We have house guests staying with us for a few days. They are in town for a friend’s wedding. Two of them wanted a tour of Washington today. We got in my car about 11 or so. We decided to drive until we stopped for lunch and then decide if we wanted to do any more. We got home at 3:20.

This was strictly an automobile tour. Except for lunch, we stayed in the car and looked out the window.

Where did we go?

We drove west on Davenport to Connecticut Avenue and turned left, towards downtown. I pointed out the building where Harry Truman lived while he was Missouri Senator (he lived there from 1941-1945 and paid $120 a month for apartment 209) and then Vice President as well as other neighborhood hot spots, like Bread Furst (Bread Furst is primarily a bakery, but they have carry out foods and shelves filled with wines, chocolates and expensive olive oils). We then turned west on Van Ness Street. I explained the history of the brutalist/modernist building that once housed Intelsat and now sits virtually vacant and is looking for a new tenant or buyer. We looked at the Embassy of Singapore and China, and then the other embassies on International Avenue south of Van Ness, including Jordan, Ghana, Kuwait and Israel. Portions of the park in the center of the embassies seemed to have been fenced off – I didn’t know why, and it meant I couldn’t show them the apple tree grafted from Isaac Newton’s tree. Then we crossed Van Ness to look at the other embassies, including Slovakia, Austria, the UAE, Bangladesh and Pakistan. I explained what I knew about each building.

Back down Van Ness, we crossed Connecticut Avenue and drove to the Howard University Law and Divinity Schools (I explained that these schools were separated from the main campus), and then down Upton Street, past the Levine School of Music (in a building formerly part of the Carnegie Institution) and the varying houses on Lenore Lane (and saw their swimming pool already open). We drove down Linnean past Hillwood (the home of Marjorie Merriweather Post, famous for its gardens and Faberge egg collection); of course, Ms. Post also owned Mar-a-lago, but that is for another day) and across Tilden to look at the Cezch and Hungarian embassies. We then looked at Sherman Adam’s house, and the other buildings that make up the Peirce Mill complex, now over 200 years old. The Adams house was built by Peirce as a distillery – probably before 1800.

We climbed back up the Tilden Street hill, turned left on Connecticut, but soon found ourselves caught in the middle of Construction Central and terrible traffic, so we backtracked a bit, went up Rodman to Reno, and turned left on Reno. We stayed on Reno only to Newark Street, where again we turned left, this time to look at some of the houses in Cleveland Park (the oldest house in Newark Street was built in the 1890s and I think most were built before World War I). Coming back to Connecticut, we looked at the Cleveland Park business district (having some trouble since the closing of the Uptown Theater and the disruption of a number of parking places, but now the home of a number of new restaurants, along with the old standbys), the library and we drove past the Zoo (home not only to pandas, but to the newly opened refurbished bird cage), the Woodley Park Towers Condominium (where I once lived) and the Kennedy-Warren Apartments (where a number of friends live), before continuing through the Woodley Park neighborhood) and over the Taft Bridge over Rock Creek Park. We talked about the plan to put higher barricades on the bridge to prevent suicides, and wondered if this indeed prevented suicides or just directed them elsewhere.

I turned off Connecticut onto Kalorama (which apparently means “beautiful vista” or some such thing in Greek), and we explored several streets in that neighborhood, pointing out the large homes of the Portuguese and French ambassadors, the Ukraine House, and the Slovenian embassy before reaching Massachusetts Ave, where we turned right and looked at the Turkish embassy with a statue of Ataturk, the South African embassy with a statue of Mandela, the old Iranian embassy (empty since 1979), the Mosque, the Kahlil Gibran sculpture park and the Finnish, Vatican and Norwegian embassies. We looked at the entrance to the Naval Observatory (where the Vice President lives, and where the country’s most accurate clock is said to reside). I then made a U-turn, and we looked at the British embassy and the Churchill statue, and the Japanese, Bolivian, Brazilian and Italian embassies before turning up Whitehaven Parkway to see the Danish embassy, the Clinton house and the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies.

Coming back towards Massachusetts, we crossed, staying on the continuation of the road, past more large houses, and into Massachusetts Heights. We came out of that area onto Calvert Street at the Omni Shoreham and turned right, turning right again on Connecticut and again going over the Taft Bridge. This time we stayed on Connecticut, going past the Washington Hilton, and under Dupont Circle, remarking how the COVID pandemic and resultant work-at-home movement has taken its toll on downtown restaurants and office buildings.

We went down Connecticut (I pointed out my first law office at 1025), by Farragut Square (I pointed out the Army-Navy Club) , the OMB, the Executive Office Building, the Ellipse, the former home of the Corcoran Gallery (now part of George Washington University), the headquarters of the American Red Cross, the D.A.R. (housing Constitution Hall), the O.A.S and the World War II Memorial. We then went around the Tidal Basin.

I was planning on heading towards the Wharf, but one of my passengers wanted to see the Mall, so instead I went towards Independence, turning north on 14th and making the first right onto the Mall from 14th Street. I pointed out where the Holocaust Museum was down the street to the South. We then saw the main Department of Agriculture Building, the African American History Museum (where we have yet to go), the American History Museum, the Natural History Museum, the National Gallery and East Wing, the Smithsonian Castle, the Smithsonian offices, the Freer, the Hirshhorn, the Air and Space Museum and the American Indian Museum. We then went south on 4th across Independence, and I pointed out the Voice of America and the Bible Museum. We cut over to 7th and saw HUD, and then went south towards the Wharf where we drove around a bit turning back at the entrances to the garages. We saw that there were a number of people eating at the restaurants overlooking the Potomac and wondered how all of these buildings were ever going to be filled and what their effect has been on the downtown economy.

From the Wharf, we passed Arena Stage, and drove east on M until we crossed North Capitol and wound up on Half Street near Nats Stadium. We parked and had lunch at Gatsby’s. The choices were a Greek omelet, a pastrami sandwich and a farro salad.

After eating, we returned to the car, drove through the Navy Yard area, pointing out what I could, like the DOT building, the Water Department, some of the new construction and the walkways and park along the Anacostia River. We drove past the Navy Yard, discussed the museum to be built there, and then turned north on 8th street, heading through Barracks Row, looking at the Marine Commandant’s house,passing all the restaurants (these not looking too busy today) and winding up driving through parts of Capitol Hill, until we got to H Street NE.

We looked at H Street and the status of development there, and then saw Union Station, but turned up North Capitol only for a block or two, turning off the show the new office and residential construction around there. Then we turned northeast up New York Avenue, passed the Gallaudet campus and into the Union Market area, where we saw the apartment construction, the market itself and both the wholesale food shops and the new restaurants and shops.

From there we went back to North Capitol and drove past McMillan Reservoir (talking about planned development there) and the hospitals, the cemeteries and old soldiers’ home (actually the home for “distinguished veterans), turning right on Upshur and heading to Mathewson, then into the Park, out by Broadbranch, and finally reached home.