Adams Morgan

Capturing City Signs Before They Vanish Forever – Georgetown Plating, Polishing and Repair

By Prince Of Petworth

Thanks to a reader for a heads up on this one:

“I think you might have featured this particular sign before, but a raze permit has been applied for for the building, so I thought you might want to re-feature the Georgetown Silversmith & Plating sign on the building at 2335 Champlain St., NW in Adams Morgan (across the street from the alley entrance to the parking garage under the Lofts). They are razing this cool old building (just the small one) to build what will surely be dubbed “luxury” apartments.”

Harvard Hall Fire Inquiry

By Prince Of Petworth

I was contacted by the writer behind 2bars3stars who wrote about his experience in the Harvard Hall Apartment fire Sunday night. He writes in his blog:

“It’s a little after 2 a.m. E. and I are sound asleep, then startled awake. Our neighbor, a close friend, is pounding on the front door of our Adams Morgan apartment, alerting us to a fire raging down the hall.”

In an email he writes that he’d like to:

“Uncover the facts of last night’s Adams Morgan apartment fire, in which no fire alarms were heard during the fire. Harvard Hall is a huge building, 7 floors. It was unbelievable to see so many people leaving the building a half hour after us, having slept through the blaze. The building manager manages lots of old buildings in Adams Morgan and, if HH is par for the course, a catastrophe is easy to imagine. If the fire had been on the scale of the mt. pleasant apartment fire last year, and the alarms failed, lots of people could’ve died.”

There was coverage of the fire in the City Paper and the Post.

Any readers out there residents of this Harvard Hall Apartments in Adams Morgan? Did you hear any fire alarms?

Do Faults Like Pandas? (By Matt)

By Prince Of Petworth

Ed. Note: Here is a little background on faults from Wikipedia.

The only visible part of the most famous overthrust fault in DC (Darton’s fault) has an amazing view of the national zoo from its perch just above where Adams Mill Rd peaks on its rise from Rock Creek Park. It sat up there as little Butterstick the Panda was born and must really enjoy the view of the creek bottom when the leaves turn in the fall. Zoo Lights evenings in December must be cool too, romantic even. If the “Fault Seeking Fault” section of Craigslist.org hadn’t been overtaken by scammers and weirdos years ago, he might have a snowball’s chance in hell of sharing those evenings with a special lady fault (Don’t hate. Faults can’t just go out and cruise happy hour looking for love like the rest of us.)

But perhaps the biggest issue for the fault since the 1920s is that it has been housed in an “exhibit”, clearly not designed by the flappers of that time, who rained reigned cool. I’ve never been at the mouth of a sealed mine, but that’s what the concrete walls and black chain link hemming in that little fault look like to me. I hope that any self-respecting flapper would have smacked whatever person or agency representatives responsible for designing that exhibit in the mouth with a beaded purse and a string of pearls on opening day.

If that agency or anyone from that design team is still kicking, they should be fitted with an ankle bracelet set to tase whenever it is within 50 yards of a drafting table. I say this because if the design sensibility encapsulated in that exhibit ever catches on I am sure that we will be opening our arms to Communism and, as much as I love a long line for bread, I’d rather not. Continues after the jump. (more…)

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