A generation ago, homeowners on the Hill thought nothing of painting the façades of their brick row houses — and colors there were many, ranging from purple through sea green to pink and dark red.

As inexorable as women’s fashion, the style has changed, with homeowners now desperate to get their row houses back to “historic” brick. The style requires, however, a pocketbook deep enough to afford the $20,000-$25,000 that leading firms charge for a complete brick look: stripping old paint, repointing mortar and repainting trim.

“Everyone wants it because it adds value, it is historic and once you have done it there is no more painting,” says Harrison Amaya of Bricklands Ltd., a Clarksville, Md., firm that has been booked for months with work returning painted brick town houses to their original look.

The process is quite difficult and laborious, Amaya explained. Many houses have multiple coats of paint. Neighbor buildings must be protected. Harsh chemicals can’t be used because of D.C. regulations. His firm literally encloses the entire front of a house in blue plastic, erects a scaffold system and tapes off all windows and openings before beginning work.

Paint is removed by a peeling chemical compound, which is laid on and then stripped off in sheets. Heavier coatings must be soaked with emulsifying chemicals sprayed on inside the steamy protective tarps.

Then comes repointing and repainting of trim, necessary for the just-done look that customers covet.

Brick has come back into fashion not only in the older buildings but also in the new. Bryan Square, Lovejoy Lofts, Lennox Lofts, Pierce School, as well as other old-look buildings of the 2000-2005 building boom rush resolutely to red brick as their route to integration with the neighborhood.

The brick fashion may be a backhanded compliment to one of Washington’s greatest minor architects, Adolph Cluss, whom most know is responsible for the design of Eastern Market, the Hill’s most famous brick pile. It was Cluss who championed dark red brick for public buildings, rebelling against the desire for pale stone and citing brick’s “value and dignity.”

It may not be coincidence that a major revival of interest in Cluss’s work is under way, starting with an international centennial of his birth July 23. He will be feted here and at Heilbrunn, Germany, his birthplace. Well-known Hill artist Michael Berman is gathering a collection of paintings and drawings of the Market, an Overbeck lecture by Dr. Joseph Browne of the Goethe Institut is set for Sept. 13, a Cluss exhibition at Sumner School (17th and M streets N.W.) on Sept. 15, a Cluss book launch and even a wine from ancestral Heilbrunn vineyards will be included.

Like the work of many prolific artists who found expression in a style they could repeat, Cluss’s work has been torn down relentlessly. The two major buildings still proclaiming his talent (besides the magnificent Eastern Market) are the Franklin School at 13th and K streets N.W. and the Arts and Industries Building on the south side of the Mall at 900 Jefferson Drive S.W.

A new gentry, with old quarrels

Accelerating change has come to the section of Capitol Hill known as Near Northeast.

Ten years ago, its small, tight row houses were the logical starter homes for up-and-coming Hill rats. Now it is under siege by economic engines on all sides: Securities and Exchange Commission lawyers have moved into the giant Station Place building on Second Street. Developer Jim Abdo is building more than 300 new upscale apartments and condos at the former National Children’s Museum. H Street N.E. is rapidly turning into a shopping, arts and entertainment corridor.

The community has been energized by an incoming group of young, affluent people, many of them white, while older black families have been threatened by higher rents or have sold out at prices unimaginable 10 years ago.

Friction between the new and old of Near Northeast has coalesced around a single very public point — a long-standing block party on Father’s Day at Sherwood Recreation Center, 641 G St. N.E. It was over this issue that one of the backers of this often-raucous event, Jordan Washington, made the claim that “New Washington” does not understand (or much approve of) “Old Washington.” The clear subtext was a clash between affluent young white homeowners and longtime black residents.

Though the event occurred without serious incident, much has been made over the confrontation between activist Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Joe Fengler (who wants the event to be limited, if not denied a public-space permit) and Washington, who has loudly defended the event as a celebration of black neighborhood culture. Exacerbating the friction is the issue of “leash free” parks in the neighborhood, something backed by “New Washington” but not by “Old Washington.”

