Then and Now - Logan Circle
18 11 2008Sometimes things never change. In a city of constant development this can be both a good thing, like in the photos below or a bad thing (like in this case). These row-houses on the northwest corner of Logan Circle look just about exactly the same as they did over a hundred years ago.
Logan Circles is so charming due to the varied residential architecture that has stood the test of time. The shot above is from 1890, and below 2008. Can you find the differences between the two photos?
We will start you off: the far right house has extended the bay windows up to the fourth floor in the second photo… leave your eye spies in the comments!
[Photos: NCinDC]
How fun! There are lamp posts in front of the two end buildings in the second photo that aren’t in the first.
The building second from the right seems to have more “rounded” turrets/bay windows, but that may be the angle of the picture.
the bldg to the far left has what appears to be a rooftop deck “fence” on top…
You can play this game in Logan Circle itself, where the 1890 photo is mounted near where it was taken (the houses are on the NW quadrant of the circle, between P St. and 13th St.).
You can barely see it at this resolution, but at the Circle, I could see that the house second from the left has lost the decorative cast-iron railings from its front steps. The current railings are plain black pipes. Also, the leftmost house used to have a decorative metal fence on top of its chimney, as well as around its roof, as previously noted.
The rooftop “fence” is decorative cresting. Cresting is now gone from both buildings on left. They never had roof top decks. That’s so 1970s. The right building not only extended the bay up to the fourth floor, it extended the whole facade. Note the now missing roof dormer. It’s door surround also looks new, but maybe it’s just painted.
The mortgages used to purchase these buildings in the 1890s were based on secured funds held throughout the life of the mortgage by a single local bank The mortgages used today were backed by a succession of progressively speculative lending organizations who invested in corporations that inflated their reported earnings and handed over obscene amounts of profits to neer-do well-CEOs.
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
yes, photo hunt! Well this seems almost too trivial to mention but the paint job on the left-most house is the opposite of what it was in 1890 (colors are reversed).