One Dupont is one ugly building. The buildings around the circle should be more iconic and take better advantage of it.

by Nick on Mar 25, 2009 4:02 pm  

You can catch a glimpse of People's and the rest of the Circle during the car chase at the end of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

by Reid on Mar 25, 2009 4:06 pm  

as far as I can recall, and I grew up here, this was the only People's in the city that stayed open 24 hours a day- all thru the riots and different protests and crime waves. DC needs to bring back more 24 hour businesses like we used to have.

Also- the DC Historical Society is in part responsible for the demolition of an entire row along NH Avenue- back in the 70's- they sold the buildings in order to maintain and renovate the old Heurich schloss that , thank god, was never wrecked. But they made an ugly trade off that should have been better thought out. DuPont, and the area to the south, all the way to K Street NW, was an incredible showcase of superb architecture. This neighborhood was the biggest- and least hearalded loss of historic buildings in the entire history of DC. It's loss of important buildings dwarfs the loss of SW or the loss of neighborhoods around the SE-SW freeway and the horrible architect of the Capitol.K street- a mostly bland and incredibly ugly office park- was once a lovely street with buildings housing the wealthiest Americans.

by w on Mar 25, 2009 4:43 pm  

Great new feature! And check out all of the historic photos of Dupont Circle at http://www.dupontcircle.biz/galhist.htm

This photo is my favorite: http://www.dupontcircle.biz/dcl/DupontCircleVehicleUnderpass1950.jpg

Dupont Circle used to have more social events - there was a lit-up Christmas Tree (stopped when hippies kept vandalizing it), there used to be an Easter parade down COnnecticut Ave, and there used to be military concerts on Navy Day, since Dupont was a naval hero. That stopped when Armed Forces Day replaced the various components' celebrations in the name of unity.

by Michael on Mar 25, 2009 5:22 pm  

as far as I can recall, and I grew up here, this was the only People's in the city that stayed open 24 hours a day- all thru the riots and different protests and crime waves. DC needs to bring back more 24 hour businesses like we used to have.

by w on Mar 25, 2009 4:43 pm

The Rite Aid at Connecticut and Fla stays open 24 hours, I think.

by Do you know who I am? on Mar 25, 2009 6:58 pm  

and the cvs at 22 and L (Ritz) is open 24/7 too.

by Matthew on Mar 25, 2009 10:17 pm  

The Thomas Circle People's apparently was open 24 hours in those days. My grad school advisor worked his way through college in rock bands and they used to finish up after the bars had closed at the soda fountain there with the working girls and the cops.

by Rich on Mar 25, 2009 11:26 pm  

One Dupont Circle was built shortly after the 1968 photograph was taken. When I first visited Washington in 1969 One Dupont had been built.

The Peoples Drug fassod was still on the building well into the 1990s.

by Sand Box John on Mar 25, 2009 11:35 pm  

@ w:

That's really interesting to know about New Hampshire Avenue. The dark ages of urbanism seem to stradle the height of modernist orthadoxy, the 50's to 70's being the heart of it. DC has retained a significant proportion of their historical core when you compare it to most medium sized cities.

While the preservation movement is far from perfect I wish some on this blog would consider what they have actually done to save what's left. With out them the modernist planners would have made DC into one big highway with glass towers in "the park".

by Thayer-D on Mar 26, 2009 6:41 am  

In 1968, the area below Dupont Circle would have been closed, right? Depressing to think that 40 years later, still NOBODY has been able to properly develop that space.

by monkeyrotica on Mar 26, 2009 7:59 am  

@W

Quite alot of people(myself included) live in those big ugly buildings south of Dupont on New Hampshire. Where would you have us all go? To the suburbs? But then who would shop your 24 hr. stores?

I think you need people to have a vibrant city. And if that means allowing developers to knock down some of the old mansions or row houses, than so be it.

by Daniel on Mar 26, 2009 10:21 am  

and the cvs at 22 and L (Ritz) is open 24/7 too.

by Matthew on Mar 25, 2009 10:17 pm

I think you mean 21st. Does it really stay open 24/7? How lonely.

