The Sherman Building at Soldiers' Home, Damaged in the Recent Earthquake

The Armed Forces Retirement Home, known for many years as the Soldiers' Home, is tucked away on a beautiful campus near North Capitol Street in upper northwest Washington. For 150 years, it has offered veterans a restful retreat amidst a cluster of striking historical buildings. Most well-known nowadays among Soldiers' Home buildings is the once-endangered Lincoln Cottage, a Gothic Revival country house built by banker George W. Riggs (1813-1881) in 1842 and used by President Abraham Lincoln as a summer retreat. It has been named a national monument, restored, and made into a fascinating museum by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. But the attention given to the Lincoln Cottage seems to have pushed the rest of the Soldiers' Home buildings into undeserved obscurity. This past week's earthquake did substantial damage—millions of dollars worth—to one of the most distinctive and iconic buildings on the entire campus, Scott Hall (now known as the Sherman Building), originally opened in 1857. Little attention has been given to this saddening loss.

A damaged pinnacle on the roof of the Sherman Building. Photo by Carrie Barton, EHT Traceries, Inc.

Once Upon a Time, Everybody Went to Hammel's

Restaurants come and go by the dozens in Washington; only a few survive through the years as bona fide local institutions. One of them was Hammel's, a German restaurant that stood for decades on 10th Street downtown, across from where the FBI Building now menacingly looms. It was hidden within a drab, not-particularly-inviting storefront, but perhaps the nondescript façade added to its character. And character it certainly had.

Hammel's Restaurant, photographed in 1981 for the Historic American Buildings Survey.