Georgetown is one of Washington’s oldest neighborhoods, predating the federal city itself. These posts explore its colonial-era streets, Federal rowhouses, working waterfront, and the characters who shaped one of DC’s most enduring communities.
Before the abdication crisis, the future Duchess of Windsor spent four quiet years in Washington as a young, separated Navy wife. She shared a small house in Georgetown, lunched at the Hotel Hamilton on K Street, and met an Argentine diplomat who would change her mind about her marriage. Her mother ran a boarding house on Woodley Road.
The man whose name is over the door at 1264 Wisconsin Avenue was a Boston Braves shortstop in the 1914 World Series before he opened a Georgetown tavern the year Prohibition ended. Ninety-three years and four generations later, it is still open, still owned by the same family, and still has a brass plaque on the booth where John F. Kennedy proposed to Jacqueline Bouvier.
A four-year-old cut the ribbon on the Whitehurst Freeway on October 8, 1949. It was Washington’s first elevated highway.
Discover the real-life inspiration for St. Elmo’s Bar from the iconic 1985 movie. Georgetown’s The Tombs played a starring role in shaping this classic spot.
Au Pied de Cochon, a 24-hour French bistro at 1335 Wisconsin Avenue NW, hosted one of the Cold War’s strangest KGB defections in 1985.
Cows in the streets, a well overflowing near the White House, and woods where the Capitol stands. John Davis saw Washington in 1799 before it was a capital.
This cottage sat atop the Exorcist Stairs in Georgetown. Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth wrote more than 60 novels in the latter part of the 19th century and was one of the most widely read authors of that era.
These haunting 1967 photos show the inside and outside of the old Capitol Traction Company Powerhouse, previously located on the Georgetown waterfront.
Carl Mydans photographed Georgetown in September 1935, capturing children playing in the streets and a neighborhood that looked very different from today.
