On November 17th, 1927 a large tornado ripped through the area, destroying over 200 homes in D.C. and 300 structures in Alexandria. Up to 50 people were injured, but we only found one reported death, which was the result of a lightning strike. Damages were estimated at $1 million.
Below is an article that we found in The New York Times, detailing the damages.
A tornado hit the Naval Air Station and the Washington Navy Yard immediately after 2:30 o’clock, wrecking hangars and planes at the former, damaging twenty buildings, including the commandant’s house, a historic building occupied for more than a century, and causing a loss of $300,000 to both naval plants.
The weather instruments in the observatory at the Anacostia Air Station recorded a gale of ninety-two miles an hour during the height of the storm and a drop of 0.46 in the barometer almost instantaneously at 2:31 o’clock, when the fury of the tornado struck.
The tornado appears to have been wholly local, having started in the Potomac River with a waterspout, just below Alexandria. It swept over the latter, five miles south of Washington, a place rich in associations of George Washington; headed across the river to the Naval Air Station, passed directly over the Navy Yard, swept a narrow path to Fifteenth and East Capitol Streets, crossing Benning Road near Eighteenth Street, and did some damage at Hyattsville and Bladensburg, Maryland towns, five miles northeast of the capital.
Source: Library of Congress
Source: Library of Congress
Here are those same row houses today on Google Street View.
Source: Library of Congress
This one is the scariest of all the images, showing a large building completely destroyed by the tornado.
Source: Library of Congress
Note that the bottom two photos are from a different storm–the tornado of July 30, 1913.
My cousins’ house is pictured in the A Street photo
I know I have seen this tornado addressed somewhere before and I remember because it was so close to the house I live in currently. I can’t find what I remember but I did find:
http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/local-news/four-photos-from-the-worst-tornado-that-ever-hit-dc.php
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/055/mwr-055-05-0227.pdf
A-ha. Now I remember. You did a post on the 1913 storm and BF Saul Building – and I replied with a link to the following.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/07/30/possible-tornado-struck-d-c-and-the-white-house-100-years-ago-photos/
Of course it made it to Shorpy. http://www.shorpy.com/node/7165
My mother and aunt lived with their parents, Langhorn & Maud DeMent Shearer on N Payne St when the 1927 tornado struck. The Shearers owned a store; they lived above it. They lost everything in the tornado. My mother was about six years old and said she remembered walking down the street and the fronts being torn off of the homes. It reminded her of dollhouses, where one could look directly into the interior. All of Langhorn’s papers were lost – his debtors never re-paid him. They had no insurance and were basically bankrupt. The family never recovered financially during the depression. They moved to a one bedroom apartment in Takoma Park, MD.