Many a time I would be looking for a cab out in front of Union Station and I would be accosted by gypsy cab drivers instead. Hey, they are cheaper, but you have to give them directions the whole way home. I have more memories of this loggia shrouded in darkness, as I waited for…
Tag: Washington DC
Cairo Apartments
The tallest apartment building in DC, the Cairo Building, is also over one hundred years old. Why is the tallest building in DC so old? Because shortly after its construction, officials became alarmed that the monumental core of the city would be dwarfed by skyscrapers, perhaps evening taller than the Washington Monument. The city passed…
Union Station, Washington, DC
Once slated for demolition like its cousin in New York, Penn Station, Washington’s Union Station has been gloriously restored to its original grandeur, providing a fitting entrance to the city of Washington.
Central Market, Washington, DC
Originally the National Archives was the site of the Central Market of Washington, DC. It was demolished because the government didn’t want such a messy, disorganized building right in the middle of the monumental core. The square is still lined by many of the buildings that once looked onto the market square. Miraculously, they have…
National Building Museum Interior, Washington, DC
Inside, the National Building Museum features one of the most dramatic spaces in the world, with the largest intact interior Corinthian columns. The space has similarities to Roman thermae such as the Michelangelo-renovated Santa Maria degli Angeli in the former Baths of Diocletian. If you look closely, there are rows of portrait busts that repeat…
National Building Museum
Built by Montgomery Meigs in the last years of the Nineteenth Century, the National Building Museum began as the Pension Bureau for the Federal Government. It is still one of my favorite buildings in the city, and takes its inspiration from the Michelangelo-designed Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Check out the National Building Museum’s website on…
Dupont Circle, Washington, DC
Dupont Circle, once the center of the wealthy at the turn of the Twentieth Century, went through a period of decline in the 1950’s, the stately mansions being carved up into boarding houses, until it was reborn in the 1960’s as the center of DC counterculture. It has now so heavily gentrified that the word…