Photo by Hewy.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- Philly restaurant Capriotti’s in talks for Georgetown location.
- El Centro running a mole festival through November.
The Morning Metropolitan
Filed under Uncategorized
Georgetown a Foodie Desert?
Photo by Gina Jones.
The sad closure of Cannon’s got GM thinking: is Georgetown a foodie desert? In other words, does Georgetown lack a strong gourmet food culture?
Part of what makes a gourmet food culture includes restaurants. And there’s obviously a very old debate about the aggregate quality of Georgetown restaurants. Yes, it is weighed down with a lot of tourist-oriented restaurants. And some of the finer dining options are sometimes accused of resting on their decades old laurels. But a lot of it is just perception. For instance, in GM’s opinion a restaurant like Capitol Prague would get much more press if it were open on 14th St.
But what GM wants to discuss more is not the food that people buy at Georgetown restaurants, but rather the food they make in their own homes.
Now, GM obviously has no idea the quality of food that gets made every night in the neighborhood. But what he can see is that there’s not much retail in the neighborhood that caters to homemade gourmet cooking.
With Cannon’s gone, the only shop in Georgetown that sells unprepared food is Stachowski’s. Sure, there’s also Dean and Deluca, but they’ve basically eliminated their produce, meat and fish sections. Now it’s almost entirely prepared foods. Continue reading
Filed under Retail
The Morning Metropolitan
Photo by Ehpien.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- First man to wear the Jack the Bulldog mascot costume was killed in a car crash in New York.
- GM reposted his article on Georgetown theaters on Greater Greater Washington and got some interesting comments.
Filed under Uncategorized
Cannons to Close, Ending an Era
Ever since Cannons Seafood closed for unspecified medical problems a few months ago, GM has heard rumors that the closure wasn’t temporary but permanent. Sadly, Carol Joynt verified the rumor yesterday. She writes on her Washingtonian blog:
Bobby Moore contacted Washingtonian to announce he’s decided to close the business for good and lease the space to his 31st Street next-door neighbor, Il Canale Italian restaurant…Moore, 47, says the “medical reasons” are simple wear and tear on his body…He says he sat down to discuss it with his family recently, and they decided to “close [the restaurant] altogether.”
This is a sad day for Georgetown. Moore’s family has owned and run Cannon’s since it opened in 1937. After a time operating at the old Georgetown Market (now occupied by Dean and Deluca), Moore’s father bought the current building on 31st St. in 1966. So with the store’s closure, Georgetown is not just losing its only fish monger, it’s losing one of its last long-term family owned businesses. (The only ones left that GM can think of are the resilient Phoenix, owned and run by Betsy and Bill Hays since 1955 and Martin’s, owned and operated by the Martin family since 1933.) Continue reading
Filed under Restaurants, Retail
The Morning Metropolitan
Photo by Ron Cogswell.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- This is interesting: Number of tavern licenses in Georgetown has dipped below six, meaning a new one could be issued for the first time in 20 years. GM’s believes that all this allows for is for an existing restaurant license to convert to a tavern license. There’s still a cap on new licenses under the moratorium generally.
- More info on the new Georgetown dorm.
- Want to help the library? The Friends of Georgetown Library is holding a book sale this Saturday at the library from 10 to 3. Check it out! (yuk, yuk, yuk…)
Filed under Uncategorized
Georgetown Theater Buildings Survive
Photo by Constantine Hannaher.
Jonathan O’Connell of the Washington Post ran a fantastic feature yesterday on the history of theaters in DC, with a map showing where historic theaters were and existing theaters are. Definitely check it out. What struck GM when reading it is that all the buildings that once held movie theaters in Georgetown are to a large extent intact from their movie days. Of course, none of the historic theaters still are theaters, but it’s still a good excuse to tally them up!
Above you see a photo of the Key Theater. Of the historic theaters, it was on the young side. It was opened in 1969 and closed in 1997. Nowadays it (along with the former Roy Rogers next door) is occupied by Restoration Hardware.
Photo by Joe.
Here is the Biograph. It was even younger than the Key Theater. It was built in 1976 in a former car dealership and lasted until 1996. Like the Georgetown Theater discussed below, in its later years it mixed art house with adult fare, but was unable to stave off closure. Like many former theaters in DC, it now houses a CVS.
Photo by Tony.
Of course, we all know that the Georgetown theater building, gutted and decrepit as it may be, is still around. The facade as we now know it, however, is thankfully not long for this world. Architect Robert Bell has a contract to buy the building and plans to restore the neon sign and rip off the ugly formstone (and maybe send it Baltimore where they can’t get enough of it).
Bell only intends to restore the facade to its state immediately before the formstone was applied. That is some simple stucco style, but unfortunately GM couldn’t locate a picture of what that looked like. Bell confirmed that he had no plans to restore the facade of the Dumbarton Theater, which was what became the Georgetown in the 1950s. It was opened in 1913, shortly before this photo was taken:
The neon sign itself with be red and the frame of the sign with be painted back to its original black color. GM predicts it will displace the old Riggs bank dome as the iconic Georgetown image once it’s finally repaired.
Photo by Bill Helms.
This obviously isn’t a theater, but the Tommy Hilfiger stands at the site of the former Lido Theater. The theater was open from 1909 to 1948. GM unfortunately could not find any picture of the original theater. The facade was changed significantly for Tommy Hilfiger, here’s what it looked like in the 1990s (on the far left):
GM’s not certain, but chances are that this isn’t really the original building. It just looks way more mid-century than turn of the century. The theater shut in 1948, and that building looks awfully 1950s-ish, so GM suspects that’s when the current structure was built. So maybe this is one that should be considered “lost”.
Photo by NCinDC.
This is also obviously not a photo of a theater, but before this building held Nike or Barnes and Noble, it held the Cerebus 1-2-3 theater. Like many of the large and similar looking buildings on 14th St., this property was originally built as a car dealership. The theater occupied the space from 1970 to 1993.
Photo by Kiev Dinamo.
Last, but not least, on O’Connell’s list is the Foundry Theater. The photo above shows it as it is today, but it hasn’t really changed much since the theater closed in 2002. It was the youngest theater on this list, having been opened in 1984. For all intents and purposes, it was replaced by the Georgetown AMC theater, which opened the same year.
So at one point in the late 1970s, there were four different movie theaters open in Georgetown. Now there’s just one (two if you count Letelier Theater) but we’ve got almost all the old shells. In the age of Netflix and on-demand movies, maybe we should be happy we’ve even got that.
Filed under Uncategorized
The Morning Metropolitan
Photo by Ron Cogswell.
Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:
- The sad demolition of the neglected home on Dent Place finally moves ahead. (Neighbors are right to cheer the demolition, given that it is an eyesore and a hazard as it is, but it is terribly sad that such a historic home was allowed to fall into such disrepair thus requiring the demolition).
- “Verizon Building” condos looking for 2014 delivery date.
Filed under Uncategorized
You must be logged in to post a comment.