Vintage photos of Washington, DC. Ordinary people on stoops, sidewalks, and streetcars. Faces and corners of a city most of us would no longer recognize.
In the 1950s, the top entertainers in the country performed on 14th Street NW. By the early 1980s, it was known as Washington’s “combat zone,” lined with topless bars and adult bookstores. By 1986, it was rubble. What happened in between reveals how gentrification works when moral crusades and economic interests perfectly align.
A four-year-old cut the ribbon on the Whitehurst Freeway on October 8, 1949. It was Washington’s first elevated highway.
The stone arches near the Kennedy Center are the Godey Lime Kilns, Washington’s last 19th-century industrial ruin.
Brickskeller was an iconic DC institution that many locals remember fondly. Learn about its slow demise and the beer renaissance that arrived in DC, as well as a look back at the 1957 advertisement for its opening.
When Cook & Stoddard opened its Cadillac showroom at 1138 Connecticut Avenue NW in 1912, the Washington Post admired its granite front. By 1914, crowds packed the salesroom to see the new eight-cylinder model.
The Silver Sightseer streetcar gave cool, narrated tours of Washington D.C.’s famous landmarks in the late 1950s. Read about this one-of-a-kind, air-conditioned trolley that was specially decorated before it tragically burned down years later when the streetcar system closed.
Step back in time with this captivating 1919 photo of Leoffler’s Liberty Lunch stand in Washington, D.C., where just 20 cents could buy government workers a box lunch filled with surprises. Discover the story of Severine G. Leoffler’s entrepreneurial spirit in the early days of street food.
In June 1966, the Pagans and Avengers shot it out in broad daylight at the Lee Harrison Shopping Center in Arlington. Eleven bikers went to prison.
The Whitelaw Hotel opened on 13th Street NW in 1919 as Washington’s first luxury hotel for Black patrons. Duke Ellington stayed there.
