The Original 9:30 Club: F Street’s 1888 Atlantic Building
Inside the 1888 Atlantic Building at 930 F Street: the cast-iron columns Bad Brains leaned against and the eighth floor that founded the National Zoo.
If Walls Could Talk
What happened inside Washington, DC’s buildings. Hotels where deals got cut, rowhouses where scandals played out, embassies that hosted defections and dinners both.
When Was the Pentagon Built? The 16-Month Wartime Sprint
Sixteen months from groundbreaking to dedication. Thirteen thousand workers on round-the-clock shifts. Segregated cafeterias FDR personally overruled.
When a Rolling Stone Got Robbed at Washington Coliseum
In 1966 a teenager from Chevy Chase reached through the window of a Rolling Stones equipment van behind Washington Coliseum and walked off with Brian Jones’s custom electric dulcimer. The recovery involved a letter to the Evening Star, a Bentley from the British Embassy, and a follow-up Beatles caper. The same barrel-vaulted shed had hosted the Beatles’ first American concert two years earlier.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Crystal Heights: DC’s Lost Glass City
Frank Lloyd Wright drew Washington a glass city of twenty-one towers on a Connecticut Avenue hill. The height limit refused to let it rise.
Engine Company No. 4: DC’s First All-Black Firehouse
Gordon Parks photographed Engine Company No. 4 in 1943: men trusted to run into a fire, and made to eat off separate plates.
Glen Echo Park: From Chautauqua to Carousel Sit-In
It started as a one-summer Chautauqua on the Potomac, built by twin brothers who had cashed in on an egg beater patent. By 1933 it was a streetcar amusement park with a Spanish ballroom and a Dentzel carousel. By 1960 that carousel was the flashpoint of a Howard University sit-in.
The Willard Brother Who Built the Ebbitt House
Three Willard brothers ran the Willard Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. The fourth, Caleb, ran a hotel just as big a block away. He just had the misfortune of calling it the Ebbitt House.
Korea’s Logan Circle Legation: Sold for $5, Bought Back
In 1891, King Gojong paid $25,000 for a Victorian townhouse on Iowa Circle to house Joseon’s first mission to the United States. Nineteen years later, after Japan forced the protectorate, the empire sold the building for five dollars. Korea bought it back in 2012 for $3.5 million. The museum opened in 2018.
Martin’s Tavern Georgetown: JFK, Booth 3, and 93 Years
The man whose name is over the door at 1264 Wisconsin Avenue was a Boston Braves shortstop in the 1914 World Series before he opened a Georgetown tavern the year Prohibition ended. Ninety-three years and four generations later, it is still open, still owned by the same family, and still has a brass plaque on the booth where John F. Kennedy proposed to Jacqueline Bouvier.