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The General Scott Apartments: A 1940 Deco Landmark on Scott Circle
Robert O. Schultz’s 1940 General Scott Apartments at 1 Scott Circle NW, the mansions it replaced, the WPA underpass beneath, and the 1982 tenant buyout that saved it.
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The Skyline Plaza Collapse: 14 Workers Killed at Bailey’s Crossroads, 1973
It is 2:18 p.m. on Friday, March 2, 1973. The top floors of a 26-story apartment tower under construction at Bailey’s Crossroads are about to fall floor by floor. Fourteen of the men working there will not go home.
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The Metro Stations Washington Almost Built: The 1967 Fight Over the “Coal Mine” Under Your Feet
Everyone knows Metro’s concrete vaults. Almost nobody knows the Commission of Fine Arts called Harry Weese’s rejected station designs “a refined coal mine shaft.”
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Carter Barron Amphitheater: The Golden Age of Concerts in Rock Creek Park
For a generation, a 4,200-seat bowl on a Rock Creek Park hillside was the summer stage of Washington. Nat King Cole sang there. So did Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Danny Kaye, Stevie Wonder. Silent since 2017, the Carter Barron Amphitheater is coming back.
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Stetson’s on U Street Was Once a Speakeasy Raided Five Times
Long before Stetson's Famous Bar & Grill filled 1610 U Street NW with punk shows and cheap beer, the same storefront was a Prohibition speakeasy. Federal agents raided it five times between 1921 and 1924. Then…
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The Reform School for Girls That Stood Where Sibley Hospital Is Now
For sixty years a reform school for girls stood on the Palisades hill where Sibley Hospital is today. The troubled history of the National Training School for Girls, 1893 to 1953.
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Nathans Georgetown: 40 Years at 3150 M Street, and What’s There Now
A bookie named Nathan Detroit opened it in 1969, Howard Joynt ran it for 28 years, Carol Joynt closed it on July 12, 2009. Now a Capital One Cafe occupies the southeast corner of Wisconsin and…
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