Letter from Washington (X): Finding a quiet place

 

Heurich House Museum grounds

With a spring-like Saturday afternoon off in Washington, D.C., Jane and I grasped our trusty guidebook [cited below] and walked in the neighborhood of Dupont Circle on the city's northwest side. The circle itself I find chaotic, formed as it is by the confluence of five major thoroughfares, and there are busy commercial strips in every direction. Real estate must be pricey even by Washington standards, judging from the dominance of new commercial offices and franchise chains. (Compare with the somewhat more modest Adams Morgan neighborhood to the north, which has more indigenous offerings, including a coffeehouse called Tryst recommended to me this weekend and which I must some day check out.)

But walking around quickly reveals more to Dupont Circle than CVS and Subway. There are embassies, including those of Chile, Indonesia, Mozambique, and Peru. The think tanks American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution are near the circle on Massachusetts Avenue, with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the National Trust for Historic Preservation between them. 

Across the circle on 20th Street is the 1898 building where the Church of Scientology was founded.

This 1909 mansion on New Hampshire Avenue is now the headquarters of the Order of the Eastern Star, of which my Grandma Pochert was a proud and active member.

The Cairo--I'm from Illinois, so I pronounce it KAY-ro, but you be you--was built on Q Street in 1894 as the tallest building in Washington, which did not thrill its neighbors, leading to the adoption of the city's strict building height ordinance.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals boast some striking yard art.

The Dupont Circle area also has the Tabard Inn on N Street, built in 1922 and long a favorite of my Creighton University colleague Graham Ramsden...

...and gourmet toast. Whatever that is.

There are also lots of churches, some quite architecturally striking.

The Church of the Holy City (1894)

Foundry United Methodist Church (1904)

Perhaps my most surprising find was the 1894 house of Christian Heurich (1842-1945), who owned D.C.'s largest brewery. The house is now a museum, which is open part of the year for limited hours. It promises to be "honestly exploring what it takes to achieve the American Dream," which sets an intriguingly high bar. The castle garden was open, and quite a few people were lounging about on the picnic benches and Adirondack chairs. The carriage house houses the 1921 Biergarten, serving a variety of beer and wine, and has restrooms, which I was unfortunately not able to experience.

Anyone who blogs about our common life has surely been vaccinated against the coronavirus, but unfortunately had neglected to bring the little card along. (This is the only time on my trip when I would have needed it, too.) 

So I had to hurry along to more permissive facilities, but not before noting what an oasis the castle garden is. On an irresistible spring day, there was a steady trickle of people into the garden for a bit of peace and quiet in company, away from the traffic and busy-ness of Dupont Circle's commercial areas.

Of course, there's plenty of peace and quiet to be had in large-lot suburban subdivisions. That's pretty much what they sell, along with space and privacy. But, as it has been repeatedly argued in this space and elsewhere, those subdivisions are neither financially nor environmentally sustainable, and they oppose the very existence of a common life. We need cities if we are going to survive, and yet... we need peace and quiet, too. Places like the Heurich House's castle garden are pearls beyond price.

SOURCE: Frommer's 24 Great Walks in Washington, D.C. (Wiley, 2009), ch. 16

Christian Heurich would have been part of this Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC). "It was, however, the last cyberspace left in Dupont," quips Matt' Johnson, AICP on Twitter.