Dupont Circle takes its name from Civil War admiral Samuel Francis du Pont, whose statue anchored the traffic circle until 1884. The neighborhood has been one of Washington’s most fashionable addresses since the Gilded Age, home to grand mansions, rowhouses, and embassies that have defined its character across 150 years. These posts dig into the history behind Dupont Circle’s streets and buildings.
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.
Frank Lloyd Wright drew Washington a glass city of twenty-one towers on a Connecticut Avenue hill. The height limit refused to let it rise.
When the cake was being cut, the President was upstairs sobbing. The story of Nellie Grant’s 1874 White House wedding, the East Room Grant rebuilt for her, and the marriage that fell apart.
A 35-year-old architect built 164 feet of Moorish-fantasy hotel into a Dupont rowhouse block. Congress hated it so much it made a law.
From a parlor near Dupont Circle, Madame Marcia told Florence Harding her husband would die in office. Three years later he did.
Brickskeller was an iconic DC institution that many locals remember fondly. Learn about its slow demise and the beer renaissance that arrived in DC, as well as a look back at the 1957 advertisement for its opening.
In 1924, construction near Dupont Circle broke into a secret tunnel. Smithsonian entomologist Harrison Dyar had hand-dug it.
The original statue of Samuel DuPont sat for more than a generation at the center of Dupont Circle. Then it was removed because people thought it was ugly. Read the story to learn more.
The Old Dutch Market at Dupont Circle is now occupied by CVS. It was a thriving business in DC through the 1920s. See their launch ad and learn more about what happened to them.
