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.
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.
Three Sisters Islands in the Potomac carry a Native American curse stretching back centuries. They also nearly vanished under a 1970s highway bridge. Here’s both stories.
Everyone calls the CIA Langley. But why? The name traces from a Virginia governor, a Shropshire estate, and exit signs that lied for over a decade.
Take a look back at the history of The Dresden at 2126 Connecticut Ave. NW, from its 1975 condominium advertisement to the obituary of Princess Cantacuzene to a 1948 rent hike. Learn more about this grande dame of Washington!
Take a look at the unfortunate demolition of the ugly, brutalist, Soviet-looking Dunbar High School built in the 1970s. Here’s an article we dug up from the Washington Post, printed on April 13th, 1977.
