The Georgetown Metropolitan

3300 block of Volta Pl

Photo by Vincent.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Fancy mattress store opening on Cady’s Alley.
• The battle over the Transformer sculptures.

1500 block of 33rd St.

Over a year ago, at a time when the Coronavirus was only just starting to make national news, WMATA proposed to severely degrade the quality and quantity of bus service to and through Georgetown. GM detailed the proposals here and here. Luckily those proposals were pulled back later that spring, but they have returned again with a vengeance.

Briefly, the proposals last year could be boiled down to these:

• Merge the D2 with the G2
• Eliminate all fully crosstown trips on the 30 series buses
• Eliminate the D5 and the D1

All of these proposals are being put forward again in some fashion (read GM’s articles from last year to see exactly why they’re so bad). However, things are worse for the G2. Last year, WMATA proposed for the G2 to be essentially grafted on to the eastern end of the D2. This year it is simply calling for it to be eliminated entirely. So not only would there be no bus service through the west village any more, there would be no more bus options to take you east of Dupont Circle.

But that’s not the worst of it.

WMATA is now proposing to completely eliminate the D6. It proposes to replace it with a new N6 route that would largely follow the D2 route through Georgetown and up through Glover Park. Notably it would not get any closer to GU Hospital than 35th and Reservoir. No bus would go to GU Hospital anymore. Patients would have to walk nearly half a mile from the hospital to the bus stop in front of Duke Ellington. Continue reading →

Photo by Ted Eytan.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• A bit more on the opening of Foxtrot Market.
• GU delays possible resumption of some in-person classes until at least March 8th.

1200 block of 33rd St.

A new food market has opened in Georgetown: Foxtrot Market. It’s in the former Jonathan Adler store at the corner of Wisconsin and N.

The market is part of a bougie national chain that began in Chicago six years ago. The original mission was to be a delivery company providing food and wine, but they expanded with a coffee shop. This model took off and became the blueprint for the company’s stores in the Windy City and in Dallas.

This location is the first for DC (although a second location is targeted for Mt. Vernon Triangle). The location offers a mix of takeaway meals, somewhat fancy snacks and treats, a smaller number of genuine staples, and beer and wine (with an emphasis on local breweries). And, of course, it also has a full coffee bar.

Continue reading →

Photo by Vincent.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• 58 GU students living in the neighborhood tested positive for Coronavirus this week.
• On a related point, the New York Times explored the extent to which college students were driving outbreaks in college towns, something GM has argued has happened here in Georgetown.

1400 block of Wisconsin Ave.

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, GM returns to the DC Historical Society’s archives for rustic shot of a bridge and a street that no longer exist: L St.

The photo is of the L St. bridge that once spanned Rock Creek. When it’s from, however, is a bit of a question. The archive’s records indicate that the photo comes from a collection of photos taken between 1923 and 1928. However, this is not what Rock Creek looked like in the mid 20s. Here’s an aerial shot showing how industrial the area around where L St. intersects with Rock Creek looked like:

Here is another shot of the bridge from the Historical Society’s archives showing how rural that area was at the time of the photo:

What to make of this inconsistency? Well additional notes to the photos might offer a solution. They state that the photos may also be copies of photos taken around the Civil War. And that makes a lot more sense. So GM is fairly confident we’re looking at what the eastern edge of Georgetown looked like in the mid 19th century. Continue reading →