Next week is National Small Business Week. It’s an even started by the Small Business Administration to celebrate small businesses across the country. The agency will run a conference all week on topics germane to small businesses. But registration is full and, besides, conferences a incredibly boring.

But that’s no reason not to celebrate! A better way to show your love of small businesses is to actually patronize them. So make a special effort next week to visit any of these small independent shops in Georgetown:

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Hey, vote for Fluerir Chocolates to get a $250,000 grant!
• Ahhh, aspirational marketing at its best. And how many college kids were even alive when Jeep stopped making the wagoneer? Also, it looks like they did their photo shoot on Pomander Alley.

1200 block of Wisconsin Ave.

Stop by the Georgetown Waterfront Park on a weekend someday soon: it’s completely packed. And no wonder why, it’s an absolutely beautiful park and people are responding well to it. There must have been at least 500 people there on Sunday when GM walked through.

Children are particularly drawn to the fountain:

It’s important to remember what this stretch of land looked like not so long ago:

Photo courtesy of here.

Thanks to the efforts of countless volunteers and donors, we replaced a massive surface parking lot with a beautiful and incredibly popular park. It goes to show you that you can remove automobile capacity and replace it with something more desirable and yet have even more people come to Georgetown to enjoy it!

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• It must be frustrating to hear loud drunk kids outside your house at night, but illegally putting up misleading and nonsensical signs is not the answer.
• Bandalero will finally open May 24th.

Tudor Place

This week for Now and a Long Time Ago, GM stays on M St. but heads east from last week. The subject of today is 3210 M St.

Currently this property hosts BCBG Maxazari, a pricey women’s store. But it’s had quite an illustrious history. It was built in 1796 to house the Bank of Columbia. Among the banks shareholders was none other than George Washington himself, who served as a director of the bank. The bank only stayed at this location until 1806. From 1807 to 1822 the federal Bureau of Indian Trade was housed in the building.

Most interesting for Georgetowners, the building served as town hall for Georgetown from 1822 till 1871, when the city’s charter was revoked by Congress.

The tall doors are a giveaway to how this building was used next. From 1883 till 1940, it was used as a station for Fire Company No. 5. In 1940 the company was merged into another company and the property was abandoned. It was used as a garage for DC’s sanitation department at least into the 1960s.

All this information plus the old photo (which dates from 1966) comes from the Library of Congress.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• This won’t hurt a bit…ok it actually probably will.
• Great expertise like this is why GM gets all his running gear from Georgetown Running Company.

3000 block of O St.

GM thought he’d use today to share with you a tool he uses quite frequently in his research: the Office of Zoning’s Zoning Map.

This is a simple Google Maps utility that allows you to zoom down into any property in the District and quickly find out useful information.

As you zoom in to any particular property you start to learn certain things. First you’ll see was zoning district the property is in. For instance, most of Georgetown is R-3 (rowhouses), but the commercial strips are C-2-A, and some of the north east sections are R-5 (detached houses). Interestingly there’s a fourth major zone in Georgetown: W (Waterfront). The only other areas of the city with this peculiar zone are around Buzzards Point and Anacostia.

Zoom in further and you’ll see the Square number (i.e. the block number). This is the official ID the city has for a particular block. Zoom in further and you see the lot number. Someone once told GM that if the lot number is a small number from 1 to 200 or so, it is a lot that has been surveyed. If it’s in the 800 range, it hasn’t.

At this zoom, you can see the lot boundaries. This is interesting information in its own right, either because the property is oddly shaped (or a lot bigger than you thought) or because it reflects the history of the property. For instance, look at the photo above. It shows the map of the area around M and Wisconsin. At the left, you can see Dogget’s parking lot. You can see how the property is actually seven different lots, likely reflecting the fact that there used to be a row of buildings there (in 1905 there were four buildings at the west end of what is now the parking lot).

Finally, once you click on a particular lot, a window opens with several tabs. The first tab lists summary information about the lot’s zone. The second tab lists the lot’s location. It lists the square and lot numbers, the physical address, the owner’s name, and the owner’s address. It also shows a photo of the property from around 2004.

The third tab lists any relevant BZA case that affects the lot. It even links to the decision.

Finally, the fourth tab lists what councilmember represents the lot, what ANC it’s in and what ANC commissioner represents it.

All in all, a pretty handy and informative tool.