Five forgotten people, robbed, slashed, shot, or stabbed in Washington’s Murder Bay slum between 1865 and 1868. We pulled their names out of the old Evening Star: named victims, named killers, and real intersections that no longer exist.
The name “Federal Triangle” replaced “Pennsylvania Avenue Triangle” as federal buildings rose in the 1920s. The shape of the land gave it both names.
The squalid alley neighborhoods of late 19th-century Washington had names like Buzzard’s Roost, Ryder’s Castle, and Zig-Zag Alley.
Murder Bay was the violent, vice-ridden neighborhood just east of the White House, now buried under the Federal Triangle. Here is what it looked like.
