DC Firehouses not only reflect the geographic expansion of the capital, but also the city as a place of diverse and vibrant communities. A boom in the construction of municipal buildings took place during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, the most critical years of the City Beautiful Movement; included in this wave of new municipal buildings were sixteen firehouses, constructed between 1897 to 1916. The development of the DC Fire Department supplied…

With 8,000 contributing buildings, the Capitol Hill Historic District is the largest of DC's historic districts. In fact, it includes 2x as many historic properties as the next largest historic district, Georgetown. The historic district — stretching from the US Capitol Building on the west to Lincoln Park on the east, and from Union Station on the north to Navy Yard on the south — was established in 1973 and has been expanded three times: in 1976, 2003, and 2015. Just northeast of the historic…

Despite being a city of memorials, museums, and government buildings designed in grand and traditional architectural styles that speak to our nation's history and democracy, Washington, DC, has plenty of Modern architecture. Visitors may notice this Modernism while using the Metro, with its stations and their famous vaulted, concrete ceilings. The system, which first opened from Rhode Island Avenue to Farragut Square in 1976 (the Red Line), was designed in a Brutalist style by architect Harry…

This Commemorative Memorials and Monuments tour might seem self-explanatory, but the sites on this tour were curated with certain parameters in mind. First, the monuments chosen here focus on individuals that weren’t directly involved in war - the Civil War monuments and American Revolution statuary already address these (these sites will be listed at the bottom of this tour route for reference). For this same reason, this tour does not include war-themed monuments or memorials. Instead, it…

The Star Theater, opened in 1906, constituted the first motion picture theater in Washington, DC. Audiences fell in love with similar small neighborhood theaters in the following years; between 1909 and 1914, the number of movie theaters in the District increased from eleven to sixty-nine screens. The 9th Street NW theater district (from Pennsylvania Avenue north to Mount Vernon Square) housed most of these early cinemas, yet subsequent advancements in technology led to better movies, bustling…