Why watch TV when you can listen to the radio? As you may know, the location is featured every month on Metro Connection, a local news magazine show on Washington, D.C.’s NPR station, WAMU 88.5. In each segment (also called the location), I talk about a different DC location that has some kind of interesting or offbeat history. I also have a theme song!
Listen in tomorrow, February 24 at 1pm or Saturday, February 25 at 7am.
Did you know that Washington, D.C.’s Constitution Ave. used to be a canal? (Non-DC people: Constitution Avenue is the street where all of the Smithsonian museums live). In this month’s segment, we visit the Lockkeeper’s House, the last remaining vestige of that time in D.C. history. The tiny fieldstone building (c.1833) still stands on the busy corner of Constitution Ave. and 17th Streets, two blocks south of the White House.
If you live outside the area or don’t have access to a radio, you can listen to the show HERE.
To read the original blog post that inspired this week’s show, click HERE.
How is Washington, D.C. like this scene from Ghostbusters 2?
Answer: Like the fictionalized residents of NYC in 1989, most present-day Washingtonians are unaware that an unusual river of slime runs beneath their city. (But ours is not paranormal). Here’s the story…
Constitution Avenue was once a river
Back when D.C. was born, water was integral to the development of commerce. Roads were unreliable, and other technologies hadn’t been developed. Why else would the city’s founders have placed it at the intersection of two swampy, humid, mosquito-filled waterways, the Potomac and the Eastern Branch (a.k.a. The Anacostia)? In fact, Pierre L’Enfant’s original 1792 plan for D.C. shows us that their city was far more watery than the one we know today. If the Washington Monument had been built then, it would have sat on the shores of the Potomac, and the Lincoln Memorial would be underwater. From the foot of Capitol Hill out to the Potomac, there ran a body of water called Tiber Creek (whose name had been changed from Goose Creek when it was decided that D.C. would become America’s capital – ya know, because they were emulating Rome).
L'Enfant Plan
D.C.’s founders and business leaders believed that the city’s economic development would be vastly enhanced if only there was a canal connecting the Anacostia River (navigable to Maryland) to the Potomac (the gateway to the west) through the city. This, the Washington City Canal completed in 1815, flowed up north from the Anacostia, passed west of the Capitol Reflecting Pool, and then headed due west along the Tiber River whose path is today’s Constitution Ave. In other words, Constitution Ave. was once a river.
The Tiber Creek/Washington City Canal is visible to the north. Photo by Civil-War-Photos.com
Ever wonder what that random tiny stone house is on the Mall?
In 1828, construction began on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, another dream waterway which would connect commerce up to Pittsburgh and through all areas in between. In the original plans, the C&O system was supposed to end in Georgetown, but that idea made D.C. leaders nervous. They imagined that the canal would help G-town outshine the Capital City, so they ransomed their $1M investment in the project and had that changed. The C&O would now end at the Washington City Canal.
Thus completed in 1833 and known as the C&O Branch Extension, D.C.’s canal connection into the C&O began at the Rock Creek Basin and followed 27th Street down until it connected into the Washington City Canal at 17th and Constitution Aves. Someone was going to have to collect the tolls and keep the records, so a Lockkeeper’s House was built at 17th and Constitution. Owned today by the National Park Service, the Lockkeeper’s House is one of the last reminders that a canal ever flowed through Washington D.C.
Photo by National Park Service
A small federal style house built of fieldstone and measuring 30 feet wide and 18 feet deep, the Lockkeeper’s House originally sat 40 feet west and 10 feet north of its current location, but was moved in the 1930′s when 17th Street was widened.
According to some reports, the Lockkeeper and his 13 children lived in the building. Cool story from an interview of Otho Swain, a man born on a canal boat in 1901, whose father was a boatman and locktender and whose grandfather helped build the C&O:
My grandfather, he had boated coal down Constitution Avenue. There used to be a canal that crossed the Potomac there, and there’s a little stone house still standing on the corner of 17th and Constitution Avenue. It was a lock house. My grandmother lived in that lock house, and that’s where my grandfather met her….
The Lockkeeper’s House was given to the National Park Service at the beginning of the 20th century during the construction of Potomac Park. For a time it was used as a “public comfort station”, but today NPS uses it as storage.
Decline to Slime
Although D.C.’s founders believed that waterways would bring commerce, we know better today – railroads were the technology of the future. As the rail was developed, the canal system fell into disuse. (Plus, the Washington City Canal had always been a bit of a mess. The water was shallow and so could only handle boats drawing less than 3 feet of water.)
