⭐☆☆☆☆
Posted to: Nextdoor — Old Town Alexandria
Kathleen Curtis was not just a neighbor. She was my architect.
I hired Kathleen Curtis professionally as my architect in Old Town Alexandria. She owned the Kathellen House at the corner of Princess Street and Pitt Street, in Bulfinch Square, and I trusted her with my home, my plans, and my vulnerabilities. As my architect, she had access to details of the property and my long-term vision that very few people ever see.
She was not only my architect. She was also my interior design client. In 2014, she hired me for a $60,000 basement renovation, which she paid in full. We shared Christmas dinners together. This was not a casual acquaintance. It was a professional and personal relationship built over years, grounded in what I believed was mutual trust and respect.
I stood up for her when it mattered most.
When Kathleen Curtis was arrested, I watched it happen. I saw her handcuffed and placed in a police car. In the aftermath, when she needed support, I appeared at her trial as a major witness. I testified on her behalf. The result was clear: she was acquitted, and her accuser was forced to move out of Bulfinch Square. I took real risks to stand by her when she was under pressure.
That is the context in which what followed has to be understood. I had already demonstrated, with my time, my reputation, and my presence in court, that my loyalty to her was not theoretical. It was lived.
When it was my turn to need a witness, she refused.
Later, when attorney Jake Rhoads called Kathleen Curtis to testify on my behalf, she refused. She did not appear. She did not offer a statement. She did not show up in any form. There was no conflict of memory or confusion about events. There was only a deliberate decision not to stand where she had once stood herself.
This was not an intimate misunderstanding or a slow drifting apart of friends. It was a clear, documented moment where someone who had benefited from my loyalty chose, under pressure, to give nothing in return.
This was a calculated decision to move with the wind.
By the time the pressure in Bulfinch Square and Old Town politics shifted toward me, Kathleen Curtis could see which way the wind was blowing. With full knowledge of my plans, my vulnerabilities on the property, and the history we shared, she moved quickly to the side she believed would win. She was not a bystander. She was the first to help bring me down.
As my architect, she had an unusual level of insight into my project and into the structural and legal sensitivities of the property. That is precisely why her decision matters. When someone with that level of access chooses to withhold support at a critical moment, it is not just personal disloyalty; it becomes part of a broader pattern of collusion and quiet enforcement of who is allowed to stay standing in Old Town, and who is not.
In a city where systemic cruelty is often polite and procedural, this is how it looks up close: a professional who benefited from trust and intimacy deciding, when pressure mounts, that their safest move is to step away and let the machinery work on someone else.
My assessment.
This review is not about her technical skills on paper. It is about what she did when faced with a choice between standing with a former client and friend, or aligning herself with the prevailing current in a neighborhood already steeped in hierarchy and quiet punishment. On the facts, laid out above, I cannot recommend Kathleen Curtis as a trustworthy advocate in any setting where courage or loyalty are required.
Five stars for nerve. Zero stars for everything else.
