Category Archives: Now and a Long Time Ago

July 30, 2012 · 10:00 am

Now and a Long Time Ago: Q and 27th

This week on Now and a Long Time Ago, GM veers off to the northeastern corner of Georgetown, specifically the corner of 27th and Q St. The photo above is from about 1920 and it shows the Penn Oil gas station that once stood there. Here’s what’s there now:

(Again, GM still hasn’t solved his computer problem, so he can’t make a mashup of these two shots as he normally does for Now and a Long Time Ago. Hopefully the problem will be solved soon.)

The great website Shorpy devoted a post to the old photo four years ago. The Library of Congress information for the photo only locates it on Q St. in Georgetown, but the always reliable Shorpy commentator Staton Square weighed found old ads pinpointing its location to 27th and Q. (The silhouettes of the rooflines behind it appear to coordinate with the homes on East Place and P). Continue reading →

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July 24, 2012 · 10:00 am

Now and a Long Time Ago: Wisconsin and Dumbarton

This week on Now and a Long Time Ago, GM stops by a particular favorite of his: the old Dumbarton Theater at Wisconsin and Dumbarton. (Again, GM is having some computer problems and isn’t able to mash the now and then photos together).

You probably need no reminded of the sad state that this old building currently is in:

 

This is what the great Jerry McCoy had to say about the old Dumbarton Theater:

In 1913 Georgetown residents Henry Frain, who lived at 3323 P St. N.W., and William A. Marceron, residing at 2911 Q St. N.W., hired Washington, D.C., architect William C. Nichols to remodel a late 19th-century structure on the east side of Wisconsin Avenue facing O Street…Together the partners spent around $2,500 ($54,000 in today’s money) to remodel the structure, resulting in a theater that measured 32’ x 76’ with a seating capacity of about 460…While not the first movie theater in Georgetown (the Scenic was the earliest, having opened circa 1907 at 1305 Wisconsin Ave.), the Dumbarton certainly had the most opulent exterior.

The theater was purchased by the Heon family in 1949 and renovated with the ugly formstone that covers the facade now. GM had hoped that there was a chance that the old facade was still there underneath the formstone, but Angie Heon Nys informed him that it was not. Continue reading →

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July 16, 2012 · 10:00 am

Now and a Long Time Ago: M and 33rd

This week on Now and a Long Time Ago, GM slides over to M between Wisconsin and 33rd. Due to some technical difficulties with his computer, GM doesn’t have one of those nifty slide features working today, but you get the drift.

The photo above was taken in 1966. The building at the center is the Reckert House, which is one of the oldest commercial buildings in Georgetown and one of the only wood frame structures on M St. It was built in the late 18th century.

It was at one point owned by Francis Dodge, who owned the Dodge Warehouse on the corner of Wisconsin and K. By the early 20th century it was owned by George Reckert who ran a grocery store there. Starting in 1960, it housed the Columbia Glass & Mirror Co., which as you probably recognize from their current location in Glover Park (they even use the same font for their sign!).

Columbia Glass & Mirror stayed at this location at least until the early 1980s. GM’s not sure when they left, but it’s now Anthropologie:

If you look closely at the old photo, you can see that Clyde’s was there already (they opened up just three years earlier in 1963. Interesting fact that GM discovered while researching that previous fact: Clyde’s is named after the River Clyde in Scotland.)

On the left you can see that there’s just air where the Georgetown Park condos now loom.

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July 2, 2012 · 10:00 am

Now and a Long Time Ago: M and Potomac

This week on Now and Long Time Ago, GM swings on by M St. Specifically he’s checking out 3251 M St.

These days, this small shop is being converted from Shoe Gallery to a Sunglass Hut. But in 1966, when the old shot was taken, this address housed the Coniglio Barber Shop.

Frank Coniglio moved to DC from Palermo, Sicily, in 1911. He opened a barber shop at 3251 M St. in 1913. He ran the shop until he died in 1948. His son Phillip, who started working in the shop in his teens, took over the shop after his father’s death. He then ran the shop until his own death in 1969.

Here’s another photo from the Library of Congress from inside the shop:

You can practically smell the Barbasol.

James Randolph took over the shop until he closed the shop in 1970 after the building was sold.

Next door appears to have been a liquor store called Lew’s Shoppe.

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June 25, 2012 · 10:00 am

Now and a Long Time Ago: Waterfront

This week for Now and a Long Time Ago, GM heads down to the waterfront and digs up the story of the great flood of 1918.

This is a story GM covered before. The Post reported on February 19, 1918:

30,000 Throng Aqueduct Bridge and Neighboring Roads to Witness Wreckage Left By Weeks’ Flood

Everybody nearly was out on the Aqueduct bridge yesterday…watching the ice in the Potomac go by. There were close to 30,000 of them during the height of the ruch witnessing and commenting on the greatest flood the Capital has seen since 1889…A young woman stood on the bridge. She was filled with poetry by the maelstrom which whirled beneath her feet. She grasped her escort by the arm “Ain’t it wonderful what nature can do?” she breathed.

The only boathouse that appears in the old shot that has survived in the green Washington Canoe Club you can see square in the middle of the new shot.

Another item in the old shot that catches GM’s eye is the block of rowhouses on Canal at the bottom of the hill. Nowadays that’s just a hillside of trees. Continue reading →

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June 21, 2012 · 10:00 am

Now and a Long Time Ago: M St. and 30th

This week on Now and a Long Time Ago, GM again focuses on Georgetown’s transportation past. The spot in question is M St., west of 30th.

