Local wine sales have reached record heights in recent years. But even though Virginia and Maryland’s 350+ wineries are beginning to enjoy the fermented fruits of their labor, the west coast remains the hub of wine production in the United States. Over 92% of the country’s wine is produced on the west coast and Napa Valley remains the recognized capital of American wine. However, the area's amateur sommeliers can take pride in the fact that John Adlum, “father of American viticulture,” called D.C. home.
Bob Hope was no stranger to Washington. The comic was well-traveled and visited the nation’s capital numerous times for performances and events particularly through his work with the U.S.O. Hope and his wife Delores also periodically came to town to visit their son, Tony, who was a student at Georgetown University in the early 1960s and, later, a Washington attorney and lobbyist. In 1968, however, Hope was angling for a more permanent connection to the District when the Washington Senators baseball club went up for sale.
The industrial revolution was reshaping the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries, as the country shifted from a pure agrarian structure, to a more industrial one. While many major American cities of the early 20th century were home to bustling factories and mills pumping smoke into the air, Washington’s largest processing industry filled the air with a different smell—fresh baking bread. In the same neighborhood as the former Griffith Stadium in Shaw, family-owned bakeries lined the streets. Among the most prominent of these bakeries were Dorsch’s White Cross Bakery, Holzbeierlein Bakery, and Corby Baking Company, which were responsible for producing almost all of the bread, cake, and pastry products sold in the Washington area, consequently making them all household names in D.C.
On Nov. 13, 1945, the National Press Club hosted a dinner honoring President Harry Truman at Hotel Statler. The 1,000 person guest list featured a virtual who’s who of Washington’s political elite, but more than anything, attendees looked forward to a performance by Glenn Miller’s famous Army Air Force Band. While festive, the evening was also bittersweet, for the band was without its leader. Nearly a year earlier, Major Glenn Miller, famous bandleader and trombonist, had gone missing over the English Channel, while traveling from England to France to give concerts to the troops liberating Europe.
If you’ve ever hiked Great Falls Park, you might have stumbled across the ruins of a long lost town. Matildaville was to be a bustling hub on an expansive trans-national trade route. But today, a spattering of stone ruins and a handful of crumbling locks are all that remain of a town conceived by none other than George Washington.
On the evening of July 14, 1935, just behind the Lincoln Memorial, on the steps of the Watergate Amphitheatre, 10,000 Washingtonians, dressed in flannel and gingham, sat on blankets and newspapers. Out on the water, hundreds of others dressed in bathing suits floated in canoes, eager to experience Washington’s newest summertime tradition: floating concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra. The NSO was taking to the water, inaugurating a new “Sunset Symphony” series, wherein the orchestra would offer summertime performances on a 75 foot concert barge bobbing in the Potomac River.
The celebrated, yet ever tormented, writer Edgar Allan Poe, famously spent much of his life living in Baltimore and Richmond, but he surprisingly spent very little time in D.C. despite residing in such close proximity. He did however have one…interesting encounter in Washington. Frequent transitions through different literary critic jobs left him in a constant state of mental and financial instability; this led Poe to determine that he needed to find a job that could provide him with more financial security. His friend Frederick William Thomas was friends with President John Tyler's son, Robert, and offered to help get him a government job. Eventually, in 1843, Poe traveled down to Washington from his home in Philadelphia to meet with the President. The true account of how Poe conducted himself upon arriving is still contested today.
Before the days of Half Smokes and Jumbo Slices, D.C.’s collective stomach rumbled for a different delicacy: diamondback terrapin. The native turtle had long fed residents of the Chesapeake but by the 1830s the turtle had become one of the region’s most coveted foodstuffs and by the end of the 19th century, swanky eateries from New York to California featured turtle soup on their menus. While turtles from all over the U.S. were used to prepare this famous dish, the Chesapeake Diamondback was undoubtedly the turtle of choice.
In 1903 and 1938, Steinway & Sons gifted their 100,000th and 300,000th custom, art-case grand pianos to the White House. The pianos, crafted with the White House East Room in-mind, were unlike any other Steinway pianos ever produced — they had extravagantly painted cases, gold leaf designs, and intricately carved wood. The pianos quickly became beacons for art and culture in the East Room and Entrance Hall of the White House where the second one still resides today. Theodore, Edith, and Franklin Roosevelt utilized and dedicated these two Steinway pianos to help establish the White House as a hub for music in Washington moving forward into the 20th Century.
When one thinks of the gambling scene in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, the likes of Al Capone, Frank Costello, and Bugsy Siegel immediately spring to mind. However, the District had its own gambling godfather — Jimmy Lafontaine. He couldn’t have been further from the American gangster archetype. Though his extralegal line of work inevitably brought him unwelcome brushes with mobsters and the law, his story is not one of bootlegged booze or mysterious murders. Rather, he’s most often remembered for his charity and reputation as Washington’s “gentleman gambler.”
On Memorial Day 1904, a group of civilians led by Alexandria County Attorney General Crandal Mackey boarded a southbound train from their meeting point in Washington to present day Arlington. As they rode over the old Long Bridge, Mackey distributed axes, guns, and hammers to the men who, only moments earlier, had been sworn in as official deputies. For decades, seedy settlements rife with betting houses, bars, and boudoirs prospered in the shadow of the nation’s capital. Gamblers had long sought protection by backing the powers that be in the dominant Democratic Party but Mackey and his supporters were a part of a new movement that claimed to oppose corruption. Mackey’s posse disembarked at the unimaginatively named “South End of Long Bridge Station” and began what would be the first of many raids. Haphazard in their approach, the gang swarmed well-known gambling houses and left smashed-up, burned-out shells in their wake.
In the summer of 1892 Washingtonians had their hearts broken. After 12 years of conducting the United States Marine Band, John Philip Sousa, D.C. native and beloved conductor, submitted his resignation to the U.S. Marine Corps. He was leaving for Chicago, where he accepted an offer to serve as musical director of a new military-style civilian band. The public would not let their beloved Sousa go easy, and arranged a farewell testimonial concert where he could exhibit his grand conducting skills for an eager audience one more time. This concert served as the first of two farewell concerts for Sousa with the second taking place the very next day on the White House Lawn.
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