The Georgetown Metropolitan

Photo by Mike Maguire.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• GM was asked for the best first date location in Georgetown, and he suggested Chez Billy Sud. Any other suggestions?
• GM finally got around to reading Ghost of Georgetown. As much as it’s obviously about ghosts, it’s also a fabulous history of actual Georgetown. Pick it up and read it sometime!

Yesterday the new Georgetown Olive Oil Co. opened at 1524 Wisconsin Ave. The store offers offers over 65 different varieties of olive oil and aged balsamic vinegars. GM stopped by for a tasting last night and sampled from about a dozen different varieties, including straight (and relatively mild) olive oil from Chile, to a much more peppery one from South Africa. The vinegars provided a huge range of flavors, from sweet fig, and smooth chocolate, to bitter orange, and fiery chipotle. Continue reading →

2900 block of M St.

For no particular reason at all, a couple local DC publications decidedly recently to revisit the insane plans from the 1960s to criss-cross the city with freeways. Due to the heroic efforts of activists across the city, the plan was defeated and dozens of neighborhoods (most of which are currently thriving) were saved from demolition.

In Georgetown itself, the plans actually were not too much more dramatic than what we currently have. A proposal to create a new bridge upstream of Key Bridge by the Three Sisters Islands would have brought highway traffic straight from Spout Run in Arlington. The traffic would feed directly into the Whitehurst and flow to an expanded K St. in Foggy Bottom. Continue reading →

Photo by Mike Maguire.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The Georgetown King of hair extensions.
• At last night’s ANC meeting, Lieutenant Hoyle announced that crime was pretty much nonexistent in Georgetown for Halloween, except of course for those four robberies.

1500 block of 33rd St.

Tonight is the November meeting of the ANC. Check out some of the interesting topics they’ll discuss below:

Green Infrastructure

GM wrote about this topic last week. DC Water is exploring using a variety of green infrastructure strategies to limit water runoff in west Georgetown. Some residents are getting worried about what that means. Since the article was published, DC Water has been very eager to ease the worries and put together a plan that will make the neighborhood happy. To that end, representatives from DC Water will be at the meeting tonight to briefly discuss the project. There also are some plans by DC Water to hold a meeting in December or January with a lot more information about what they’re considering. Keep tuned.

Booze

A couple interesting liquor license applications are up for discussion tonight. The first is for Via Umbria. They’ve been shut down for months as they renovate. But in the meantime they’re planning some changes for when they reopen. They already have a liquor license to sell wine. But they also want to have events where people purchase wine for consumption on the premises. And there’s only one type of license that allows that combination: a market license. This presents some interesting possibilities because it requires the store to actually be a food market. Georgetown residents are always bemoaning the lack of food markets in the neighborhood, so this might kill two birds with one stone. But we’ll see…

The Starbucks by the Safeway and the Shophouse also are seeking a license. The Starbucks change is part of a wider change that the store is making in the city to offer nighttime fare. Given the Georgetown location’s roof deck, there will probably be some restrictions placed on them. But it will probably eventually go through.

The last is a license for Kouzina Authentica. GM’s mentioned this restaurant before as it is somewhat emblematic of the problems with the liquor license moratorium. The applicant squatted on one of the newly released licenses for years before ABRA finally pulled it. So he went and grabbed it again. According to ABC transcripts, the space he intends to host the restaurant won’t become available until next year. Continue reading →

Photo by Jason Rosenberg.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Nice write-up of the Exorcist Steps dedication.
• Bunch of robberies Halloween night.

3100 block of P St.

Photo by BKL.

Tonight the city is honoring the special place that the so called “Exorcist Steps” have in the city’s history and designating them a “significant location”. The author of the original book, the director of the film and a host of other dignitaries will be on hand to mark the occasion. But it got GM wondering, how did such an odd set of stairs come about in the first place?

After digging a bunch, GM only came up with partial answers, unfortunately.

Unsurprisingly the stairs were built in conjunction with the adjacent Car Barn. The Car Barn was built in 1895 by the Capital Traction Company, which was actually running a cable car system at the time (that’s why some of the building’s decorations have flywheels on them). There’s an interesting article in the Washington Post from December 1894 profiling the elderly famous author Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth who lived in a cottage perched next door on Prospect. Here it is after she passed away when it became a bit of a tourist trap:

The Post noted that

The Union Station at the end of M street, in Georgetown, where the Great Falls railroad will join the Georgetown road will be built on the property just east of Mrs. Southworth’s historic home. Already the great grove of trees in front of it is cut down and the excavation has commenced, which will leave it sixty feet “above ground”. The dynamite blasts shake it to its foundation. In a little while the bare brick walls of the station will cut off most of the fine view in this direction, which has partly given it its name. But there is still the great stretch of the Potomac south and the hills beyond. “Prospect Cottage” can never have its outlook here taken away while it stands.

The cottage was demolished in 1942. In 1950 a new townhouse was constructed in its place. That is the Exorcist house:

Prior to the construction of the station, there was essentially a steep rocky hillside running from Prospect down to M St. From old maps it looks like 36th st. flowed over this steep hill much like 35th still does today (this is from 1874 when 36th was still called Lingan St.):

But in order to fit the large streetecar station, Capital Traction essentially had to dig into the the side of the hill and level the ground. Here are a couple photos from the construction. You can see how the excavation created the cliff we’re now familiar with:

Unfortunately neither of those photos shows the stairway.

After construction, the form we’re familiar with today was already present (north is to the right): Continue reading →