Travel Spots in the USA

On This Spot: Pinpointing the Past in Washington, D.C. (Capital Travels)

Description

Now for a new generation of DC residents and visitors - a celebration of Washington, DC, its history, people, and neighborhoods - through fascinating archival photos and lively accounts.

This is not a standard guidebook. It's a book that carries you back in time to meet the men and women who built and developed our Nation's Capital - not just the political types, but also the spies, murderers, bartenders, and writers. Stand on the spots where they stood when historic events took place, like the Fort McNair tennis courts, the historic spot where the Lincoln assassination conspirators were hanged. See the now august buildings and landscapes through the historical perspective of the rough, dirty, unhealthy place Washington once was. Neighborhood by neighborhood and using the 19 illustrated maps in On This Spot, you can travel through Washington, DC's history on your own.

Features the sites where:

* Important events took place

* Famous people from American history lived, worked, and died

* DC's changing neighborhoods

* Buildings that have been lost and those that have been saved

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-01-26
Summary: "Indispensable DC Lore"

Indispensable.

So many of us come to this city from elsewhere. So many of us stay, for reasons other than its charm. Where you lived before you came here, you knew, for example, why there was a Van Wyck Expressway and how to pronounce it, who Harry Van Arsdale was.

Once here you have to learn about Foxhall Road and Constitution Avenue. Why Foggy Bottom is Foggy Bottom and why the Watergate Hotel is so named. There is no better way to do so than reading Evelyn and Dickson's book. It is a way to instant "roots."

Coming from anywhere in America you know of the monuments here; the granite, the marble, the glass edifices erected to our nation's heroes. They are in this book, yes. But, more importantly, something else.

The poet James Fenton offers this, about another country:

It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.
It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses.
It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.

And this is true, too, of our nation's capital. The federal buildings will remain lighted at night and open to tourists during the days.

But the Knickerbocker Theater at 18th Street and Columbia Road NW lasts only in photographs and words. "Get Rich Quick Wallingford" the showgoers were watching in 1922 when the roof collapsed under snow and 98 people died.

The tents of the "Bonus Army" are long gone. Twenty thousand veterans camped by the Anacostia River asking for the government-promised payment for their services in the Great War. These veterans were literally burned out by their soldier-successors, Patton, MacArthur, and Eisenhower. Nothing of their encampment remains. (And now on this spot the Newsmuseum.)

The Chinese legation occupied Senator William Stewart's castle at Connecticut Ave. and Dupont Circle. In 1901 the castle was razed; the Chinese remain, but their embassy is now on Wisconsin Avenue near the Naval Observatory.

Evelyn and Dickson also note that Chinatown itself moved. Imagine that. The whole of it, when the government began buying up property for the federal courthouse.

This is a book for browsers, for walkers, for anyone who wants to know the guts and sinew of D.C. as well as its advertised charms.

Note that the new edition is greatly expanded and that the maps are hugely improved, more detailed and with numbers on each street and avenue correlating to the text descriptions.

The photographs too are wisely chosen, many of them from the authors' collections. Many will find the one of Klanswomen on Pennsylvania Avenue where Barack Obama just strode to the White House and the view of swimmers at a "white's only" beach at the site where the Jefferson Memorial is now particularly instructive.

I take this book down often from the shelf. I cannot recommend it more highly.

greenman, Garrett Park, MD

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-01-06
Summary: "Great guide for newcomer or long-term Washington resident"

ON THIS SPOT is a wonderful reference for the newcomer, inaugural visitor, tourist, or D.C. resident. This handy-sized volume helps the visitor to peel away the layers of the city, to discover the stories and scandals underneath the facade of monuments and museums we all recognize.
Full of wonderful primary source materials, this book is a great guide to the different sections of the city, organized with a map for each section that pinpoints the stories and photographs that are discussed.

As a newcomer to Washington, I am using it to explore the city a section at a time, a very enriching experience. As I stood in the magnificent space that is the Building Museum, I could visualize the incredible scene of frozen canaries falling to the dance floor during Grover Cleveland's first inaugural ball (p.127). Stories like these bring history alive. I will also use it as a resource for my school library and share it with my teaching staff. This kind of writing encourages us all to ask the next question and look behind the facade. It is great fun and my new best gift for visitors to Washington D.C.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2008-11-08
Summary: "A great way to learn about the city!"

I picked up this book last night and spent the entire evening browsing through and reading portions of it. It is absolutely delightful and fascinating. I can only imagine the amount of research and effort that went into it -- even for the revisions/updates. And it is updated, referencing events as recent as the renovation of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

It is a great introduction to Washington, DC, full of insights, historical photographs, and fascinating information, and a terrific companion for a walk around the city. There should b a book like this for every major city.