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Last week WMATA announced that due largely to the money made available to it under the American Rescue Plan Act it would be able to avoid enacting the drastic service cuts it had earlier proposed.

The most dramatic of the proposed cuts affected Metrorail. They would have called for the elimination of weekend service and peak frequencies of only 30 minutes on the weekdays. But the cuts to bus service were deep and wide as well. And for a neighborhood so reliant on bus service, Georgetown would have been deeply affected.

As GM wrote earlier this month, the proposals would have:

• Eliminated the D6
• Eliminated the G2
• Eliminated the D1
• Eliminated the D5
• Eliminated all fully crosstown trips on the 30 series

Now all of those cuts are off the table. Although, the D1 and the D5, both of which have not been running during the pandemic, will continue to be temporarily suspended. Once demand on the D2 and the D6 returns to pre-pandemic levels, WMATA promises to restore them.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Nice run down of some good dining options around the neighborhood.
• Sandlot owner aims to open the new beer garden at M and Pennsylvania within two weeks.

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, GM is exploring a photo of Dumbarton House from 1913. It comes from the Willard R. Ross postcard collection in the DCPL archives.

While this photo might seem not so different from how the building appears today, there are some rather huge differences!

But first, the small differences. For one, the building was not called Dumbarton House yet. It was called Bellevue and it was owned at the time by John L. Newbold. Newbold had purchased the home just the year before from Howard Hinckley.

Although the home was built in the federal period, and had many distinctive features of that style, such as the Palladian windows and the bowed rear wall, Newbold added some Georgian features. You can see these in the picture above, particularly the quoins (the blocky white parts attached along the corners) and the parapet across the top of the roofline. Since the Society of the Colonial Dames, who currently own the building, want to highlight the original federal features of the house, these additions were removed.

The house was also known as the Rittenhouse home (as mentioned in the photo). In fact Hinckley bought the house from Sarah Louise Rittenhouse, who grew up there. Rittenhouse was a prominent Georgetown leader who was instrumental in the creation of Montrose Park (the sculpture in the rose garden is dedicated to her). Rittenhouse also was instrumental in another significant act that came from the same legislation that created Montrose Park: the construction Dumbarton Bridge.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Great rundown on some of the large construction projects around Georgetown.
• Covid positives still not dropping much in GU community. There were 25 positives this week, up from 18 the week prior.

Dumbarton Oaks

It’s that time of year again when GM harangues you about caring for our precious street trees. So here is goes:

Water your street trees!

It’s still early in the spring, and trees are only starting to leaf out, so you do not need to start watering street trees immediately. But it will become necessary sooner than you think. So if you have a young tree on the sidewalk in front of your house or apartment, please, please keep it in mind this summer and water it. The basic goal you should have is to water young trees at least once a week, so long as you get a good 20-25 gallons of water.

The preferred watering device is the ooze tube (the bags that go around the bottom of the trees). You can differentiate them from the not-preferred gator bags because the gator bags have zippers. (They’re not preferred because they can create an unhealthy environment around the trunk and you have to remove them after each use.) With the ooze tube you can just fill it up and let it go.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Georgetown real estate is on fire right now.
• Baby clothes boutique opens on P St.