This week for Georgetown Time Machine, I’m checking out a snapshot from the DC Historical Society. It shows a street sign for P St. Or is it a street sign for West St.?
It’s P St., of course. Specifically it’s the intersection of P and 31st. The photo was taken in 1967 and shows one of the commemorative signs noting the historic street names that once dotted the neighborhood. In this case it noted that P St. was previously called West Street. (At least east of Wisconsin it was called that. West of Wisconsin it was called Third St.)
These signs were installed around 1950 to celebrate Georgetown’s 200th anniversary. I’ve written more about them here. I’m not sure when, or exactly why they were taken down. I suspect it was a mixture of nobody wanting to pay to maintain them and the city just not wanting to confuse people.
One of them came up for sale at the Opportunity Shop back in 2017 and I bought it to donate to the Peabody Room. It was in pretty rough shape, so much so that you could be fooled into think it was from when the street had its old name (the names switched in the 1890s). You can see it at the library now.
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
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