This is an amazing old color photo that I came across on the Library of Congress’ website. It was taken by John Collier in May 1943. The unnamed sailor at left appears to be somewhere between 19 to 24 and is visiting Arlington National Cemetery with his girlfriend. The photo is one of a large collection transferred to the Library ... Read More »
The street names don’t always make sense in Columbia Heights, nor do they truly conform to the grid system of Old City (ie, below Boundary Street – now Florida Avenue). Take a look at the map below. Things don’t look right. Kenesaw Ave. is now Irving St. Whitney Ave. is Park Rd. Howard is Newton and Sheridan is Monroe (Lydecker ... Read More »
After The Dead and The Police, I’m on a little bit of a concert kick and this one is pretty sweet. Janis Joplin played Merriweather back in 1969, three weeks before the defining moment of the decade: Woodstock. That’s pretty cool. The Washington Post wrote a review and the guy that wrote it was Carl Bernstein … yep, as in ... Read More »
I had heard that Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland (aka, The Police) had played in Adams Morgan and wanted to do a little research into that. Unfortunately, they weren’t a huge band when they played here in 1979, so there was very little on their arrival here. After all, they had only been around for a little over two ... Read More »
This one made me laugh. This would never happen today … at least I hope it wouldn’t. It’s a story about Calvin Coolidge’s time here at Vice President under Warren Harding. Coolidge and his family arrived in Washington as the new Vice President and needed to find a suitable home. Unfortunately for the Coolidge clan, Calvin felt the housing prices ... Read More »
I don’t know if you’re a fan of the Dead. I am. Let’s add another concert post on top of Hendrix, the Doors, U2 and Chuck Berry. In their heyday, they passed through down in the fall of 1972 to play a free show at AU in front of about 10,000. It was sponsored by the student government (does this ... Read More »
You can’t walk past the Tivoli Theater in Columbia Heights and not admire it, imagining what the surrounding streets were like in the late 1920s. The arrival of Harry Crandall’s new theater was a big deal for the area and let’s not forget that just a couple of years earlier, his Knickerbocker Theatre was the site of the catastrophic roof ... Read More »
Washington’s estate at Mt. Vernon is one of the best sites to see whether you’re a tourist visiting the area for the first time, or a long-time resident. If you haven’t seen this place during their nighttime candlelit tours (Thanksgiving and Christmas), you must … you’re missing out. Here’s a nice short video from 5min Travel. [gigya src="http://embed.5min.com/517229505/" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" ... Read More »
Good week? Nah, this was a great week. We had some really popular posts that made the rounds on Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere at large. Here were the top three from this Titanic-centric week. 100 Years Ago Today: Major Archibald Butt, D.C. Resident, Boards Titanic for Transatlantic Crossing – Everyone’s talking about the Titanic. This evening marks 100 years since it ... Read More »
Here’s a great photo from Shorpy. This is the inside of Weller’s Pharmacy, located at 755 8th St. SE. Franklin Pierce Weller was a long serving druggist on Capitol Hill, starting in the 1890s, operating his business for several decades. Below is his obituary From the Washington Post on March 28th, 1933. Funeral services for Franklin Pierce Weller, pioneer Washington ... Read More »
Petworth was not always full of hipsters that resemble Officer Sprinkle (J.L. Sprinkle was such a badass, he was a hipster before being a hipster was even invented). At one time it was rural … yes, rural. Two primary country estates made up the bulk of what is the current neighborhood. The first was the estate of Marshall Brown and the ... Read More »
A brief article tells the tale of the last execution by hanging in the District. Copeland was a cop killer and had murdered three policemen in cold blood in May 1918. He shot and killed Officer Conrad and Deputy Sheriff McParlin and then engaged in a shootout near his relatives home in Southwest. There, he mortally wounded Lt. Dunigan. He ... Read More »
We are a great nation and Americans in the 1880s were proud of their rapidly growing and dominant country. But how can you truly be a great nation without a national zoo to show off all the wonderful creatures that roam your lands, as well as those of foreign lands? Not only that, how will you help preserve the species ... Read More »
The new Air Force One, and the first jet in service for the president, set a new record in 1963. The Soviets claimed that the United States did not have any aircraft that could fly non-stop from Washington to Moscow. Not only did the Air Force have such an aircraft, it happened to be the president’s official transport. On May ... Read More »
The opium den post of last week was the first foray into old Chinatown research, but I’ve uncovered a gold mine of fascinating local history. You probably were unaware of this, but in the 1920s, there was a brutal criminal underground layer in Chinatown — if there still is, I’m totally oblivious — and a very detailed Washington Post article ... Read More »
Ghosts of DC The lost and untold history of Washington