GoDC is 450 posts in now and we’re going to take this next week off to recharge. Hopefully you won’t miss us too much. We will get out an email and fire out a few tweets here and there to share some good old posts. Want to make sure you get that email? Sign up here. Before we go silent ... Read More »
This is a great moment in time captured on film. It’s a group of young men at the Citizens’ Military Training Camp in Maryland, which was a camp to teach young men how to be civilian and citizen soldiers. I dug up a great article in the Washington Post from 1971. The author, James W. Mitchell, had spent summers at ... Read More »
Take a look at this photo from Shorpy. The woman in the car is Mary McConnell Borah. The wife of Idaho senator, William Borah, she was 42 years old at the time of this photo. Mary and William were married in 1895. Mrs. Borah lived a long life, until she died at the age of 105 (!) in 1976 — ... Read More »
This is a guest post by Rick. He also wrote a good one on the alley dwellings in Foggy Bottom. The District’s baseball fans are beginning to believe that the 2012 Nationals may actually make it into post-season play and begin what some think will be a long series of annual Fall celebrations, including, just maybe, the second World Series ... Read More »
Check out this photo from around 1930. What is up with the ridiculous striped uniforms? This is a shot of a lacrosse game being held at Central High School (now Cardozo). The game was between Oxford-Cambridge and St. John’s College of Annapolis on April 1st, 1930. The Washington Post wrote bout the British star athletes touring the east coast, making their ... Read More »
I received the following email the other day from a GoDCers up near AU Park and Spring Valley. Hello, I love your website. Thank you for researching DC history! I grew up in AU Park — my parents moved into their house the day President Kennedy was shot. The house 2 doors down from my parents’ house was recenly featured ... Read More »
I was trying to dig up a photo, or at least some more information on what happened to Marjorie. I was able to find two documents related to her on Ancestry.com. The first one I found was a record of her crossing the Pacific as a passenger on the U.S.S. U.S.A.T. “Thomas”, which departed Manila on September 22nd, 1926 and ... Read More »
Here’s a great shot of Dupont Circle. You can clearly make out the Patterson House (now the Washington Club) in the background. What an amazing shot frozen in time. Check it out below. It’s Google Street View from approximately the same spot. Related articles Apartment Building Collapses in Dupont Circle (ghostsofdc.org) Hawaiian ex-Queen Liliʻuokalani Comes to Washington (ghostsofdc.org) Car Flattened Near ... Read More »
This article in the Afro-American caught my eye: “$41,000 Nixon Home Covered by Racial Covenant.” This was published on October 4th, 1952 and was referring to his recently purchased home at 4801 Tilden St. NW (4 bedroom home built in 1951 and $1 million according to Zillow). Already chin deep in hot water because of his secret acceptance of an ... Read More »
Here’s a good find from the National Archives. It’s a very well dressed couple riding an odd-looking bicycle (or quad-cycle), just south of the White House. Related articles Email From a GoDCer: Alexander Graham Bell’s Georgetown Home (ghostsofdc.org) Georgetown Canal Boatmen Brawl; Brutal Fight Ends in Murder (ghostsofdc.org) From a GoDCer: A Family Connection to a Tragic Suicide (ghostsofdc.org) Read More »
That football bet story, uncovered in the last post, about Marjorie Morris is too good not to look into, and sure enough, there’s an article about it titled “Hilltop Football Victory Wins Bride for Student.” Below is the Washington Post article from November 21st, 1928. When Georgetown’s football team downed the University of West Virginia Saturday, it rang the wedding ... Read More »
Ah, kids will be kids. Even your grandparents and great-grandparents were kids once, and they too got themselves into trouble. So don’t feel so bad about what you did in high school or college. The evidence is in this article from the Washington Post on July 13th, 1929. Throwing a party while your parents are out of town is a ... Read More »
Yes … literally, not figuratively. This is an amusing article by Mike Causey of the Washington Post, published October 7th, 1968. Despite some talk about cleaning up the mess in Washington, none of the candidates has yet promised to throw the rats out of the State Department. The Foggy Bottom diplomacy factory has its share of rats who seem to ... Read More »
I took a tour of the Dupont Underground yesterday, and I have to say, it’s amazing. It’s like to step back into 1955. If you haven’t done it, you really should. You may or may not know this, but the road that goes under Dupont Circle (i.e., Connecticut Avenue) wasn’t initially built only for cars. It was proposed and built ... Read More »
This is a guest post by Aaron. He also wrote a really popular post on red metro trains. It must have made a splash. But nobody saw anything. An overturned taxi lay atop the rocky shore of the Potomac. There it was. No driver and perhaps no obvious clues within. But it didn’t take long for police to grab a suspect. It ... Read More »
Ghosts of DC The lost and untold history of Washington