The Georgetown Metropolitan

This week on Old Georgetown in color, GM thought he’d take the occasion of the dismantling of the Corcoran Gallery to bring a bit of color to a ghost that’s probably feeling pretty blue this week: the museum’s founder, William Wilson Corcoran.

Nope. Even in full color, he still looks pretty dour. Cheer up old boy, they’ll still keep your name around!

Photo by Jackdean085.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Sad story of a Georgetown resident who in 1890 killed himself on the White House gates.
• Longtime Georgetown Current photographer splits over pay dispute.

1500 block of 34th St.

We now know who bought the old Nathan’s building from the Heon’s: Under Armour. The athletic clothing store bought the historic building last month for $12 million.

So passeth yet another restaurant from M St. Granted, ever since Nathan’s was replaced by Serendipity 3, it wasn’t exactly a local-friendly hangout. But still, that’s a historic dining spot, and now it’ll just be yet another athletic clothing store selling stuff you can find anywhere. Continue reading →

Photo by JackDean085.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• New tea room open on Prospect by the couple behind Macaron Bee.
• Remember, check out the awesome Kojo Nnamdi at the Q & A Cafe next friday.

2700 block of P St.

GM was at the Hyde playground with his daughter this Sunday before the storm moved in, and witnessed the procession filmed above. It was a pretty massive group of GU students protesting the proposed Keystone Pipeline. After protesting in front of Secretary of State John Kerry’s house on O St., the group headed down to the White House.

There must have been nearly a thousand people in the march. All in all, a pretty impressive display of civic engagement. Prolly won’t make a difference, but still, good on ’em.

Photo by Ron Cogswell.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• This is a bummer: acclaimed chef that planned Georgetown restaurant pulls out after he can’t “make the numbers work”.
• Is “Georgetown” a code-word?

1500 block of 28th St.

Last weekend, the New York Times ran an ode to the marvelous American elm in its winter splendor:

THEY looked, at first glance, like trees in a paint-by-number picture, snow outlining branches in idiot-proof chiaroscuro — a child’s “Winter Scene.” Yet as I stood in a recent wet snowstorm on 110th Street, looking down Fifth Avenue along Central Park, I saw that the elms flanking the sidewalk had an aspect in winter less observable in other seasons, when their branches are cloaked in leaves.

Joined overhead, the topmost limbs rose airily to form a long vaulted corridor stretching to 59th Street and the park’s southern perimeter. It was as if on this west side of Fifth Avenue there existed a chamber, a “tabernacle of the air,” to use a purplish phrase the 19th-century orator and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher favored when describing groves of elm.

Trees are ordinarily most admired in spring blossom or summer abundance. But the striking architecture of the American elm is–as the Times piece notes–in most display in the depth of winter (particularly after a snow fall)

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Continue reading →