Washington’s built environment is the product of grand ambitions, fierce debates, and brilliant (and sometimes terrible) ideas across more than two centuries. These posts dig into the buildings, architects, and design decisions that shaped the city we know today.
In 1923 the Chevy Chase Theatre opened at 5612 Connecticut Avenue NW. Renamed the Avalon in 1929, it survived 78 years of Hollywood and one Loews bankruptcy that gutted it in 2001. Neighbors raised roughly $750,000 and reopened it in April 2003. The lights are still on.
On the evening of September 21, 1927, a Washington attorney named Alexander G. Bentley walked into a room at the Houston Hotel on E Street near Ninth and shot himself. He was 52. The Washington Post ran it on page one the next morning. His home address, given in the second sentence: 1627 Lamont Street … Read more
Robert O. Schultz’s 1940 General Scott Apartments at 1 Scott Circle NW, the mansions it replaced, the WPA underpass beneath, and the 1982 tenant buyout that saved it.
The 1918 apartment hotel at 2400 16th Street NW housed ten senators, hosted embassies, and unfurled the first Czechoslovak flag. Today it is The Envoy.
Five circular towers, 1,168 condominiums, and the man who built the Watergate built them too. The story of The Rotonda in McLean.
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.
Before Commander Salamander made Georgetown punk, 1420 Wisconsin Avenue was a 1909 store and a quiet antique shop. The wild history of one storefront.
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.
