The boom-and-bust history of the National Bank of Washington building

The monumental bank building on the southeast corner of 14th and G Streets, NW—vacant now for well over a decade—is one of several such landmarks in Washington's old financial district, but it has lived the ups and downs of the banking industry much more dramatically than the others. It was born as the home of a feverish enterprise that burned itself out after only 20 years. After going on to host the venerable National Bank of Washington for many decades, it went dark when that institution also collapsed in 1990. For more than a decade now, plans have been afoot to turn it into a museum to commemorate the victims of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923. The building, including its interior, is protected as an historic landmark. It's one of only 15 properties in the District with an historic interior designation. As reassuring as it is that plans are in the works for the building's future, it is also disheartening to see it stand vacant for so long—an unintended reminder, should we need one, of how impermanent our financial institutions can be, despite their best efforts to convince us otherwise.

The bank building as it appeared in 1995 (Photo courtesy of the archives of the D.C. Preservation League).

The Aqueduct Bridge, Gateway to Georgetown

Before the magnificent Francis Scott Key Bridge was completed in 1923, a far homelier structure linked Georgetown to Rosslyn. Known as the Potomac Aqueduct or Aqueduct Bridge, it was born of Alexandria's aspirations to rival Georgetown as a  commercial hub. A remarkable engineering achievement, the bridge served as a vital Potomac crossing for 80 years.

The Potomac Aqueduct, c. 1865. Source: Library of Congress 

It all began with construction of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal in the 1820s. The canal project was a long, complex, and expensive effort originally intended to spur commercial trade with Georgetown (and Washington) by establishing an economical transportation link to the vast and fertile Ohio Valley. It turned out to be too expensive to build it all the way across the mountains to the Midwest, and it never lived up to its investors' early hopes, but in the 1820s it seemed like the next big thing for the city. Alexandria merchants sorely wanted to get in on this expected action. It would have been too expensive to unload canal boats arriving in Georgetown and reload them on river boats to take them down to Alexandria, so a non-stop method was needed to get the canal boats to Alexandria.

Bertram's Pipe Shop on 14th Street

The art of making a really good pipe seems to have died out, and many would say that's a good thing. But if we set aside the health and social issues for a moment, we discover a business that once relied on skilled artisans to make its very finest products. In Washington, D.C., the very best pipes were made by Bertram's on 14th Street, opposite Franklin Park, and it seems like almost every famous world leader from the early 20th century who smoked had his pipe made there.

The Prolific Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth and her Georgetown Cottage

Georgetown has had its share of unique residents over its 260 years of existence, and perhaps none was more distinctive than Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth (1819-1899), a prolific novelist who lived in a picturesque cottage perched up on Prospect Street overlooking the Potomac. Her cottage, a well-known landmark in its day, has been gone since 1940. It would have been as out-of-place in modern Georgetown as the potboiler novels that once made her wildly popular among 19th-century women readers across the nation.

Prospect Cottage (Source: D.C. Public Library via Flickr).

The Once-Ubiquitous Peoples Drug Stores

They used to be everywhere. Peoples Drug Stores were for much of the twentieth century one of those staples of everyday life in Washington, squatting on street corners in almost every neighborhood. The name seemed to have special resonance in the nation's capital, as if it were a commercial incarnation of democracy itself (or perhaps an arm of the Communist Party, depending on your perspective). It grew to be one of the largest drugstore chains on the east coast, with over 500 stores at one point ranging from Georgia to Ohio. And it all began here in the District.

A typical Peoples store in Arlington, Virginia in the 1960s (Source: DC Public Library, Star Collection, © Washington Post).