The Georgetown Metropolitan

Photo by M.V. Jantzen.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Lane closures coming to Canal Rd. near the university.
• Georgetown folk map makes it to Antiques Roadshow.

This week on Georgetown Time Machine, I’m taking a look at a photo from Georgetown’s transportation past. It comes again from the DC Historical Society and shows a streetcar exiting the massive car barn at M and 36th.

The photo record states that it was taken in 1949. In fact, the date from the record suggests that it was taken April 30, 1949. That would make this a more important historical record than it otherwise would be. That’s because that day is the last day that regular streetcar service used the car barn.

As I’ve written about before, the car barn was built in 1895 originally to serve four different streetcar companies. One of the companies that used it was a briefly lived cable-car-powered company called Capital Traction. That is why the facade has that name along with the image of a cable pulley:

The barn was primarily used by Capital Traction until its merger with Washington Railway and Electric Company to form the Capital Transit Company in 1933. Capital Transit continued to use the building, as much for office space as streetcar storage. But with the end of the Rosslyn-to-Benning line on April 230, 1949, the barn ceased to be used for regular service. The photo purports to be from that day.

The car barn continued to be used by Capital Transit to store streetcars until 1950.

The grand dame of Georgetown events, the annual Garden Tour, is returning for the 95th time on May 10th. The organization itself is working on its second century, having celebrating its 100th year in 2024.

And new eatery has arrive to upper Georgetown. Caspian Crust has moved into the cafe space recently occupied by Janti. The cuisine will not change a whole lot with the change. Janti was a Turkish-style coffee shop, and Caspian Crust is similar. As they explain:

Located in the heart of Georgetown, Caspian Crust invites you to start your day with delicious breakfast selections, irresistible paninis, fresh bakery items and savory boreks. Pair your meal with our variety of exceptional traditional coffees or our unique signature coffee creations. Whether you’re stopping by for a quick morning boost or relaxing with friends, our cozy atmosphere will become your new favorite spot in Georgetown!

Glad to see this space continue to bring some cozy treats to upper Georgetown!

Photo by Beyond DC.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• A summary of our last ANC meeting.
• GU’s downtown campus may face enrollment challenges.

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, I’m returning to another charming painting from the neighborhood. It comes from the DC Historical Society. It’s from 1954 and it’s by John Bryans. The title, as you can see, says that it’s of Wisconsin Ave. and N St.

It took me a minute or so to figure out what buildings this could possibly be, but I believe it’s of the back of the two buildings on the northwest corner of that intersection:

The windows of the now gray building match up with the yellow building in the painting. And the roof lines also match. The first floor extension that now exists clearly doesn’t match the shed-style extension from the painting, but that was probably changed over the years.

Most notably, the painting does not have the Georgetown Inn building. That makes sense since it wasn’t constructed until 1962.

I think I like the yellow better. They ought to bring it back!

Last week I was bemoaning the one-out-one-in trade of Citibank moving down Wisconsin Ave. But a commenter pointed out that another bank branch is closing in Georgetown imminently: the TD Bank at Wisconsin and Q. The reader stated that the closing date will be May 4th.

Another source confirms the branch’s closure. The action is reportedly connected to the bank pleading guilty to money laundering violations last fall. Allegedly as s result of the $1.8 billion fine, the institution is closing 38 branches this year, including the Georgetown location.

Longer term residents likely remember this property as the former Reed Electric building. The company vacated the property around 2007 and the current building was constructed a year or so later. TD Bank has been the only tenant in the building since then.

This vacancy leaves open a property with a great deal of potential. We saw a similar situation arise with the closure of the Capital One down the block. Now that formerly quiet bank branch is packed with people downing coffee and croissants as a Tatte. It’s a great demonstration of the huge amount of potential that buildings occupied by bank branches are likely wasting. And I say that as a Capital One account holder who was inconvenienced by the bank’s closure. Yes, it’s inconvenient, but the area is much better off with a lively cafe instead of a mostly empty bank.

And like the Capital One, the TD Bank building sports a parking lot that could be used, at least in part, for outdoor dining. I hope a restauranteur with a good vision steps forward to take over the space!

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Lots of timely and local issues to discuss at the Q&A Cafe tomorrow.
• J Crew moving down M St. and other ins and outs.

Georgetown has too many banks. I’m not sure what the appropriate number of banks is exactly for Georgetown, but it’s fewer than the amount we currently have. This has been a bit of a bugaboo of mine for quite some time. As of late 2019, there were as many as 18 banks in Georgetown. That’s one whole bank for every 500 or so Georgetown residents. If all of DC had that same density of banks, there would be about 1,500 banks in DC. For perspective, there are only six bank branches in all of historic Ward 8 (not counting the wealthy Navy Yard sections that were added to the ward recently).

We’ve made some progress since then. We now have 12 bank branches in Georgetown. The good news is that yet another bank branch closed. The bad news is that it just moved down the street.

The closed branch is that Citibank that has long stood just north of the Safeway on Wisconsin Ave. If anything, you could argue that this was not exactly an egregious case of bank over-saturation: it had been there forever, it was off the beaten path and the neighborhoods to the north and west of Georgetown have few other bank options.

