Personal stories about people who lived in Washington, D.C. before we did.
10-Year-Old Girl Enters Central High School
This is an interesting article that we came across, published in the Washington Post on February 10th, 1924. A 10-year-old student in high school! She is Sylvia Altman, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. J. Altman, 612 Otis place northwest. The...
Complete Biography of Officer Sprinkle
You all have been waiting a long, long time for this. So have we. Thanks to one of our GoDC fans, we have in our possession, the biography of Officer Sprinkle from the 1908 Metropolitan Police Department’s official history book....
Who Was Marjorie Morris Sinclair?
I love when this stuff happens. GoDCer Steve did a little Googling and came up with this amazing piece of Internet gold. Remember Marjorie Morris? The intrepid young Washingtonian, noted for her adventures in Chevy Chase? We wrote some more about her...
Miriam Grew Up to be a ‘Million Dollar’ Realtor
Photos like this really captivate us. This is Miriam Auerbach at the age of 12 in 1924. Her father was Joseph Auerbach, clothing store merchant from Germany, who had arrived in the U.S. in 1906. He married her mother Edna,...
More on Marjorie Morris, the “Whoopee Party” Girl
I was trying to dig up a photo, or at least some more information on what happened to Marjorie. I was able to find two documents related to her on Ancestry.com. The first one I found was a record of...
The Crazy Family Problems of Real Estate Man William Matteson
Initially, this was going to be part of the previous post about Cathedral Highlands, but it was too good. This deserves it’s own post. Trust me when I say this is crazy. We learned from the advertisement in the previous...
Move to Cathedral Highlands: An Unobstructed View of the Entire Surrounding Country
It’s been a little while since we’ve done a “Reader’s Choice” post, so this one is for GoDCer Samantha, who tweeted the request to do something on Cathedral Heights. I also haven’t really done anything about that area, so this works...
100 Years Ago Today: Major Archibald Butt, D.C. Resident, Boards Titanic for Transatlantic Crossing
This post went up at exactly 8 a.m. this morning local time, which is twelve noon Greenwich Mean Time. Exactly 100 years ago at this very moment, on April 12th, 1912, the Titanic set off from Southampton, England, on her tragic maiden...
Pauline Floyd: Youngest Woman to Practice Before the Supreme Court
Pauline Floyd was a pioneer and an excellent role model for women pursing a career in law. Not only did she enter the legal field at a time when female attorneys were rare, she was one of the youngest to...
Robert H. Muir: Manager of The Cairo
There were a couple of requests a short while back to do a post on The Cairo, the most famous residential building in the city. You can Google it or check it out on Wikipedia, so no need to do...