It’s a Damn Shame: The Demolition of D.C. from the 1950s to the 1980s

Published August 25, 2014

It's a sad fact that much of D.C. was demolished from the 1950s through the 1980s. Read the full story to learn more about this damn shame and the major influence of Gilded Age capitalist Frank Munsey.

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It’s a sad fact that much of D.C. was demolished from the 1950s through the 1980s. It’s a damn shame, but everything was in the name of progress.

(right) The Munsey Building, built in 1905 and demolished in 1980; (left) the Washington Post Building (also demolished) – c. 1920

Source: Flickr user Smithsonian

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Munsey Building prepped for demolition (1980)

Source: Streets of Washington

Our role model, John DeFerrari wrote an incredible post on the building’s history, and you need to head over there to check it out.

Frank Munsey was a Gilded Age capitalist—robber baron, if you will—who had a major influence on the publishing business at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is credited with perfecting printing processes that could use extremely low-quality “pulp” paper to produce periodicals that were both dirt-cheap and filled with enough racy fare to be widely popular. Thus was born the era of pulp fiction. Munsey went on to buy, sell, and merge many newspapers throughout the country, often for his own profit but at the expense of the publication’s very existence.

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Head over to his Streets of Washington blog to read the full story. And, if you haven’t seen his site before, you’re in for a treat. John’s blog and books have served as a huge inspiration for this site.