In the Paper

The most practical remedy is to establish government dispensaries for limited sales to good citizens who are not drunkards. This will eventually be done.

This address to Americans by the Abbé Raynal was and is incredibly relevant and important to our country. Maybe even more so today.

It’s really hard to believe, but the year 2020 is nearly upon us. I suspect the denizens of Washington, D.C. on December 31st, 1919 felt the same way about 1920 approaching. It’s entirely likely that they were desperately dreading the...

We love old predictions of the future like this. This was an article from The Washington Post printed on December 18th, 1953, the day after the 50th anniversary of their first flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. (They also flew...

Let’s try something new. We browsed the papers from Saturday February 22nd, 1919 to come up with some fun and interesting things to share with you. This is what we came across in The Evening Star on that date. Origin of Keeping...

Whitehurst Freeway was envisioned I'm the 1940s to bypass Georgetown traffic. Ultimately opened in 1949, it was named for Captain Herbert C. Whitehurst.

Check out this great old advertisement from The Evening Star back in 1904. It shows a number of great properties for sale in then-new Columbia Heights, which was booming with development. Source: Library of Congress

Did you know that selling balloons on the streets of D.C. was made illegal back in 1934? There was quite a booming industry of balloon vendors trolling the streets, getting parents to buy balloon for eager young children. Below is...

This is a great old article that we dug up in The Washington Post from May 14th, 1900. We see this same ignorance or protectionist tendencies to this day. Look at taxis versus Uber and Lyft, or hotels versus AirBnB. We...

No more foreign cars! They’re an abomination and a detriment to our economy … and society at large. Or so said many nearly 110 years ago. No, this wasn’t Trump’s America, it was the land of Roosevelt and Taft. Below...

This great newspaper clipping is from The Washington Times on January 29th, 1922. Source : Library of Congress

Pre-dating Uber drivers by about 160 years, the hackmen of Washington used to provide transportation to locals and visitors alike. Hackmen used to rule the streets of the city, taking people wherever they wanted to go. (A hackman was one...

What do you think? Is Washington the most beautiful city in the world? I have to believe that I’m biased, but I do think it is certainly one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Okay, there’s Paris, Vienna,...

This print is still appropriate today … sadly. We found this in the awesome collection provided by the DC Public Library. If you haven’t checked it out, it’s amazing, and curated by an old GoDC fan, Jerry. The print was...

This is such a cool cutaway drawing of the Evening Star Building at 11th and Pennsylvania Ave. NW. We posted a great photo of it some time ago, but this was something we had to share after GoDCer Ellen sent...

Here is the front page of the Alexandria Gazette, exactly 110 years ago today, January 2nd, 1904. Source: Library of Congress

One hundred years ago today, these two images were the front pages of The Washington Times and The Washington Herald, respectively. Merry Christmas GoDCers! Have a great, relaxing time around the tree with your families. Source: Library of Congress Source: Library...

Everyone else is going to be covering the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination and there will be no shortage of stories about it. Here at Ghosts of DC, we want to shed some light on the other things that happened...

Interesting, and yet things never change. I don’t know if that makes you feel better or worse … but, here’s an article written in The Washington Post, exactly 100 years ago today. This article speaks to the same frustrations many express...

The debate over building height is certainly not a new one for Washington. It seems to be heating up again and we thought it would be interesting to dig up previous arguments from the archives of The Washington Post. Source: Library...

It’s just shocking to see the blatant racism of 100 years ago. Here’s a comic strip, printed in The Sunday Star on January 5th, 1908. The strip is called Sambo and His Funny Noises.

Here’s a cool page from the newspaper in 1915. This was printed in The Washington Times on October 19th, of that year.

Exactly one hundred years ago today, this was in the Washington Herald.

Here’s a fascinating article from the Washington Times, printed on April 22nd, 1916. For those of you unfamiliar with The Birth of a Nation, it’s a crazy racist film which was banned in a number of American cities, sparked large...

This is the front page of the Washington Times from Tuesday evening, July 28th, 1914, the day Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Source: Library of Congress

This is a page from the Washington Herald, published on February 5th, 1922. It shows a number of D.C. hardware stores selling Buffalo Paints.

Here’s an interesting page from the Washington Times on April 10th, 1915. It shows a series of photos from popular driving spots in and around Washington.

Here’s the Thursday edition of “In the Paper” for May 17th, 1912.

Also of interest in this edition is Roosevelt being sure of his nomination.

Taft and Roosevelt were battling it out for the Presidency in 1912. Here’s the front page of the Washington Times for May 15th, 101 years ago today.