Washington in the 1920s was a city in full swing. The decade brought jazz clubs, speakeasies, and a building boom that filled in the last great gaps in the city’s streetscape. Calvin Coolidge’s Washington was prosperous and busy, even as Prohibition tried to shut down the good times. These posts explore the capital’s roaring decade.
Long before Stetson’s Famous Bar & Grill filled 1610 U Street NW with punk shows and cheap beer, the same storefront was a Prohibition speakeasy. Federal agents raided it five times between 1921 and 1924. Then they raided it again in 1930.
Walk into Hotel Lombardy and you feel a hotel from another era. Chinoiserie panels, a bar Oyster once called ‘a British manor in colonial Shanghai,’ and an attendant-operated elevator that hung on until 2011. The Foggy Bottom landmark started as apartments in 1929.
A cast of 1,000 on the Capitol steps, 50,000 at the Monument fireworks, and a plea for DC voting rights. How Washington celebrated America’s 150th birthday in 1926.
Shanklin Hall and Columbia Station made 2325 18th Street NW famous for music. A century ago the same Adams Morgan storefront was the home, store, and headquarters of D.G.S. founder William Hornstein.
The Castle at 10 Post Office Road in Silver Spring is not a 19th-century folly. It is what a midnight furnace fire on April 24, 1922 left of the Forest Glen Trading Company, plus the granite a Pittsburgh oilman and the Seminary president bolted on top.
A reader asked about Georgetown’s Flour Mill at 1000 Potomac Street. The building was the neighborhood’s last working mill, and it began as a cannon expert’s cotton factory. Now its offices are headed for a 135-home conversion.
The Northumberland at 2039 New Hampshire Ave NW is Harry Wardman’s 1910 luxury apartment house and DC’s oldest self-managed co-op. Inside its storied past.
The Maret School began in 1911 in a rented Washington apartment, founded by three immigrant sisters. The story of how it started, and of the school’s first student.
The Big Hunt opened in 1992 inside a 1928 storefront at 1345 Connecticut Avenue NW and closed for good in 2020. Inside Dupont Circle’s three-story dive bar with the safari kitsch, the hidden patio, and the Hell’s Kitchen basement.
