DC By the Book

Excerpt: But only that NW corner of the city seemed to count, everything interesting crammed into it, from movie palaces like Loew's Capitol to department stores like Garfinckel's, from restaurants like Olmstead's to hotels like the Ambassador, where I was staying. Along NW's 16th Street and Massachusetts Avenue were sixty or so embassies and chancelleries, not to mention various union headquarters and trade associations... The only action was the occasional cocktail lounge, like the Ambassador's High Hat; first-class hookers and bored government girls made it easy to get cheaply and/or casually laid in that town; or so i understand...

Excerpt: Many of the important politicians who didn't live in suburban Virginia or Maryland lived in NW, including most congressmen, as well as the client who'd summoned me here--James Vincent Forrestal, who rented a big colonial house on Woodland Drive behind the swanky Shoreham Hotel and overlooking the leafy vastness of Rock Creek Park

Excerpt: I tooled my dark green rental Ford down M Street, where I left the car in a parking garage near the Francis Scott Key Bridge; I walked away humming "The Star Spangled Banner," jaywalking across to 34th Street and--pausing once to take in the dramatic view of the canal and the Potomac at my back--trudged up its steep hill.

Excerpt: Back when the rest of the District of Columbia was swampland, Georgetown--in the city's furthermost NW section--was a booming colonial seaport. Despite the lovely landscaped acreage of Georgetown University in its midst, the village had declined into a run-down near -slum by '33, when FDR's New Dealers and Harvard brain trust types had arrived on the scene, looking for lodging. These pillars of social conscience soon displaced much of the village's Negro populace, and ramshackle former mansions that had housed ten or twelve colored families were renovated into suitable quarters for one wealthy white clan. Negroes were driven out of their timeworn wooden frame houses and crumbling stone cottages and weathered brick former slave quarters, which were quaintly though elaborately remodeled into dwellings befitting liberal white folk. Now, in 1949, Georgetown was Greenwich Village gone to graduate school: within these reconditioned slums dwelled professors, artists, congressmen, and cabinet members. But what these latter-day carpetbaggers hadn't anticipated was the ancillary impact of this transformation: tourists... In from the hinterlands on safari, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Buck (and all the little Bucks) trekked through a jungle of shaded streets, seeking the big game of formal mansions on tree-flung manicured lawns, and the smaller game of cozy cottages set flush against sidewalks. In the commercial section--mostly M Street and Wisconsin Avenue--Great White Hunters from Nebraska and Idaho could take a breather from the chase and duck into cozy cafes or charming little antique shops or bookstores in ancient houses with brand-new storefronts. ---------- Probably no better example of gentrification in Georgetown is 1066 Wisconsin Avenue…from fire station to Frye shoe store. Incorporated in 1817 as the Vigilant Institution, an all-volunteer fire buck brigade, the Vigilant Fire Co. was constructed in 1844. It housed the first steam fire engine ever used in the city and is the oldest extant firehouse structure in Washington, DC. One of the most beloved 19th century members of the company was Bush, the old fire dog, who died of poison July 5, 1869. And no, Bush is not buried here.

Excerpt: Finally she turned onto Wisconsin Avenue, leaving the residential neighborhood for the heart of Georgetown's commercial district, where cafes, restaurants and bars were courting the remaining tourist trade. Now I had pedestrians to blend in with, storefront windows to catch her reflection in and otherwise conduct a normal tail; and before long she had headed into Martin's Bar, which surprised me some.

Excerpt: The "Most feared and hated man in Washington, D.C."--as the Washington Times-Herald had termed him, with neither affection nor irony--lived in a typically dignified Georgetown townhouse so evocative of bygone days that you might expect to see a gloved gent in stovepipe and muttonchops stroll down the steps to the cobblestone lave where a horse-drawn coach awaited. But on this sunny Sunday afternoon on Dumbarton Avenue, you would instead have seen only a gloveless guy in a tan fedora and dark blue shantung suit going up those steps, and trying the polished brass knocker at the door of the home/office of Drew Pearson.

Excerpt: But our destination proved to be past the White House, flanking it on the east, at Pennsylvania and 15th Street: a gray granite Greek Revival-style structure that rose five stories and consumed two blocks.I'd been here before--the Treasury Building--on various visits to Elmer Irey and Frank J. Wilson, the Capone case IRS agents I'd seen Glenn Ford playing a composite of, this afternoon.

