2007 18th Street, NW
Big news from the Post’s Express:
“Trevor Frye, the beverage director of Jack Rose Dining Saloon and co-founder of the celebrated basement cocktail lounge Dram & Grain, is leaving the establishment to launch a project of his own in Adams Morgan. A lease is still being ironed out.
The bar, which he hopes to open by the end of the year, will be called Marble Alley, a reference to the notorious D.C. slum known as Murder Bay, which arose in the mid-19th century.”
From Wikipedia:
“In the 1860s, much of the Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site south of Pennsylvania Avenue had become a disreputable slum known as Murder Bay, the home to an extensive criminal underclass and numerous brothels. During the American Civil War, so many prostitutes took up residence in Murder Bay to serve the needs of General Joseph Hooker’s Army of the Potomac that the area became known as “Hooker’s Division.” The two trapezoidal blocks sandwiched between Pennsylvania and Missouri Avenues (now the site of the National Gallery of Art) became home to such expensive brothels that it gained the nickname “Marble Alley.” In the 1870s and 1880s, the avenue was the site of significant competition between horse-drawn streetcar and chariot companies.”
