The Georgetown Metropolitan

The Friends of Volta Park will be holding a park clean-up this Sunday from 8:30 to 10:30 am. Please come out and help the community keep this wonderful park looking its best!

And speaking of Volta Park, here’s just another reminder about the community meeting November 27th at the Georgetown Library at 6 pm where the field renovations will be discussed!I hope you can make it to both events!

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Corey Peterson is returning to Georgetown as VP of Community Engagement and Local Government Affairs. This is a huge win for the school and the neighborhood as his work in the community affairs office was critical for greatly improving the town-gown relations over the last 10 plus years.
• GLOW sneak peek.

This week for Georgetown Time Machine, I’m dipping back into the 30 year old photos from 1993. I chose today’s in honor of the fact this building will be vacant soon with the departure of the Edible Arrangements.

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Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Secret Service agents opened fire at a group of people breaking into their car.
• New garden shop opens.

The popular (if not a bit omnipresent) Tatte Bakery is taking over the former Capital One Bank branch at the corner of Wisconsin and Q St., according to a building permit filed this month.

The bank closed last year after having occupied the lot since the 90s. (Prior to that it was a gas station for many years). Built in the house style of Chevy Chase Bank, the building is attractive but not actually historic. As such it could be razed. But when Roadside Development purchased the property this summer, they announced plans to keep the building and bring in retail. That’s where Tatte comes in.

The Boston-based bakery has been on a rapid expansion into the DC market in the last couple years. There have long been rumors of it finally cracking into Georgetown, but this is the first concrete sign I’ve seen of it actually coming.

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Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Georgetown GLOW to return.
• Bellringer Ride raises over $1 million.

In response to a request for a follow-up meeting concerning the plans to renovate Volta Park, DPR and DGS will be hosting a community information session November 27th at the Georgetown Library. (A virtual option will also be available here.)

There is a great deal of interest in the designs of what the city is planning for the park, particularly with regards to potential fencing. I look forward to seeing the plans and hearing the response from the public. If you’re interested in learning more, please come!

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• The Kardashianization of M St.
• Come out to hear from business writer William Cohan at the next Q&A Cafe.

There will be a public meeting to discuss the status of the plans for the major Jelleff Rec Center renovation. It will be Wednesday night from 6pm to 7:30pm. It will be both in-person, at the Georgetown Library, and virtual (at this link).

This budget and scope of this project has grown quite a bit as a result of strong advocacy. This meeting will reveal the updated status of the design concept for the project. So if you want to hear and weigh in, don’t miss this meeting!

I’ve got an embarrassing secret I have to admit. Despite living in Georgetown 20 years, I only just finally watched the Exorcist this weekend. Me being me, my primary focus (beyond enjoying the film) was to detect all the fascinating time capsules of early 1970s Georgetown that the film captures. While most of the shots frankly could be recreated today without much difference, a few captured scenes or features that are no more. Here are some of them!

The first shot of Georgetown is…mostly the same as now. It’s the view across from Rosslyn (which itself looked way different back then). What’s obviously different on the Georgetown side is that the old Key Bridge Exxon still had a garage, which disappeared long before the gas station closed. (In fact, if the garage still were open, it may have prevented the gas station from closing at all due to DC law.) Additionally, this was before Arthur Cotton Moore’s 3633 M St. was constructed just to the west of the gas station.

There is something else interesting in this shot. In order to explain the multiple falls from the house to the steps, the film crews created a false wing on 3605 Prospect Street:

The left side of the house shown above doesn’t really exist on the actual house. In fact a whole fake mansard roof was constructed just to cover the attic sub-plot:

In the long shot above, you can see that they built a whole south facade for the fake wing and carried the mansard roof around. But it was only visible for this one shot, I believe. That’s a lot of effort for just a fleeting moment that only crazies like me would even notice!

(Later in the film, the camera makes it look like this false wing literally abuts the steps, but as this shot shows, it still would have taken a pretty big jump to get from the house to the steps…)

This shot along 37th St. shows just how big those trees have gotten in 50 years:

I loved this little scene as well. It shows Ellen Burstyn’s character eavesdropping on a conversation between Father Karras and another priest. The previous shots establish that this is supposed to happen on or immediately next to the campus. But Georgetown residents will immediately recognize this as actually being Christ Church in the east village. It’s amusing that they went so far to make this Episcopal Church look Catholic by announcing the confessional schedule on the board. (While Episcopalians do perform confessions, it’s not something you’d see regularly scheduled on a sign like that. Although maybe it would be more likely back then.)

Later in the film, you see Father Karras running laps at the old Keough Field. It was replaced by the construction of Yate Field House later in the 1970s.

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