Hurst Hall at American University in 1918

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.

Check out this 1887 map of a much smaller Rockville. This was way back when Grover Cleveland was the U.S. President, and just about two

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 the roof, with a spectacular view of the Washington Monument and the President's house.

What did Courthouse in Arlington, Virginia look like in the early 1990s?

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the women’s suffrage parade in Washington. Give the historical importance of that, and the fact that today is

Our apartment directory listings from 1911 and 1914 were immensely popular, so we dug up another one to share with GoDCers. Here’s one from March

Abraham Lincoln was sworn in for his second term as president and delivered his second inaugural address on March 4, 1865. There are a couple

This is a serious case of right place, right time. The Class of ’75 at Holton-Arms had a notable classmate in Susan Ford, the daughter of President

Arthur G. Barkley was an unemployed bread truck driver from Phoenix hijacked a Washington-bound TWA jet, demanding $100 million in ransom. He was distraught from

This is a super awkward situation. How many guys are in this car? This is a photograph of Vice President John Nance Garner, one of

Everyone else is going to be covering the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination and there will be no shortage of stories about it. Here at

This is a guest post by John (from The Lion of Anacostia), cross-posted here. Frederick Douglass was a baseball man. His son, Charles, organized and played on Washington, DC-based colored teams