The Georgetown Metropolitan

A new food market has opened in Georgetown: Foxtrot Market. It’s in the former Jonathan Adler store at the corner of Wisconsin and N.

The market is part of a bougie national chain that began in Chicago six years ago. The original mission was to be a delivery company providing food and wine, but they expanded with a coffee shop. This model took off and became the blueprint for the company’s stores in the Windy City and in Dallas.

This location is the first for DC (although a second location is targeted for Mt. Vernon Triangle). The location offers a mix of takeaway meals, somewhat fancy snacks and treats, a smaller number of genuine staples, and beer and wine (with an emphasis on local breweries). And, of course, it also has a full coffee bar.

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Photo by Vincent.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• 58 GU students living in the neighborhood tested positive for Coronavirus this week.
• On a related point, the New York Times explored the extent to which college students were driving outbreaks in college towns, something GM has argued has happened here in Georgetown.

1400 block of Wisconsin Ave.

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, GM returns to the DC Historical Society’s archives for rustic shot of a bridge and a street that no longer exist: L St.

The photo is of the L St. bridge that once spanned Rock Creek. When it’s from, however, is a bit of a question. The archive’s records indicate that the photo comes from a collection of photos taken between 1923 and 1928. However, this is not what Rock Creek looked like in the mid 20s. Here’s an aerial shot showing how industrial the area around where L St. intersects with Rock Creek looked like:

Here is another shot of the bridge from the Historical Society’s archives showing how rural that area was at the time of the photo:

What to make of this inconsistency? Well additional notes to the photos might offer a solution. They state that the photos may also be copies of photos taken around the Civil War. And that makes a lot more sense. So GM is fairly confident we’re looking at what the eastern edge of Georgetown looked like in the mid 19th century. Continue reading →

Photo by BeyondDC.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• GU’s nursing school program is getting really popular with undergrads in the wake of the pandemic.
• New “speakeasy” upstairs of Flavio.

Potomac River

As GM was writing his article earlier this week concerning the future (and past) of Hardy Middle School, he dove into the history of the various names the building has had over the years. And it occurred to him that he has yet to gather all the names of the various historic school buildings in Georgetown and note the inspiration for their names. (Although he did once run a series on all of the buildings themselves). Here they are:

Hyde – Constructed in 1907 as a white school and named after Anthony J. Hyde, a Georgetown businessman and schools advocate. Still in use as school.

Addison – Constructed 1885 as a white school and named for former mayor of Georgetown, Henry Addison. Still in use as school.

Curtis – Constructed 1875 as a white school and was named for President of the Board of Trustees for Georgetown schools, William Wallace Curtis. It was demolished in 1951. It stood where the Hyde-Addison playground is now. Continue reading →

Photo by Vincent.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Eastbanc is bringing a “retail lab” to the old Brooks Brothers building.
• Some more details on the shooting murder on Thomas Jefferson St. last week.

1600 block of Avon Place

ANC 2E returns for their March meeting next Monday night via Zoom at 6:30 pm.

There are several interesting items on the agenda, including a reconsideration of the topic of requesting lower speed limits on side streets (which was initially discussed last month) and the question of the future of Hardy Middle school (discussed here yesterday). But the item that particularly caught GM’s eye is a discussion on whether to request DPW return to ticketing cars in Georgetown.

You may or may not know, but DPW has essentially stopped writing tickets throughout the city for many common parking violations. This unofficial policy was adopted for several stated reasons. The first is that with the pandemic, people are having a tougher time taking steps to keep their cars properly registered. For example, if you just moved to DC, getting new DC plates would involve a trip to the DMV, which was considered too much of a burden (at least as of last year when this policy was quietly rolled out). And since DPW ticket writers couldn’t tell whether a car without DC plates (or a Zone 2 sticker) was a genuine resident who simply had not been able to get properly registered or just an out-of-towner, they stopped writing tickets for violating the 2 hour parking rule. Continue reading →