The old photo is from DDOT’s archive. It’s from 1959 and it shows a desolate M St., presumably late at night. Down the center of M St. are the streetcar tracks, which were used only a few more years. On the south side of the street, it appears that M St. once had a service lane like there is on K St. downtown or up in Cleveland Park. GM’s not sure, but he suspects the purpose of this service lane is to give a place for people to stand while they wait for the streetcar.

On the corner where Juicy Couture is now once was Birch funeral home. Just to east of this building, where now stands Cusp was a Sinclair gas station.

It’s tough to make out any of the stores on the north side, but you can see the Riggs Bank golden dome glowing in the distance. Continue reading →

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June 11, 2012 · 10:00 am

Now and a Long Time Ago: Wisconsin and P

This week on Now and and Long Time Ago, GM stops by Wisconsin and P St. When researching last week’s post, he came across a site with old DC streetcar photos. One of which shows the “pit” that was once on Wisconsin Ave. at P St. The old Photo is from the Ed Havens collection.

Last week commenter Nemo explained the purpose of the pit:

 In fact, if I’m not mistaken, the Wisconsin Avenue streetcars changed over from underground “plows” to overhead wires and catenaries at the intersection of Wisconsin and “Q” Streets, just south of the West Georgetown School. Back when Metro first opened in the mid 70s, The Post carried a fascinating profile of one of the first class of subway motormen, who was probably in his 60s at the time. He had worked his way up in the old Capital Traction/DC Transit system, where one of his first jobs had been as a “pit boy” assigned to Wisconsin and “Q.” He sat in a hole in the street, and when a streetcar came to his station, his job was to unhitch the underground connection to the electric cable while the car’s motorman was ratcheting up the catenary to connect w/ the overhead wire. Must have been a h***ish job during the summer months.

According to the DC Trolley Museum website, there were pits across town. The other Georgetown pit was on the campus of Georgetown University, approximately where the south parking lot is. Continue reading →

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June 4, 2012 · 10:00 am

Now and A Long Time Ago: West Georgetown School

This week on Now and a Long Time Ago, GM heads up old “High Street” (now known as Wisconsin Ave.) to visit the old West Georgetown school. GM has written about this school before:

[Opened in 1910] the new West Georgetown School…was not like other schools in Georgetown. It was a vocational school targeted towards poor mothers.

Opening in 1912, the school offered cooking and food preservation classes to adults. The school eventually became known as the Central Lunch Kitchen and in 1934 began serving free hot lunches to 4,500 children as part of the Civil Works Administration. The school provided mothers with culinary and child care instruction.  It also taught reading to illiterate adults.

From 1942 through 1949 the school offered canning classes as part of a culinary arts program. It appears that by 1950 the building no longer hosted classes and was converted to office and storage space for the school system.

The District finally sold the building in 1954. It has held a variety of tenants, most recently the American College of Surgeons. It was sold last year to the African Union, which is in the process of renovating the building.

The old photo above is probably from around 1917. One thing that GM noticed from the old photo: overhead wires. That supposed scourge of historical vistas was here in Georgetown north of P St. (where streetcars switched from underground to overhead power). Continue reading →

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May 7, 2012 · 10:00 am

Now and a Long Time Ago: Potomac and M St.

This week on Now and a Long Time Ago, GM stops by M St. and Potomac. On this site sits the historic Georgetown Market. GM wrote about the history of this building a couple years ago:

As early as 1795 there was a market at what we now call 3276 M St. Throughout the 19th century the market waxed and waned. At times it was a produce market at other times it was a slave auction house. Eventually it was torn down and replaced in 1865 with the building that stands today. In the 20th century it saw almost steady decline. From 1945 until the 1970′s it housed Southern Distributors, an autoparts wholesaler (seen above in 1966). By the mid 1970′s it sat empty.

Interestingly, almost since the beginning the local government has owned the property. It was first conveyed to the Georgetown Corporation in 1803 and then became the property of the District when Georgetown was absorbed in 1871. It remains a District-owned property to this day.

As the quote states, the old photo above was taken the summer of 1966. In 1979, Western Development signed a lease with the city to run a farmers market in the building. After about 5 years of struggling, the market closed. It sat empty until 1992 when Dean and Deluca moved in.

While the lease for the building has bounced around various holders and subletters, the city still owns the property (it was originally built and owned by the municipality of Georgetown and ownership transferred to the city when Georgetown’s charter was revoked in 1871). Anyone fearful that the building could get redeveloped into some other use should be relieved to hear that the city is under a federal mandate to operate a market on the property. Continue reading →

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April 23, 2012 · 10:00 am

Now and a Long Time Ago: Canal Towpath

Last week GM introduced a new series, “Now and a Long Time Ago”. It was a replacement for his old series “Not So Long Ago”. Unlike that other series, where GM compared photos of today with photos from 1993 (in order to show how much has changed in such a short amount of time), with the new series he’ll show how much has changed over a rather long time.

And today he stops by the canal towpath between Thomas Jefferson and 30th St.

The old photo is from the Library of Congress (where pretty much all the old photos are going to come from) and it was taken by Albert Burns October 1, 1935. The most striking difference is that nowadays there’s a rather large tree on the banks. Of course, when this was an active canal, any trees between the towpath and the canal would have been cut down because they would otherwise get in the way of the ropes.

Continue reading →

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