?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Well, I’m speaking from old experience and from having just kind of reconnected in a little bit and been thrilled with what is actually happening. But just beginning with women as little girls, the fact that girls were allowed to dream in that little preschool that was in the basement of the Ritz at first. That there were afterschool tutoring programs, that there were people connecting too little to children and young adults, and that there was there were options for women because there was childcare available in the building.
Jubilee has always cared about the whole person, not just the rent is paid and that the building is clean, but what is it like to live your life here? And what can life be for these people? What can life be for us together? And it’s a community and it’s a place to belong. And that to me was the most exciting people that belong and are known can encourage each other. And that’s what encourages not just women, but little boys and young men. It’s fun.
Liz Wainger: Is there anything else that you think people should know about your experience that I haven’t asked you about? Is there something else that you think is important for people to really be aware of about Jubilee….or about?
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Well, I’m just and I guess the thing that I’ve seen, yes. What people should be aware of, what I’m aware of after kind of reconnecting is just profound gratitude for what the faithfulness of a small group of people. And I’m not putting myself in that category. It’s the people that stayed. It’s Terry and Barbara and Gordon and all the people that came along. And, you know, I could name 100 people probably that I know that have contributed to the health clinic, to all that the other little….Gordon used to call them mini institutions. But you know, that’s really kind of what they were.
And I think of Mary Cosby….when you ask about women, Mary had this love of beauty, and love and just joy about life and graciousness. And that got reflected in Jubilee. There was there was a sense of you don’t just need to paint the building and paint the apartments. Let the people talk to you about what colors they love.
And I’ll never forget Janet Cowell, who is a very high-level person at CBS in DC, left her job and was our person in charge of volunteers for a time. She’d go around with a little cart that looked like you had in a hospital hallway, a little stainless-steel cart with paint collected from Manning Dyers paint store. He was another one in the church who just gave us paint. And you could talk to somebody who’d never been asked what their favorite color was. And if it was blue, they got a blue wall, and they got the shade of blue they wanted. And to be given options and choice and respect and something that spoke to the heart, not just covered, you know, not just kept you out of the cold, but spoke to your heart, the place that was really home and really a sanctuary. That is what took hundreds of people. And a lot of it was a lot of women who gave their all….everything they had to make this happen.
Liz Wainger: Well, thank you. I think we’ve covered everything, and I really appreciate hearing this. As someone who’s been on the board for a long time, some of these stories that you told me I had never heard, so it’s just really exciting to hear about that. And thank you for making the time.
Carolyn Banker Cresswell: Well, thank you for asking about it, because it was it’s just kind of a joy to know who you are and what you’re doing now. That’s what’s exciting to me.