I think you need people to have a vibrant city. And if that means allowing developers to knock down some of the old mansions or row houses, than so be it.

by Daniel on Mar 26, 2009 10:21 am

I'm not sure that knocking down old mansions is really necessary, though.

by Do You Know Who I Am? on Mar 26, 2009 10:32 am  

I'm pretty sure that both the Walgreens and the CVS by the Ritz on M st are 24 hours. They're not that bad though- they get alot of traffic from the hotels.

by Daniel on Mar 26, 2009 10:39 am  

@W There shouldn't be a trade-off between density and aesthetics. It's quite possible to build large apartment buildings that don't make your eyes bleed, the problem was in the postwar period most developers were too lazy or inept to bother.

by Steve on Mar 26, 2009 10:47 am  

Steve,

Aesthetics didn't matter in the postwar period because architecture schools fell under the spell of the European Modernists who's attack on aesthetics was a reflection of their disaffection with their society's values. American developers ever happy to save a dollar grabbed on to the latest and greatest as promoted by architects.

by Thayer-D on Mar 26, 2009 11:13 am  

So here's a question. Say theoretically that from 1960 on all "old" DC received the same historic preservation protection as Dupont now has. No knocking down historic buildings. Most post 60's buildings wouldn't exist or would be much smaller.

What would it look like now? What would the city be like? How would it have affected regional development, mass transit, etc.? How would people feel about the change?

I obviously have my own opinions, but I am curious to hear what others think.

by Daniel on Mar 26, 2009 11:33 am  

Daniel,

It's not a either or question. What if architecture schools put out students who actually tried to make their buildings as attractive as the "old" DC buildings most people seem to worry about. My quess is there wouldn't be such a need for preservationists because the new buildings would be as lovable as the ones they're replacing.

There have always been Historical Societies of one sort or another, but the mosern preservaiton movement was a direct result of the vast urban renweal efforts of the 60's etc., and those where a direct result (partially) from the modernist ideology that "historic" architecture and Victorian architecture specifically was a bad thing.

by Thayer-D on Mar 26, 2009 12:22 pm  

In both photos, are the benches around the circle the same ones? Maybe the current photo just has new benches that look like the old ones?

by Steven on Mar 26, 2009 12:35 pm  

Thayer you make a lot of great points. And Daniel- Im all for having places for folks to live- but DC actually had almost 400K more residents after WW2 and we did not have those ugly modernista boxes either.

As for 24 hour places, Im talking about the places that STAYED 24 hours and didnt change after the riots and demonstrations. You have to understand, that DC went thru a huge crime epidemic from the late 60's up into the early 80's- when it kind of settled down.Then it went up again.

Then it went down.

I was not talking about all of the present day 24 hours places- but the one at DuPont in particular. Thank god for the others- and hopefully more will start opening later.

by w on Mar 26, 2009 12:55 pm  

I think it's interesting that Dupont Circle is one of the most praised urban places in DC, but the neighborhood is overwhelmingly modernistic; that the land use park's shape really carried the area despite buildings some people here don't like.

It is also interesting that the People's drug sign is that same kind of mall architecture that Apple tried to put up in round 3 of that fight.

by цarьchitect on Mar 26, 2009 1:26 pm  

Thayer you make a lot of great points. And Daniel- Im all for having places for folks to live- but DC actually had almost 400K more residents after WW2 and we did not have those ugly modernista boxes either.

As for 24 hour places, Im talking about the places that STAYED 24 hours and didnt change after the riots and demonstrations.

by w on Mar 26, 2009 12:55 pm

You bring up a great point, and it must be one reason that I am dubious about plans to "increase density" by putting up high rises. But really, was it the presence of larger families that accounts for the difference?

by keyboarding kate on Mar 26, 2009 1:57 pm  

Kate, it's also due to the increase in institutional, governmental, and commercial uses that have replaced a lot of downtown residential districts.

by цarьchitect on Mar 26, 2009 2:05 pm  

in some parts of DC, there large residential alley areas, densely packed- but not all of them were bad places.

Yes- the gov't and pirate sector office buildings rose up after 1940 and took out a huge amount of housing that was here. Just around the US Capitol- hundreds, if not thousands of residential dwellings were destroyed in the post war period. Not to mention the SwSe freeway that destroyed some of the most historic buildings in the city.

And the freeway went in after the preservation people had organized. They obviously were not effective in stopping it.

by w on Mar 26, 2009 2:18 pm  

It's also a little disingenuous to say that there were 400k more people here following WWII. DC's peak population according to the Census was in 1950, at 802,000. It's now in the 590,000 range. We're talking more like 200,000 people, not 400,000.

As the Tsarchitect notes, some of that is due to the transition of dense residential areas to commercial ones (Chinatown comes to mind). Another reason isn't so much the decrease in families, but the decrease in the size of families across the US.

by Alex B. on Mar 26, 2009 2:27 pm  

If you look at the census figures, DC does have a much lower percentage of children per household than US average or the surrounding suburbs, so yes that has affected how many people live here.

Look at Anacostia. Not much infill since the 80's, but its still losing alot people.

DC is now disproportionately aging working class/poor African American residents & younger, educated and childless couples/singles. That equals far fewer residents per house hold.

by Daniel on Mar 26, 2009 2:58 pm  

the 800K number , of course, is a best guess.

