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Dallas Williams, the Bad Man of Swampoodle
On January 31, 1958, the Evening Star started calling Dallas O. Williams “the Bad Man of Swampoodle.” The nickname stuck through five trials, three vacated convictions, and a 1961 double murder that exposed the broken machinery of DC’s insanity defense.
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The 1857 Election Day Riot, When Marines Fired on a DC Mob
In 1857 the commandant of the Marine Corps faced down a rioters’ cannon at a DC polling place, armed only with a cotton umbrella.
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O. Roy Chalk and the Last Days of D.C. Transit
Just after 2 a.m. on January 14, 1973, WMATA condemned D.C. Transit and its suburban sister company out of existence. The owner was a New York lawyer named O. Roy Chalk, and he had run Washington’s bus system for sixteen and a half years.
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Swampoodle: The Lost Irish Neighborhood Union Station Erased
A rough, all-Irish neighborhood called Swampoodle once stood where Union Station is now. The railroad cleared it, and DC forgot.
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The 1963 Report Where DC Begged Washington to Pave Over the City
In April 1963, DC's three appointed commissioners begged the federal government to build every freeway on the map: the Three Sisters Bridge, the Inner Loop, the East Leg, the North-Central. Almost none of it survived the…
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Crystal Heights: DC’s Lost Glass City
Frank Lloyd Wright drew Washington a glass city of twenty-one towers on a Connecticut Avenue hill. The height limit refused to let it rise.
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Engine Company No. 4: DC’s First All-Black Firehouse
Gordon Parks photographed Engine Company No. 4 in 1943: men trusted to run into a fire, and made to eat off separate plates.
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