Georgetown Time Machine: Boogies

This week for the Georgetown Time Machine, I’m swinging by a great example of faux historical archictecture that once sat on Wisconsin Ave. The address is 1235 Wisconsin Ave. Today the Apple Store occupies this space. But in 1993, it was the home of something called Boogie’s Diner.

As for the actual Apple store address itself, there stood a building that Apple knocked down to build its store. I believe that building was built in the 1980s and replaced a parking lot. In 1993, it hosted a diner called Boogies. One commentator described it thusly:

In the early 1990s, there was a branch of Boogies Diner in the Georgetown section of Washington, DC. They tried to sell trendy clothes in a diner atmosphere.

The clothes smelled like grease, and the restaurant area smelled like leather. Suffice to say, the concept did not work.

It lasted less than a year. Enough said.

According to this article, it opened in 1990, so the 1993 photo testifies to at least three years of greasy leather and leathery food. Sometime after 1993, the French Connection UK moved into this space (and occupied it until Apple bought the property). I’m not sure if anything was in here between Boogies and FCUK, but if there was it probably wasn’t for long.

As I mentioned above, this building was built in a faux historical style. It was a weird pastiche of Victorian commercial style with a huge ass federal Palladian window right in the middle. Historical preservation principles would actually argue against approving such a building, as new buildings in historic districts are supposed to reflect the era that it was actually built in, not this weird pre-20th century Madlibs approach. But as we saw with the Apple Store that followed, when the rubber hits the road, these principles often get ignored. So instead of a building clearly of the 21st century, we ended up with yet another vague historic pastiche. And maybe that’s what people prefer, but they shouldn’t fool themselves that they’re doing it in the interests of historic preservation.