And if that branch’s closing is a mixed blessing, the bad news is not mixed at all. As I previously reported, Citibank has opened a massive new branch in the former Gap store at Wisconsin and N. This is a historical building that once served as a popular theater in the 19th century, once hosting Mark Twain.

It even served as a military prison during the Civil War. (Here’s a great history on the building).

But now it will be just a huge billboard for a bank (with glowing bright TV screens shining their ads through the windows 24/7 and making the purpose of the location clear).

There’s nothing inherently bad about having banks. But when we have so many of them, and when they squat on such prominent properties like this (or the Chase at Wisconsin and P) it becomes a case of the tragedy of the commons. Banks want these locations to take advantage of all the eyeballs of the people walking by who have absolutely no intention on entering their business. They are free-loaders taking advantage of the stores and restaurants that actually draw people to the neighborhood.

It may be that I’m being over-dramatic, but just take a walk by Yellow on a Saturday sometime and count the people in line. Then take a look across the street at the Chase and try to remember whether you have ever seen a single customer enter. If that’s not a gross misallocation of real estate uses, then I don’t know what could be.

Hello and welcome to your April Northwest Georgetown ANC update!

Spring is here! And with the magnolia and cherry blossoms comes the need to sweep them up and take them away. As a reminder, if you have bags of garden waste, you need to place a request with 311 to have the city pick them up. (You also have to make sure to put the waste in paper bags in the first place).

The Department of Public Works has not exactly covered itself in glory with how it has handled leaf and Christmas tree pick up this past year. This service was supposed to happen on a comprehensive basis without the need to call 311. As we all saw, this simply didn’t happen. Leaves and trees remained on the sidewalk for months. The north part of my district (above Q St.) was particularly neglected. While the city did eventually collect the bulk of the leaves and trees, to this day bags and other detritus remain.

During our ANC meeting last night, a representative of the Mayor’s office explained that one of the possible contributing factors to this failure was that the supposedly sophisticated tracking system that was used to ensure total coverage of the all the city’s blocks was unable to distinguish between when the trucks were picking up the leaves and when the trucks were simply driving by. This seems like a fairly obvious flaw that should have been anticipated!

In either event, at this point the best approach to finally getting the bags of leaves to be taken away is to make a 311 request. Sadly, I can tell you that there is currently a three week wait for such requests. I pressed the Mayor’s representative last night for that time to be brought down substantially. With the spring rains we have, the bags cannot hold up that long.

Until that delay comes down, my best advice is for neighbors to organize 311 requests for the block moving forward. If you stagger the requests, multiple houses can put their bags out together and avoid the delay. It’s not an ideal solution by any means, but may be a reasonable hack for an unreasonable situation.

Change in Leadership at the Georgetown Community Partnership

The Georgetown Community Partnership (GCP) does not have the flashiest name. It could be describing almost anything. A book club? A farmer’s market? A small scale insurance company? Of course it’s none of those things. It’s actually one of the most important and successful projects that the Georgetown neighborhood has seen in decades.

The GCP came about as a solution to the acrimonious fights that took place between the neighborhood and the university every ten years due to the school’s campus plan renewals. Essentially what would happen would be that the two sides would duke it out over the renewal (sometimes in court) and then spend the next eight years or so stewing in anger over town gown issues until exploding in another supernova with the subsequent renewal.

Wiser heads finally prevailed with the 2010 renewal process. Rather than letting issues build up over a decade, the new model involved the creation of a standing platform for the school and the neighbors to address the problems while they happen. The steering committee oversees a group of active working groups each tasked with tackling long standing issues that come from a major university and hospital operating in a residential community such as transportation, trash/rodents, an off-campus life.

Most importantly, the steering committee is led by two co-chairs: a VP from the university, and a representative from the ANC. Since the creation of the GCP, the ANC’s representative has been one of my predecessors on the commission, Ron Lewis. The GCP has truly been Ron’s baby, as he was instrumental as ANC chair in its creation. And he has remained dedicated to its success ever since.

To a lesser extent, I was also involved in the creation of the GCP and served on the transportation working group for several years. But it wasn’t until I joined the steering committee as an ANC commissioner that I saw the full scope of the GCP in action and the role Ron played in keeping the ship on a steady course.

But the time has come for Ron to hand off the reins to his successor. The whole ANC is hugely grateful that he has found a worthy (and, more importantly, willing) successor in Rick Murphy. Rick, another long time Georgetown resident and former ANC chair, has large shoes to fill in the role, but the ANC is fully confident in his ability to step in and continue the success that Ron made routine. Thus the ANC designated Rick our co-chair for the GCP at our meeting this week. Best of luck to Rick and congratulations to Ron on his many years of success and well earned retirement!

Volta Park Cleanup This Weekend

There will be a park clean up at Volta Park this Sunday at 8:30. I’ll be there so if you’re itching to give me a piece of your mind, come and join me in picking up trash as you fill me in! There will be a Tunes for Tots session from 10-10:45 following the clean up.

Speaking of Volta Park, Councilmember Brooke Pinto has requested funds in this year’s budget to allow for a renovation of the playground and the installation of a splash pad. Both would be huge improvements for the park. If you would like to see these requests actually funded, reach out to the Mayor to request she include it in her budget proposal!