The Georgetown Metropolitan

Photo by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• A more in-depth history of why streetcar to Georgetown is dead (for now).
• The Harper Macaw store is open now.

3200 block of M St.

In light of the passing of the great Morgan Wootten, GM wanted to revisit the time Wootten faced off with the also great John Thompson in the Greatest Game Never Played:

GM was reminded of a fantastic article from Deadspin a few years ago by the great DC writer Dave McKenna. It is all about the decades-long grudge between John Thompson Jr., the legendary Hoya basketball coach, and Morgan Wootten, the equally legendary basketball coach from Dematha high school. And perhaps the most pointed moment of the rivalry took place at the Jelleff Boys and Girls Club here in Georgetown.

As the article explains, Wootten was already a legend when Thompson, a DC native, took over the coaching job at St. Anthony’s high school in the late 1960s. Thompson was quickly successful at building a program at St. Anthony’s, and Wootten allegedly wasn’t interested in doing anything to help Thompson. The story goes that Wootten actively undermined Thompson and took steps to avoid playing St. Anthony’s. Continue reading →

Photo by Angela N.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• DDOT’s really on a roll killing projects that could actually help reduce car trips to Georgetown: now it says streetcar won’t be extended here. Bet you they had super supportive Facebook posts about Greta Thunberg though.
• DC Council Chair Mendelson says that until a new Ward 2 councilmember is elected, he will handle constituent concerns.

C & O Canal

Last week, the Washington Post published an article on living in Georgetown. It was a fairly anodyne piece focused on the real estate perspective. But it repeated a fairly common trope that GM tries (and fails) to dispel, from time to time:

Housing types range from condominiums and attached rowhouses to grand estates, many in the Federal and Georgian architectural styles.

This is wrong! There are very few Federal homes in Georgetown, and even fewer (if any) Georgian homes. You can re-read GM’s old series on architectural styles to understand what those terms really mean, but here’s a quick recap:

• Georgian: a style of architecture that was popular in the late 18th century. It is characterized by (among other things) dentil moldings, square lights (i.e. small windows) over the front door, pilasters beside the door, and double-hung windows with many small panels of glass.
• Federal: a variation on the Georgian style that arose in America after the Revolution. Shares many of the same features as Georgian, but it distinguished by Palladian windows and fan lights over the door.

You don’t have to have understood anything about those two paragraphs to grasp this more salient point: the Georgian and federal period of architecture ended by 1820. So any home built after 1820 is by definition not either Georgian or federal. And more over, it is almost certainly not stylistically of those groups either. Continue reading →

Photo by Daniel Lobo.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• When historic preservation thwarts efforts to fight climate change.
• The fight over the proposed bus service cuts.

3200 block of Volta Pl.

It’s been a rough couple weeks for the 1200 block of Wisconsin Ave. Over that time three stores have either closed or announced closures: Massimo Dutti, Ecco and Papyrus.

Massimo Dutti is already gone. It’s unclear why this particular location closed, but the parent company of the store has been closing stores all over as part of a shift towards e-commerce. In fact, that parent, Inditex, also owns Zara, which has already abandoned this block. (GM only wonders what happened to that horse mannequin they had at Massimo Dutti. And is GM wrong that that horse was there when it was an American Eagle store? Does the lease mandate the horse? Wait, is the horse the landlord?!) Continue reading →

Photo by Angela N.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Fun view of M St. in 1943.
• It’s still a bit crazy to think how Georgetown’s Sweetgreen now has over 100 locations nationwide.