During WW2, many, many homes, including some of my family's former homes, were converted into boarding houses to accomodate the gigantic influx of workers into the city. Other estimates have the city's population at closer to a million during and right after WW2. Many of these tenants were likely not counted.

The same thing happened in the Civil War here in DC. During that time, it is said that only Philadelphia and New York had a larger population.

Most people who are not from here have no idea at all what this place was like. I can still recall the quonset huts on the national Mall, and the homes being converted back into single family housing in the 70's when I was a tot.

SE DC had a lot of this kind of conversion- as the US Naval Gun Factory was the LARGEST employer in the city- over 25,000 people worked there at one time. The impact of these factories and foundries is ALWAYS played down by "historians" who are mostly folks that are not from the city or live in NW DC and seldom care to learn about the "rest " of DC. Places like DuPont also had huge change overs in population during WW2.

Columbia Heights was , prior to WW2 , a very prosperous area, converted, and then allowed to deteriorate.

by w on Mar 26, 2009 3:20 pm  

w, do you have a source for that population estimate, or is it just a guess? I'd love to see their methodology for what the Census might have missed.

To be technical, the 802k number is not a guess, it is exactly what the Census counted. There are certainly holes in the methodology, but it is not a 'guess' under any circumstances.

by Alex B. on Mar 26, 2009 3:51 pm  

Thanks for an interesting bit of history. But it doesn't do alot to bolster your claim:

"but DC actually had almost 400K more residents after WW2 and we did not have those ugly modernista boxes either"

So it appears that the answer is to live in overcrowded rooming houses?

That said, its not that I'm in love with the big ugly 60's apartment building. I would be thrilled to have elegant pre-war buildings like "The Wyoming" in Kalorama. But I am happy that they built something denser in that area.

by Daniel on Mar 26, 2009 3:52 pm  

We should give people the choice. If they want to live in smaller spaces with more people in a rooming house, they should be able. I know many people in group houses, for example, who are perfectly happy. Yet after WWII our laws gradually started outlawing these forms, which only raised the cost of living in walkable neighborhoods.

by David Alpert on Mar 26, 2009 4:01 pm  

Thayer-d, have you seen the documentary film 'Helvetica'? I think you'd enjoy it. It's thouroughly amusing, and interesting! (Your comment above about euro designers' rejecting the pre-war culture is a major theme-)

by Bianchi on Mar 26, 2009 4:33 pm  

24 hr pharmacies-there's some zoning reg that requires a certain number of pharmacies to be available 24/7 for the obvious reason that there can be a health emergency anytime that requies a prescription.

by Bianchi on Mar 26, 2009 4:35 pm  

I used to work in One Dupont Circle - it was built in 1969 according to the plaque in the lobby. While it's not a beautiful building, it's much better than 11 Dupont Circle, the building with Books-a-Million on the street level. I heard that the Dupont Hotel (former Jury's, under renovation) is a protected building as an example of modernist architecture - can anyone verify that?

by AMDCer on Mar 26, 2009 5:00 pm  

As David pointed out "scientific" post war zoning prohibited many forms of residential housing such as above stores, in alleys, or auxilary apartments to say nothing about the whole sale demolition of residential areas. But who's fussing over the exact number, this city could accept another 500,000 people and still retain the existing mansions of DuPont. There's so much fallow land all around the shattered diamond. What's missing is the political will to lay out an intelligent blue print to get us to where we're going whether we like it or not.

by Thayer-D on Mar 27, 2009 6:06 am  

Increasing density will be difficult as long as "historic preservation" is synonymous with "low density".

The kind of zoning regulations you are talking about have their faults, but so does anti-density, preservation at all costs planning.

by Daniel on Mar 27, 2009 9:50 am  

Did anyone notice that the Diamond cab in the 1968 photo looks just like the Diamond cabs of today? Those guys really gotta get new cars

by dcdc on Mar 27, 2009 7:31 pm  

...post war zoning... T-Dawg, that zoning isn't just postwar, unless you mean the Franco-Prussian War. City Beautiful architects and all kinds of Victorian reformists were harping against alley zoning, density, mixed use, and total reconstruction of neighborhoods. The real devious inventions of the postwar period were the automobile suburb and shopping mall.

by цarьchitect on Mar 28, 2009 9:51 pm  

Rather, that should say "and arguing for total reconstruction of neighborhoods." Robert Moses was born of the same mother as Jacob Riis.

by цarьchitect on Mar 29, 2009 1:52 am  

Does anyone remember, if not exactly, approx, when this turned into a CVS? Thanks!

by ESP on May 30, 2009 7:39 pm