Georgetown Time Machine: Weaver’s Burned Out Building

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, I’m checking out another photo from the remarkable Emil A. Press collection at the DC Historical Society. This one shows the burned out shell of Weaver’s Hardware following the July 1963 fire.

Weaver’s and Sons have occupied this building for a long time. A really, really long time. The family has owned and operated a shop here since 1889. Here’s a photo of their truck outside the shop in 1926:

Nowadays the building is pretty sedate looking, but before the fire it looked largely like this:

The vaguely exotic architecture might reflect the fact the second floor was (and I think still is) occupied by the Freemasons. They love themselves some vaguely exotic architecture. The first floor was renovated and changed between this photo and the fire, as you can see from comparing the ruins to the old photo. But the masonic lodge part of the building was pretty similar as you can see from a photo from the fire:

Sadly they did not restore the facade after the fire.

While the building was uninhabitable, the hardware shop relocated up the block at Wisconsin and N:

Weaver’s Hardware is still operating at its original location, but it ceased being a bread-and-butter hardware store a long time ago. It now sells high end plumbing fixtures and other household hardware.