Washington in the 1970s was a city reinventing itself. Home rule arrived in 1973, giving DC its first elected mayor. Metro opened in 1976, remaking how the region moved. Watergate consumed the political establishment for two years. And neighborhoods that had been devastated by the 1968 riots slowly started to find their footing again.
In 1971, President Nixon granted Sammy Davis Jr. membership to the National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity. An odd couple united by their beliefs in economic opportunity, the photo captures a poignant moment in history.
A photograph of President Gerald Ford taken on August 10th, 1974, the day after Nixon resigned. Ford’s expression captures the weight of the moment.
The Dunbar Hotel at the corner of 15th and U Streets NW was Washington’s premier Black-owned hotel from 1945 to 1974, where Duke Ellington stayed when he came home to play. Before that it was the Portner Flats, a brewer’s luxury apartment house built in 1902.
Washington was much seedier decades ago with all forms of adult entertainment available.
This 1976 photograph shows the Willard Hotel looking northwest across 14th Street, taken during the years the hotel sat vacant before its 73 million dollar renovation brought it back in 1986.
This article takes a look at the 1975 handover of power at the White House, when Dick Cheney replaced Donald Rumsfeld as President Ford’s Chief of Staff. Read to find out more about the transition and the men behind it!
Vintage photos from Metro’s own archives document the decade-long construction of the Washington subway system before it opened in 1976.
Friendship was the McLean estate where Evalyn Walsh McLean kept the Hope Diamond. In 1942 it became apartments for 3,500 war workers.
Brookland is now an up-and-coming neighborhood in Washington DC, but it wasn’t always this way. In 1977, the Washington Post printed an article about how Metro was about to arrive. Read on to learn more about the past and present of this DC neighborhood.
