The Georgetown Metropolitan

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, GM is visiting a stout looking horse. This particular horse was a fire horse from Engine Co. No. 5, which was once housed at 3212 M St.

The photo comes again from the Henry Wagner collection at the Historical Society of Washington, DC. The info lists the photo as being from between 1900 and 1910. Engine Co. No. 5 occupied that address from 1883 to 1940. The building (which now hosts Aritzia) has quite a history. Prior to being a firehouse, it was the city hall for Georgetown, when the neighborhood was its own city. Continue reading →

Photo by Bill Starrels.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The French Market will go virtual this year.
• The Christ’s Church minister may not have been DC’s patient zero after all.

Tudor Place

Yesterday, GM suited up and went shopping at Safeway. He noticed that Safeway has now added “one-way” aisles.

These measures are designed to avoid the crowding that takes places as two shopping carts pass in different directions. It obviously doesn’t eliminate crowding entirely, because people still often need to pass as other people stop and browse the shelves. But it’s still an improvement. Continue reading →

Photo by John Weiss.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Don’t throw out candidates’ campaign signs! Even when the candidate has no business being in the race.
• Send in your street safari pics!

3300 block of O St.

If you’re a parent of a young child and looking for an idea to entertain them while also getting them out of the house, consider modifying an idea GM tried over the weekend: make your own treasure map.

Here’s what GM did. You can take some or all of the ideas for your quest. First he decided where the treasure would be. Then came up with a final hint that would lead there. The final hint was converted into a series of numbers using a basic cypher key (a=1, b=2, c=3, etc.). Then GM came up with clues that would guide his daughter towards filling in the numbers by guiding her to addresses around the neighborhood. Then she could decode it back into words and get the final hint.

The first clue was “Go to where our neighborhood is written in lights”, i.e. the Georgetown theater:

(She didn’t quite figure this one out right away, so GM suggested they walk down Wisconsin Ave. and see if they found it. It was all a bit like Easter, since GM was pretending that the map was delivered by a mysterious figure and that he had no idea where it came from or where the clues led. Of course she is way too old to believe this, but it made it a bit more fun.)

From here the map said to walk a block west and then walk north until you see a flag and a ring of roses. (Thus the adventure doubles as a wayfinding lesson!)

The map then said to plug the address into the first two spots. So the street address, 1415, became 14 and 15, or N and O.

The next clue was to walk a block north and look for a horse: Continue reading →

Photo by Ehpien.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Should the city be doing more to provide more space in Ward 2 for pedestrians to practice social distancing?
• How COVID has forced able bodied professors at GU to empathize more with their students with disabilities.

Today GM has a treat, particularly for younger readers. Inspired by a virtual Escape Room pulled together by a Children’s Library at Princeton, GM has made his own virtual mystery: The Mystery to Find the Missing El Greco!

This should be fun for kids, although maybe an adult might need to help out for a step or two. It works best on a computer with a mouse or pointer, but it will also work on tablets or phones.

Anyway, enjoy it here.

Dumbarton Oaks Park