So, the canal system was completely abandoned by the end of the 1850′s. The C&O Canal only made it as far as Cumberland, MD before it went under. What did D.C.’s residents do with this body of water running through its middle? Throughout the Civil War and after, they turned the Washington City Canal into an open sewer.
Photo by Affordable Housing Institute
Luckily, when Boss Shepard came into power in the 1870′s, this smelly problem was added to his list of public improvements. A young German immigrant engineer, Adolph Cluss, was enlisted to move the body of water underground. He apparently built a tunnel from Capitol Hill down to the Potomac that is ”wide enough for a bus to drive through to put Tiber Creek underground”.
A River Runs Under It
When the canal was filled in, it created B Street, which was subsequently renamed Constitution Avenue. Although the massive undertaking solved public health problems, the federal government apparently did not contemplate the potential engineering dilemmas that might result from building on top of an underground creek/sewer:
Many of the buildings on the north side of Constitution apparently are built on top of the creek, including the Internal Revenue Service Building, part of which is built on wooden piers sunk into the wet ground along the creek course. The low-lying topography there contributed to the flooding of the National Archives Building (Archives I in Washington, DC), IRS, and Ariel Rios buildings that forced their temporary closure beginning in late June 2006. In fact, until the mid 1990s, that part of Washington around the intersection of 14th Street and Constitution was an open parking lot because the underground water was too difficult to deal with. During construction of the Ronald Reagan Building (1990–98), the engineers figured out how to divert the water. But that dewatering then reduced the water level underneath the IRS building which caused the wooden piers to lose stability and part of the IRS building foundation to sink.***
National Archives building 2007 Photo by BMS CAT
So maybe D.C. doesn’t have real ghosts flowing under our feet, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t haunted by underground things from the city’s past.
When I move into Diane von Furstenberg’s amazing “tree house” penthouse apartment which both overlooks NYC’s High Line (which she helped create) and sits atop her flagship store in the Meatpacking District, I will keep everything except for the gigantic picture of her face. This Architectural Digest article about her home is my own personal interior design porn:
Although I am currently against the new encroachment of businesses and bloggers on Pinterest, I am delighted to follow the pins of Design*Sponge, who are keeping it classy. Check out their “copper” Board. Pretty:
Harry Weese Brutalist lighting fixture 1968
In this NYT op-ed, a call for creative solutions to the housing crisis:
…better design is precisely what suburban America needs, particularly when it comes to rethinking the basic residential categories that define it, but can no longer accommodate the realities of domestic life. Designers and policy makers need to see the single-family house as a design dilemma whose elements — architecture, finance and residents’ desires — are inextricably linked.
After complaining last week to my wonderful friend Danielle about the severe creative mental blockage I was suffering, she suggested I read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (also the author of The Legend of Bagger Vance). Although some of the book was a little too touchy-feely for my taste, it got to me and and I “overcame resistance”. Not as great as The Hunger Games (!), but I think it could help anyone (creative or otherwise) who needs to get mentally unclogged.
Washington, D.C. has the best real estate market in the country – just walk up 14th Street NW. But even on the most glittering and glistening blocks of new and new-ish construction, there are some sad little broken-down buildings that I adore and monitor patiently for new signs of life. Por ejemplo:
Federal-American National Bank/Hahn Shoe Building, 615 14th Street, NW
Photo by wallyg via Flickr
This former site of the Federal-American National Bank and Hahn Shoe sits two blocks from the White House and one door down from the National Press Club, but (according to one DCMud commenter) “still looks like it is in the decrepit marion barry 1980-90s.” In 2008, the HPRB gave concept approval to beautiful plans for the site to become the Armenian Genocide Museum, which would maintain the building’s historic features while adding a glass extension that would serve as the main entrance. Unfortunately, the museum is now on hold due to litigation about back D.C. real estate taxes. Keeping my fingers crossed…
“Ledo” Building, 433 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Photo by Washington Post
The owner of this building, Austin Spriggs, was all over the news in the summer of 2010 as a cautionary example of too much faith in the booming real estate bubble. As the block surrounding 433 Massachusetts was bought up by developers, Spriggs held out, using as his excuse some plan to build a neighborhood pizza place. By the summer of 2010, the tiny building looked like the last scene of “Batteries Not Included” (you know, the one where the tiny brick brownstone is surrounded by massive metallic NYC skyscrapers). Once Buddha Bar and high end condos moved in, Spriggs had a change of heart and listed the property for $1.5M. But it was too late – the boom was bust. Finally, in May of 2011, a developer purchased the building for $800,000. Here is the architect’s rendering of what the new restaurant space will look like:
Photo by Core Architects Group
Webster School, 940 H Street NW
Photo by DCMud
During my days in lawyer hell (aka document review), I used to stare out the window across the massive parking lot (soon to be City Center) at the Daniel Webster School and wondered why the lovely red brick structure was boarded up and abandoned. Built in 1882, it only served as a public school through the first decade of the 20th century, but the DC Public Schools continued to use it for educational purposes and citizenship classes through the 90′s. Years of neglect led to some damage. According to the GSA:
A lack of proper maintenance over the last twenty years has resulted in severe water damage, causing substantial deterioration of the roof structure, floor structure, masonry, and interior finishes. Advanced rot of the wood-framed floor structure resulted in the complete collapse of all three floors of the southeast corner, destroying all interior features in this section of the building. The surrounding masonry walls remain intact and have since been stabilized with interior and exterior shoring.
