Lost Washington, D.C. by John DeFerrari

Author:John DeFerrari
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

By the following year, the Kenmore had closed, and the building was vacant. The Post reported in August that passersby invariably wanted to know which window was the one to the murder room (that one over there, on the fourth floor, without a curtain). “Many strangers, who are unaccompanied by a resident of Washington, and desiring to know the exact location of the room in which the tragedy occurred, frequently go out of their way and make inquiries of the firemen of Truck A, which is located directly opposite the hotel.” 6

The hotel was later reopened for several years as the Hotel Burton and, after that, as the Washington Inn. The existence of a fire station across the street came in handy early in 1912 when the hotel caught fire. Everyone was saved unharmed from the severely damaged building, except for “Cap,” a beloved little fox terrier that had suffocated behind a closed door. The police suspected (with what evidence, it is not clear) that a former janitor who had been fired a month previously had set the fire.

By this time, the sweeping vision of the McMillan Commission for a grand, monumental core to the city had firmly taken hold, and plans were afoot to raze whole blocks of the old brick houses around the Mall that had witnessed so much history. In 1913, the government bought up all the buildings on either side of the 200 block of North Capital Street in preparation for creating a vast open plaza that would stretch between the Capitol and Union Station. The buildings were all promptly demolished, although construction of the plaza was not completed until 1931. In 1932, on the occasion of the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth, the District of Columbia donated a historical marker that was set in place in the plaza at the location of the townhouses that originally had been built by our first president. It is the only reminder left of this site’s rich and dramatic past.

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