Articles

When Union Station opened in 1907, the white granite Beaux-Arts train terminal designed by architect Daniel H. Burnham set a new standard for District's monumental style. The $25 million project was inspired by classical Roman architecture--the Baths of Diocletian and Caraculla and the triumphal Arch of Rome--and incorporated flourishes such as Ionic columns, chiseled inscriptions. But by the mid-1960s, the railroads' fortunes had faded, and they were eager to unload Union Station, and there was talk of demolishing it.

When the Atlantic building at 930 F Street NW was completed in 1888, it was on the cutting edge. Designed by James Hill Green, the supervising architect of the U.S. Treasury Department, it was the biggest commercial structure in the District and one of the first to feature a passenger elevator. Over time, however, it was gradually was overshadowed by newer, flashier modern buildings, and became a largely-forgotten bit of the District's architectural history... until the 1980s, when the building achieved new fame as the epicenter of the District's alternative music scene.

As the sun rose over Washington, D.C., on the morning of March 30, 1981, an excited tourist lay in his bed at the Park Central Hotel on 18th Street NW. He had arrived the night before on a Greyhound bus, and had a big day ahead. But unlike most other visitors to D.C., he didn't plan to see the Lincoln Memorial or the Capitol dome. He was going to try to kill the President of the United States.

Over the past several decades, Arlington's Columbia Pike corridor has grown into one of the most ethnically diverse communities in the nation. The neighborhood is literally home to the world, which makes it a fascinating subject for study. But how do you capture the essence of a community? It's a big question and one that Lloyd Wolf and his collaborators on the Columbia Pike Documentary Project have been trying to answer for almost 10 years.

Earl Lloyd was a rising basketball star at West Virginia State College, but little did he know how soon he would become an important part of sports history. Toward the end of Lloyd’s senior season he was heading to class with a classmate and she told him she heard his name on the radio that day. The Washington Capitols had drafted him. It would be a history-making homecoming.

Coaches are always looking for an edge on the competition but former University of Maryland basketball boss, Charles “Lefty” Driesell may have been the best – or at least the most original. Case and point: October 15, 1971, the official first day of the college basketball season. At 12:03am – when presumably the competition was sleeping… or doing what college kids do in the wee hours of the morning – he blew the whistle to start his team’s first practice. In doing so, he unknowingly created a fad, which took off – first at Maryland and, soon, at other schools.

In 1873, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner published their novel The Gilded Age, both as a parody of contemporary popular novels and to criticize political and economic corruption. In chapter 24, Twain and Warner take the reader on a virtual tour of the nation’s capital. They didn't paint a pretty picture.

Today, it's common to see people wearing t-shirts emblazoned with Bob Marley's instantly recognizable likeness, and the reggae classics that he recorded with the Wailers are so iconic that they're used in TV commercials. But back on the afternoon of October 14, 1973, when the then-28-year-old singer with the dreadlocks and wispy beard and his band stepped out onto the stage at the U.S. Naval Academy's Halsey Field House, things were quite different. 

By the time she was 23, Mulholland had participated in more than fifty sit-ins and protests. She was a Freedom Rider, a participant in the near riotous Jackson, Mississippi Woolworth Sit-in, and helped plan and organize the March on Washington in 1963. On a local level, she was part of the first Arlington sit-ins, which integrated lunch counters across northern Virginia, and helped to coordinate demonstrations at Glen Echo Park, Bethesda's Hiser Theater amongst other locations.

When Abigail Adams came to Washington, D.C. on November 16, 1800, she arrived at an infant city, sparse and not fully formed. Having just left the comforts of old Philadelphia, this must have been quite a shock. To make matters worse, her trip south had seen been rough. So, it’s safe to assume that she was in an irritable mood when she finally made it to D.C. We should probably keep that in mind while reading her appraisal of the city. 

With the decades of lackluster baseball teams in the nation's capital, the 34 years when D.C. didn't have a team at all, and the early struggles of the current Nationals franchise, it's probably hard for most fans to imagine what a baseball championship in the nation's capital looked like. Well, thanks to the Library of Congress, it just got a whole lot easier.

In Rock Creek Park, there's a granite bench on the trail near Beach Drive, just south of Peirce Mill, that bears a curious inscription: "Jusserand: Personal tribute of esteem and effection." It's a safe bet that most of the people who pass by the odd little 78-year-old memorial don't realize that it commemorates one of President Theodore Roosevelt's close friends, French ambassador Jean Jules Jusserand — one of few people in Washington who could keep up with Teddy on a hike.