Ghosts of DC The lost and untold history of Washington, D.C.

One link for you this morning, because it’s a really cool one. Check this out, and happy Friday! Ruins of coal: This is a fascinating piece in DCist on the Huber Coal Breaker. Great photos. [DCist]

If you’ve lived in D.C. for a while, you’ll remember the good old days when the W Hotel was actually Hotel Washington, the historic and storied hotel near the White House. I remember having quite a few pleasant lunches on …

This might be one of the coolest old photos we have discovered. It shows a squadron of bombers flying over Washington in 1931. The main road in the picture is Pennsylvania Ave. heading toward the White House. Click on the …

We are grateful for the picture below, since so many of the amazing images on this site come via the Library of Congress! In December 1941, as a precautionary measure, about 5,000 boxes of materials from the Library of Congress …

This is cool. I’ve had a few questions over the years about Griffith Stadium, and specifically, where it stood. We dug up a map from 1921 and it gives a great perspective on the ballpark and surrounding neighborhood. Source: Library …

What an incredible approach and entrance to Key Bridge. This was a proposed design for the approach and massive entry to Key Bridge from 1928. This is a fascinating piece of architecture that was never built. I’m assuming this is …

It’s. Too. Cooooold. I hope you are letting your faucet run just enough to prevent your pipes from freezing. The GoDC household had frozen pipes during Polar Vortex I and it was an expensive lesson learned. Your morning links, brought …

Source: Streets of Washington When the Chevy Chase Ice Palace and Sports Center opened on Nov. 23, 1938, it became an instant sensation. On opening day more than 2,200 people hit the indoor skating rink, bringing in $4,000 in profits …

This is one of the most incredible images we have found on the Internet. It shows the Inauguration of President Obama in 2009. I don’t know about you, but I was there, and I don’t think I’ve ever been colder …

That snowstorm wasn’t as bad as we thought. I was really hoping for a mini-Snowpocalypse. You? Here are your morning links GoDCers! Animals love snow: You have to check out these photos of animals playing in the snow at the …

Here are two great old photos from 1913, showing different angles of a traffic stop. The car is a Haynes roadster, which cost about $4,000 at the time. That’s about $95,000 today, or the cost of a sweet new Tesla. …

This is a video of the dedication ceremony for Dulles Airport in 1962. It was the first airport built exclusively for jets, and 27 miles outside of D.C., was also a really long drive from the city center. We’ve written …

This is something that would bring everything to halt on Key Bridge, and probably all of Rosslyn and Georgetown. Twitter would be blowing up and there would be tons of Instagram photos. Below is an amusing article that I dug …

Are you bracing yourself? You better, because this is going to be epic! Okay, probably not that bad, but at least the forecast is for real snow. Not the wimpy dustings we’ve had in the past. On with the show …

There’s certainly been no shortage of colorful characters on the Washington sports scene. From Sonny Jurgensen to John Riggins to Curtis Portis on the Redskins and from Walter Johnson to Bucky Harris to Bryce Harper on the Nationals, DC sportswriters have …

Sweet concert! This is an ad in The Washington Post on February 11th, 1979 for a Kenny Rogers concert. Almost 35 years ago, this was a Sunday, and while Washingtonians were heading to Landover for the concert, the Shah in Iran …

GoDCer Chris graciously offered to share this cool aerial photo of Washington, taken sometime in the 1940s. Compare it to the Google Map below. [googlemaps https://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=38.866444,-77.058449&spn=0.131118,0.216122&t=k&z=13&output=embed]

What a horrible story. We found this printed in The Washington Post on April 6th, 1907. Fire Chief Belt yesterday ordered a thorough investigation of the stabbing with a pitchfork of a fire department horse at No. 8 engine house on the …

Here are your morning GoDC links … Today is the 83rd birthday of our nation’s first African-American Governor, Doug Wilder, who served from 1990 to 1994. He was also mayor of Richmond from 2005 to 2009. Twenty years ago, today, …

Hello GoDCers! Thursday is coming to a close, and tomorrow is Friday. So that’s great news. To celebrate, we’re sharing a great afternoon photo with you. This is a great photo that we dug up on Flickr. The photo was taken …

Wow, what else can I say about this one. Thanks to the abundance of random stuff on Reddit, I stumbled across this the other day. How amazing is it? This almost looks like it was taken yesterday with these vivid …

Here’s a cool old photo from Christmas 1919. It appears to be a makeshift post office to handle overflow mail during the holiday season.

We’ve heard from quite a few of you that Ghosts of DC is a regular morning read. And, given that we come across so much great content, we’re going to compile a brief post on occasion to share these links …

We haven’t done a good “Three Things …” post in a while, so here’s one listing three old saloons in Washington. We dug through the old newspaper archives and came across a classified listing of businesses in The Washington Post from …

Check out this cool beer ad from 1900. Golden Hop … yum.

This is a powerful Civil War-era photograph. It shows Price, Birch & Co., which was a slave dealing business. Source: Shorpy

Check this out. It’s a proposed design for a second mall, east of the Capitol Building. Obviously, this was never built, but imagine how different things would be. The design below was done as part of the Beaux-Arts Institute of …

Sorry, this was supposed to auto-publish yesterday afternoon, but didn’t. Here’s the solution to Donovan’s Baseball House Puzzle, printed in The Washington Post on October 7th, 1894. Did any of you get this? Below is the article. Last Monday evening Mr. J. …

This is a map of Metro done with braille. I’m not sure what the date it on this, but since the Red Line stops at Silver Spring (why is it named Silver Spring?), it’s some time before 1990, when Forest …

Here’s a terrific puzzle for you to solve, from our last post about the Baseball House and William Donovan. Below are the directions printed in The Washington Post back in 1894. We’ll be posting the answer at the end of the …