Excerpt: A stairway from 14th and H Streets led up to the Casino Royal, which was not, strictly speaking, a casino at all: there were illegal gambling joints within D.C. environs, but this wasn't one of them. It was instead one of Washington's two principal nightclubs (the Lotus being the other) and--with its prom-night glitter, popular prices and endless dance floor--a poor excuse for a Chicagoan's Chez Paree or a New Yorker's El Morocco. ---------- In 1953 local bar owner Leon Ziegler was looking to open a nightspot on a larger scale. He bought a struggling Chinese restaurant on this site called Bamboo Gardens, renovated the interior, kept the staff, added American dishes to the Chinese menu, and reopened as the Casino Royale. The main attraction of the new 600 seat nightclub were the thrice-nightly one-hour floor variety shows typical of the time – signers, comics, dancers, building up to a headliner who performed for about 20 minutes. Ella Fitzgerald was the first headliner, and other notable acts who played the Casino were Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, Dinah Washington, Bobby Darin, Chubby Checker, Peggy Lee, Frankie Avalon, Nat King Cole, Andy Griffith, Bob Hope, and Mae West. A former employee said “It was a time when money spoke. We always had too many people on the floor. If we’d had a fire, it would have been a disaster. I’d see the officials go into Mr. Zeiger’s office and stay in there about an hour. They’d smoke some cigars, and everything would be okay. They’d all come and get their payoff.” But within a decade, the money of television had spoken more loudly. The Casino’s top rate for performers was $7,500 for a week-long engagement, which was less than the Ed Sullivan Show paid for a ten-minute segment. The Casino couldn’t compete, and in 1964 Jayne Mansfield was the last live act at the Casino. Zeigler turned it into a dance hall and finally closed it down in 1972. For the next fifteen years, the site was occupied an adult bookstore and X-rated clubs until the entire area was redeveloped in the late 1980s.

Excerpt: Due west of the white-marble temple of the Lincoln Memorial, and bordering the low-slung but formidable granite-and-concrete Arlington Bridge, yawned a convex arc of granite steps known as the Water Gate, a couple hundred feet wide at the top, fanning out gently to maybe another thirty feet wide at the bottom, these steep steps formed an ornamental buttress between the bridge and the roadway ramp angling from the memorial toward Rock Creek Park. The Water Gate was designed, in part, to serve as an outdoor amphitheater; in the summer, a barge outfitted with a band shell would be anchored at the foot of these forty or so steps as a stage for concerts by the National Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Excerpt: Then the limo slowed and pulled up in front of the huge Mayflower Hotel, on the southeast corner of De Sales Street and Connecticut; only it turned out we were going to the nearby Harvey's, one of the city's best-known, most popular restaurants, seafood a specialty. Wilson led me through the nondescript but packed dining room--where it didn't seem likely we'd be seated until maybe next Wednesday--toward a teensy elevator behind a velvet rope guarded by a massive colored samurai of a headwaiter.

Excerpt: I met Drew Pearson at ten a.m. on the third floor of the Metropolitan Club, a venerable, subdued bastion of respectability on Connecticut Avenue. A colored waiter in a starched white coat served us eggs Benedict; the dark-paneled room was sprinkled with bankers and executives doing business over breakfast. "At noon this place is jam-packed," Pearson said, sipping a glass of orange juice. He was immaculate in a well-cut gray suit with gray-and-blue tie, the tips of his mustache waxed, sharpened, "You can't turn around without bumping into a former Secretary of State or a top diplomat." "How is it that you're a member?" I knew an exclusive club when I saw it; this reminded me of Chicago's Tavern Club. "Oh I'm not," he laughed, his smile turning his eyes to slits, as he took my dig in stride. "They draw the line at only two types of members: Negroes and journalists. But I'm on the approved permanent guest list."

Excerpt: Just north of M street, we were paused in backed-up traffic next to a bronze statue in the middle of a grassy dividing triangle, a majestic male figure in academic robes seated in a chair with a book in one hand and a pigeon on his head (the latter not a part of the statue proper.) "Longfellow," Pearson said, noticing me eyeballing the striking statue. "The poet."

Excerpt: I was on the same side of the street as sprawling Georgetown University Hospital, which took up the entire block between Prospect and N Street... With the tourists gone, and the traffic eased, the neighborhood patina over the elegantly historic homes with their deep-red brick walls, black wrought-iron trim, burnished brass doorknockers. It was not difficult to imagine the likes of John Adams or Aaron Burr walking these streets, or to summon the ghostly clip-clop of hoof-beats, or the sound of children singing "Yankee Doodle" when it was still a new tune.

Excerpt: On my way from where I left the rental Ford off the intersection of the parkway and New Hampshire Avenue, I passed a white marble statue of a heroic figure poised on tiptoes with arms outstretched, as if about to dive over the landscaped bank into the nearby river, where no boats--pleasure or otherwise--disturbed the glassy surface. A memorial to the victims of the Titanic disaster. [Ed. note: The statue was moved from this site in 1966 due to the construction of the Kennedy Center. It now sits at 4th & P Streets SW, in the Washington Channel Park.]