The Georgetown Metropolitan

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 →

Photo by Urban Bohemian.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Nice capture of fall in Georgetown.
• Turkish bakery coming to Wisconsin and M.

Montrose Park

Last Saturday, Rose Park hosted a lovely ceremony for the dedication of the tennis courts to the sisters Margaret Peters and Roumania Peters Walker. The Georgetown Current had a great write-up of the event. But due to some understandable confusion, it gave GM a bit more credit for the renaming then is due.

The article repeats something that Friends of Rose Park president David Dunning said during the ceremony: that GM (a journalist) wrote a series of articles about the Peters sisters. That’s not quite right. First, GM is not a journalist, he’s just a lawyer with hobby. Second, he didn’t write a series of article on the sisters. He’s written a couple, but they came well after the renaming idea caught on. Here’s what actually happened: Continue reading →

Photo by Urban Bohemian.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Some background on the Exorcist celebration this Friday.
• DCRA now doing door-to-door inspections of off-campus housing to ensure that they’re up to code.

3000 block of O St.

GM was going to publish this article to remind you that the West Heating Plant open house was tonight. He just received notice that the meeting was postponed because the architect can’t make it. Here’s the post for some more background info:

Tonight at Georgetown Visitation, the public will be given an opportunity to review the state of the plans for the replacement of the West Heating Plant. The meeting will be hosted by the Georgetown Citizens Association and will also serve as a meeting of the whole of the ANC.

When last we heard publicly about these plans, this is what famed architect David Adjaye drew up for the project:

It would involve taking down almost all of the building, leaving just the 29th st. facade. The bulk of the current building, however, would largely be replicated in the new building. A park would be created on the south part of the lot. Continue reading →

Photo by Urban Bohemian.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Paolo’s wants Georgetown to love it again.
• Great write-up of the Peters Sisters tennis court dedication.

1300 33rd St.

Photo by Steven Vance.

Water, water everywhere and not a sufficient sewer system to handle it in an environmentally sound manner. That’s not just an excerpt from the world’s worst sailor’s poem; it’s a good description of Georgetown when it rains heavily. As GM will explain, that causes some serious problems that DC Water is under a court order to remedy. And to remedy the problem in Georgetown, they’re considering the creation of “Green Infrastructure” (“GI”). A lot of GI. So much that you might wake up one day with trucks outside your house ripping up the street and sidewalks, and you’ll shout “Nobody told me about this?!” Well, here’s your opportunity to be told before the trucks arrive (and possibly forestall those trucks from coming in the first place).

As GM has written about a (surprising) bunch of times before: our water agency (DC Water) is under a court order to remedy the pollution created when it rains too much. Here’s why: the pipes that take our rain also takes our, ahem, “waste” (i.e. poop). On a normal day, those pipes bring everything to the Blue Plains treatment plant and clean it up. But when they get overloaded, they dump the excess right into the Potomac.

DC Water is addressing this problem with a city-wide effort. They’ve already dug a couple fabulous tunnels to act as massive underground reservoirs, holding the rain water until Blue Plains can work through the backlog without dumping the excess into the river.

The existing tunnels are on the east side of town, focused on the Anacostia watershed. DC Water is also contemplating a tunnel along the Potomac. Originally it was to stretch approximately from the Kennedy Center all the way up past the Georgetown Waterfront park. But tunneling is expensive, and DC water is exploring whether a cheaper alternative can’t be used to supplement a smaller Potomac tunnel.

And that alternative is GI. The idea is that by capturing the rain before it even hits the storm drains, it will limit the need for a huge tunnel. So DC Water is going to focus its GI effort squarely on west Georgetown.

But what that means is still anybody’s guess.

Some hazy details, however, have emerged from meetings with DC Water: Continue reading →