During the late 90′s, it was owned by the National Treasury Employees Union, who tried to knock it down but were successfully challenged by the DC Preservation League. The Secret Service (whose HQ is next door) then took the building by eminent domain with plans to use it as an adjunct space. But, now they say that there are inadequate funds to do anything to the structure in the foreseeable future.
General Harrison Allen’s mansion, 1001, 1015, or 1017 11th Street NW (depending on who you’re asking)
Photo via The Triangle
Behind the weird billboard (a.k.a. “special sign”), chain link fences, rot, and age, anyone can tell that this former home of Civil War hero and politician, General Harrison Allen, was once a magnificent building. I cannot do better justice to Allen’s history than this post on the blog, Victorian Secrets. Owned since 2003 by Douglas Development (who pays regular commercial tax on the address, not the blighted rate), there is no information about what’s next for the property. I’m trying to get an update…stay tuned.
What seemingly abandoned or neglected buildings do you keep your eye on?
Are you ready to listen to another a fascinating radio segment about local Washington, D.C. history? I hope you are! As you may know, the location is featured every month on Metro Connection, a local news magazine show on Washington, D.C.’s NPR station, WAMU 88.5. Each segment (also called the location), I talk about a different DC location that has some kind of interesting or offbeat history. I also have a theme song!
Listen in tomorrow, January 27 at 1pm or Saturday, January 28 at 7am.
This month, I talk about the iconic Black Family Reunion mural located at 14th and Florida NW., which will soon be covered by Douglas Development’s new 6-story condo building.
If you live outside the area or don’t have access to a radio, you can listen to the show HERE.
To read the original blog post that inspired this week’s show, click HERE.
Architects are listening to your brain: In her NYT article today, Sarah Williams Goldhagen (architectural historian and critic for the New Republic) contends that “a revolution in cognitive neuroscience is changing the kinds of experiments that scientists conduct, the kinds of questions economists ask and, increasingly, the ways that architects, landscape architects and urban designers shape our built environment.” True? I don’t know, but I am intrigued by one of the examples she sites: the Metropol Parasol in Sevilla, Spain. This beautiful wooden structure designed by German architect Jürgen Mayer-Hermann was finished in April, and lives in the old part of the city. Roman and Moorish ruins are displayed in its underground level, a central market is hosted at street level, and the top two floors have some of the best views in Seville:
Tenement time machine: Imagine entering an old boarded up brownstone on a quiet side street in New York’s Lower East Side that has not been touched since the 1930′s. This is how the founders of the Tenement Museum discovered (and currently maintain) their time capsule of a building, which contains 70 years of history and artifacts reflecting the multi-cultural lives of the many families that shared its space. Maybe it was because the exhibits hit a little too close to home for me – my grandfather grew up in a crowded New York tenement where the living room couch was his bedroom – but this is one of the best museums I’ve ever been to. A guided tour takes you through rooms decorated with furnishings recreated using pictures and oral history of the people who lived there. But the real and breathtaking details that make this a different kind of place include the original wallpaper – some areas covered in ancient newsprint and peeling to reveal layer after layer of decorating history, or the original murals in the front hallway. On a related note, check out the fantastic book “97 Orchard: The Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement”.
Photo by New York Magazine
Gray job: Of the nine spots that exist on DC’s Historic Preservation Review Board, only one is currently filled (by Chairwoman Catherine Buell). This comes after two long-delayed nominees decided they didn’t want to serve after all. Tommy Wells is not happy…
The Ghosts of Buildings Past: If you haven’t checked out the informed and wonderfully written blog about D.C. buildings that once were, you must read Streets of Washington by John DeFerrari. Or better – buy his new book, “Lost Washington“.
Long lost relatives?: And, finally, the next time I’m in Canton, OH, my first stop will be at Bender’s Tavern. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this 95 year old bar and restaurant ships its seafood in daily from Boston.
