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Dupont Circle Information
Dupont Circle is a traffic circle in the northwest quadrant of Washington,
D.C., at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, Connecticut Avenue, New
Hampshire Avenue, P Street and 19th Street. Dupont Circle also gives its name to
the public park within the circle as well as the surrounding neighborhood, which
is bounded approximately by 16th Street to the east, 22nd Street to the west, M
Street to the south, and Florida Avenue to the north.
Dupont Circle has a subway stop on the Washington Metro's Red Line; the
entrances are north (20th & Q) and south (19th & Dupont Circle) of the circle.
The circle is divided between two counterclockwise roads. The inner road is
reserved for Massachusetts Avenue traffic, and the outer road serves the other
intersecting streets. Connecticut Avenue passes under the circle via a tunnel,
and its traffic accesses the circle via service roads that branch from
Connecticut near N Street and R Street.
The park within the circle is a common gathering place for those wishing to play
chess on the permanent stone chessboards or to relax on the grass during warmer
months. It has also frequently been the location of political rallies,
especially those supporting gay rights and protesting the 2003 invasion of Iraq,
the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. The park is maintained by
the National Park Service.
The area was a rural backwater until after the Civil War, when it first became a
fashionable residential neighborhood. Some of Washington's wealthiest residents
constructed houses here in the late 19th century and early 20th century, leaving
a legacy of two types of housing in the historic district. Many of the grid
streets are lined with three- and four-story row houses built primarily before
the end of the 19th century, often variations on the Queen Anne and
Richardsonian Romanesque Revival styles. Rarer are the palatial mansions and
large freestanding houses that line the broad, tree-lined diagonal avenues that
intersect the circle. Many of these larger dwellings were built in the styles
popular between 1895 and 1910.
One such grand residence is the marble and terra-cotta Patterson house at 15
Dupont Circle (currently the Washington Club). This superb Italianate mansion,
the only survivor of the many mansions that once ringed the circle itself, was
built in 1901 by New York architect Stanford White for Robert Patterson, editor
of the Chicago Tribune, and his wife Nellie Patterson, heiress to the Chicago
Tribune fortune. Upon Mrs. Patterson's incapacitation in the early 1920s, the
house passed into the hands of her daughter, Cissy Patterson, who made it a hub
of Washington social life. The house served as temporary quarters for President
and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge in 1927 while the White House underwent renovation. The
Coolidges welcomed Charles Lindbergh as a houseguest after his historic
transatlantic flight. Lindbergh made several public appearances at the house,
waving to roaring crowds from the second-story balcony, and befriended the
Patterson Family, with whom he increasingly came to share isolationist and
pro-German views. Cissy Patterson later acquired the Washington Times-Herald
(acquired by the Washington Post in 1954) and declared journalistic warfare on
Franklin Delano Roosevelt from 15 Dupont Circle, continuing throughout World War
II to push her policies, which were echoed in the New York Daily News, run by
her brother Joseph Medill Patterson, and the Chicago Tribune, run by their first
cousin, Colonel Robert R. McCormick.
The neighborhood's fortunes and importance began to decline after World War II,
and reached a nadir after the race riots of the late 1960s. Its residential
character was threatened by encroachment of commercial development from
downtown, and many fine buildings were demolished. Beginning in the 1970s,
however, Dupont Circle began to enjoy a resurgence fueled by urban pioneers
seeking an alternative lifestyle. The neighborhood took on a bohemian feel and
became a gay area. Along with the Castro in San Francisco and Greenwich Village
in New York City, it is considered a historic locale in the development of
American gay identity. Pioneering gay bars on P Street in Dupont Circle included
P Street Station (since renamed the Fireplace), Mr. P's (of John Paulk fame,
since closed) and the Frat House (since renamed Omega D.C.). Gentrification
accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s, and the area is now a more mainstream and
trendy location with coffeehouses, restaurants, bars, and upscale retail stores.
Notable stores include a 24-hour bookstore and restaurant, Kramerbooks &
Afterwords, and D.C.'s first gay bookstore, Lambda Rising.
In addition to its residential components, comprised primarily of high-priced
apartments and condominiums, Dupont Circle is home to a number of the nation's
most prestigious think tanks and research institutions, namely, The Brookings
Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Eurasia Center,
and the Institute for International Economics. Further, the renowned Paul H.
Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of The Johns Hopkins
University is located less than two blocks away from the Circle itself. Dupont
is also home to the Founding Church of Scientology, the first such church
established by the religion's founder, L. Ron Hubbard.
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