Ever wondered what those giant concrete cylinders lined up along Michigan Avenue are? Well, if you lived in D.C. at the turn of the twentieth century, they might have saved your life.
In 1866, State Department employees were forced out of their old offices in the Northeast Executive Building because an extension to the Treasury Department was being constructed on that site. As a result, they moved into the Washington City Orphan Asylum, a small and unassuming brick building on the corner of 14th and S streets NW. Though the move was less than ideal, the walls of the new State Department would soon see major historical and diplomatic events unfold. One sleepless night in particular occurred on March 30, 1867: when Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the Alaska purchase.
Scout Joe Cambria of the Washington Senators was in Florida in the summer of 1938, seeking out new recruits for D.C.’s major league baseball team. When he watched Forrest “Lefty” Brewer pitch for the St. Augustine Saints that summer, the scout had no doubt that this was a player who could help turn around the struggling D.C. club. On June 6, 1938, Brewer threw a no hitter in the minor leagues. Exactly six years later he jumped out of a plane over Normandy, France on D-Day.
By mid 1944, Washingtonians had known for some time that a major invasion of Europe was in store. But when news of D-Day came on June 6, 1944, it was still a sobering event. The city reacted with a combination of pause and activity.
When I.M. Pei, the celebrated Chinese-American architect from New York, was selected to design a new addition for D.C.’s National Gallery of Art, the Washington Post’s architecture critic remarked it was “no doubt one of the toughest [assignments] since Michelangelo was asked to put a dome on St. Peter’s.” Pei knew it would be a difficult task to build the new gallery, but that did not deter him. This is the story of how one of Washington's most unique buildings came to be.
On the evening of October 30, 1944, hundreds of people filled the seats of the Coolidge Auditorium in the Library of Congress for the 10th annual festival of chamber music. In the last performance of the night, the audience was transported to rural, 1800’s Pennsylvania through Aaron Copland’s musical masterpiece, Appalachian Spring. The ballet, featuring choreography by renowned American dancer, Martha Graham, enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive premiere that night, and became the most well-known piece of music commissioned by the Coolidge Foundation and Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge—the “patron saint of American music.”
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation was a controversial blockbuster and a D.C. schoolteacher, Angelina Weld Grimké, was a writer unafraid to use her art as form of protest. This is the story of "Rachel," an acclaimed anti-lynching play written in Washington, D.C.
Back in 1887, the Baltimore Sun was looking for a bold way to celebrate its 50th anniversary and to declare itself one of the nation's premiere newspapers. What better way to do that than with the first skyscraper in the nation's capital?
For one season the American Basketball Association set up shop in the Nation's Capital, as the defending league champion — and star player Rick Barry — moved from Oakland to D.C. But almost as soon as the Washington Caps arrived in 1969, they were gone. So why didn't D.C.'s team last?
“Anyone who thinks anyone is on the streets by choice is saying that out of a bed; a warm, comfortable home with a roof over their heads, money in their pocket and food in their stomachs.” - Mitch Snyder
Faced with a growing homeless crisis, the Reagan administration made a surprising policy decision in 1983. Vacant federal buildings became available to “local governments and charitable organizations” for use as emergency shelters at a “cost basis.” The properties included thousands of HUD and Department of Defense owned structures across the country, and one particularly notable building in the shadow of the United States Capitol. But while the new policy seemed to be a step forward, Mitch Snyder's fight for D.C.'s homeless was just beginning.