Now that lines have been drawn and sides taken, it will only be a matter of time before another issue rises. At stake: Which culture owns the streets of Near Northeast?

Lobby on: The rich get richer

Lovejoy Park (that is to be) is now a distinctly unlovely jumble of cracked asphalt, weeds and urban debris. Located at 12th and E streets N.E., it’s typical of many of the city’s “parks” run by the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation — a place with a distinct abandoned look.

But recently completed Lovejoy Lofts, a complete adaptive reuse of a surplus D.C. school building by Atlanta’s Winter Properties, has turned a handsome neo-gothic red and tan brick school into a prestige address where the top-priced “loft residence” went for over $800.000, according to The Washington Post.

Therefore it may not be coincidence that Lovejoy Park (formerly the playground of the school) is being heralded as a great boon to the community and a worthwhile expenditure of close to $1 million in taxpayer money. The main beneficiaries, of course, will be the owners of Lovejoy Lofts; the park wraps 90 degrees around their building, replacing a squalid alley and bare playground with trees and shrubs, seating, lighting, paths, garden plots and a boutique playground.

The money comes out of an “erosion and lighting” fund in the Department of Parks and Recreation budget, though erosion is hardly a problem there. The park plan will become reality next April. It is plain proof that lobbying works. Anne Montgomery, a local resident, plus the ad hoc Friends of Lovejoy Park waged a six-year campaign pushing the city toward the park project, raised $30,000 to inform local residents of the park plan and ensure that the park would not be abandoned by the city as soon as it is built — as so many are.

Bully for them. But would this very expensive park in Northeast Hill drug-land have been built except for the very expensive lofts and their very rich and assiduous owners? It’s doubtful. But if this is the price of gentrification, lobby on. It may prove catching.

METRO

• Only aquatic: The Hill boasts the best and only public aquatic garden in the metro area, and it’s a beauty — Kenilworth Aquatic Garden at Douglas Street N.E. Don’t miss the Waterlily Festival on July 16, and don’t miss the fantastic story of the wounded Civil War veteran who created this magic palace of linked pools. It’s well-marked by signs off Kenilworth Avenue N.E. ...

• Why is every tourist always asking, “Show me the way to Georgetown?” But this month, there’s actually a reason to go there: “Georgetown Homes of the Famous and Infamous,” led by author/historian (and a hell of a speaker) Anthony Pitch, will kick off from the Georgetown Library July 24 at 11 a.m. …

• The Capitol Hill BID (Business Improvement District) has a new motto and its telling the world via vertically oriented light-pole banners proclaiming “it’s on the hill” and parading categories such as shopping, dining and history. Jim Doussard of HOK Design did the art, winning over rivals for the 115 banners soon to be seen. ...

• That menace at the D.C. permits office, Toye Bello, has gone. Bello, at the center of the fight over Boys and Girls Town as zoning administrator, made rulings that led to fiasco: the project’s first being approved and part-built, then abandoned and torn down. Promoted to the $103,000-per-annum job of city zoning administrator last October, he mysteriously departed this summer. ...

• National Park Service concessions specialist Steve LeBel says the 73 empty boat slips at the Anacostia Marina at 1900 M St. S.E. will be available “this month,” after a nearly five-year closure. The concessionaire, Guest Services Inc., will make repairs to the abandoned marina, part of which is still cordoned off because of “environmental dangers.” ...

• A fervent New York Times editorial (July 5) has labeled the little-noticed CSX rail bridge at 2nd and E streets S.W. as “Washington’s deadliest bridge” in the event of a terror attack. It takes note of the fight here over shipping deadly chemicals, including chlorine gas, along rails close to the Capitol, where, the paper thunders, “every member of Congress” is endangered, as are “250,000 other federal employees.” But the Times fails to note that there are no guards on rail bridges or tunnels. Perhaps for D.C. that’s too easy a solution.