The Georgetown Metropolitan

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Early voting has begun! You can vote in person at the Georgetown library through to Sunday between 8:30 AM and 7:00 PM each day. On Election Day, Hardy Middle School is Georgetown’s voting location (although you can vote at any center throughout the city). If you live in northwest Georgetown, please vote for Christopher “Topher” Mathews for ANC!!!!
• Did you know that GU has its own farmers market?

3000 block of R St.

Happy Halloween! GM would like to celebrate by reprinting a Georgetown ghost story as told by Tim Krepp in his fantastic Ghosts of Georgetown (which you should buy!):

Good morning Georgetown and Happy Halloween! Here’s the latest:

• Chicken Pot Pieathon returns! Get your orders in now!
• Great behind the scene photo from the filming of the Exorcist on the GU campus.

3000 block of R St.

News Tuesday night of a fire at Blues Alley got GM thinking about other fires throughout Georgetown’s history. And it doesn’t take a lot of effort to remember some of them, because there have been a bunch of significant ones! Here are just a small sampling of the infernos that have raged in the neighborhood:

Georgetown Library

The most recent notable fire surely was the August 2007 conflagration that struck the Georgetown neighborhood library. It was suspected to have been started by workers using heat guns to remove paint during renovations. (Oddly the historic Eastern Market also was gutted by fire the exact same day.)

If it weren’t for the quick thinking of Jerry McCoy at the Peabody Room, a whole treasure trove of Georgetown history would have been destroyed by the fire. That’s because McCoy thought to bring in a document freezer truck from the Library of Congress to safely protect the documents that were drenched by the fire hoses.

It took years of construction, but the renewed library opened October 2010 with a Peabody Room still full of priceless Georgetown history.

Photo by Sidney Lawrence.

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Application to convert 30th St. mansion into hotel dropped.
• Update on the Blues Alley fire.

When is a landmark not a landmark? That is a question that the DC Historical Preservation Review Board is scheduled to decide in December. Specifically, they are being asked to consider removing historic landmark status from the property at 1524 33rd St.

You may recognize the photo above from an article that GM wrote last March questioning the supposed history of the building. In short, it has been long claimed that this property was once a notable 18th century tavern where figures such as Thomas Jefferson once dined. It was supposedly called the Yellow Tavern and/or the White Horse Inn. When the house was put up for sale, GM dug a little into the story, expecting to find evidence of its historic importance. Instead he discovered that this property was almost certainly not either the Yellow Tavern or the White Horse Inn, despite the large brass plaque on the front of the house declaring it to be. It wasn’t even clear to GM that it ever was a tavern at all.

Perhaps inspired by GM’s report, the Post did its own digging into the story and uncovered a hidden history to how the property “became” a landmark. After concluding like GM that there was no evidence it was the Yellow Tavern, writer Kathy Orton wrote:

Good morning Georgetown, here’s the latest:

• Fire at Blues Alley last night!
• Here’s some more info on the fire.