The Georgetown Metropolitan

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Taste whiskey with Mount Vernon’s own master distiller tonight at the City Tavern.
• The new chocolate shop on Wisconsin is now open.

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, GM is exploring once again a postcard found on Ebay.

This particular postcard shows a scene of Georgetown College as viewed from Observatory Hill. You can see how much more rural the western half of the campus was at the turn of the last century.

The card itself was sent on March 28, 1905. It is addressed to Miss Nellie T. Downes of Brooklyn, NY. care of Edward Fearon. (Downes married Fearon shortly thereafter).

Curiously the sender of the postcard (who’s only identified with the initials “CCD”) tells Downes “Our Glee and Mandolin Club Concert – April 4 – Wouldn’t you like to come and hear us. We’re good-if not bad.”

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Rake your leaves into tree boxes by Nov. 14th if you live in east Georgetown and Nov. 21st if you live in west Georgetown.
• Buy a chicken pot pie to benefit Georgetown Main Streets!

A developer submitted a plan for Old Georgetown Board review this month for two lots it owns along the waterfront, and boy are they shabby.

The lots–located at 3224 and 3226 Water St.–currently consist of two rowhouses built in the mid-20th century. They, along with a third next door, are unique properties in all of the District. They are the only single family homes that are truly waterfront. There are some apartment buildings, like Washington Harbour, that are technically on the water, but no other properties have private backyards that end with a shoreline.

And that uniqueness actually poses the greatest challenge for these lots. This land gets flooded. A lot. And it’s only going to get worse with rising oceans and climate change-driven extreme storms. There is no way you would be able today to build townhouses like the ones that occupy the site right now. You’d have to build in some significant flood-mitigation, like an unoccupied ground floor.

However, that’s not what the developer did. It submitted the plan with no such measures. The plan, as it is, calls for the construction of a 8 units apartment building. The rendering, however, makes it appear that the proposed five story building would only be about 8 feet taller than the third remaining townhouse. In reality, it would be about two stories taller.

Which is fine as far as GM is concerned. We need more housing in Georgetown and can’t keep letting obsessions about current viewsheds keep getting used to thwart all construction. (And in this case there would be literally no view being blocked.) But between the failure to address the floodplain and the ridiculously out-of-scale renderings, it seems fair to conclude that this developer is not up to the challenges this site presents.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The GU Covid situation is not getting better. This week marked the highest cases reported and positivity rate since the beginning of the semester.
• After a $50 million gift, the new Georgetown Hospital wing will be named after Grant Verstandig.

Dumbarton Oaks Park

Halloween was yesterday, but GM would like to reprint again a Georgetown ghost story as told by Tim Krepp in his fantastic Ghosts of Georgetown (which you should buy!):

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The Tombs has now reopened.
• GU saw a sharp increase in covid cases last week and ordered all students to get tested.