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A Visit to the Kiplinger Library

Yesterday morning, I attended an orientation for researchers to the Kiplinger Library at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. I'm ashamed to say I had not previously used the library, at least...

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The Ken Burns approach to neighborhood history

If you are interested in local or neighborhood history, you have probably encounted the books published by Arcadia Publishing. The firm bestrides the field of neighborhood publishing like a 6000-part...

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Gleanings from the Cathedral archives

This term I've been doing some research for a course in architectural documentation on Hearst Hall, the original building of National Cathedral School. When I was at NCS in the 1970s, Hearst was leased...

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Show us your Ardmore model bungalow

I've been househunting in bungalow-rich neighborhoods of NW DC and close-in Maryland suburbs...

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What might have been: 1896 article on plans for the Washington National...

Did you know that plans originally called for a Renaissance-style design for the National Cathedral? Ernest Flagg, architect of the Corcoran, was originally hired to design the Cathedral and associated...

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I was wrong about my bungalow

What have I been up to? Well, dear reader, remember the Ardmore model bungalow that was for sale in Shepherd Park? I bought it. I spent late summer and fall engaged in new-old-house work, from updating...

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I went to a meeting about zoning, and this is what I heard.

This week, I went to a community meeting in Ward 3 on DC's zoning rewrite process. I was dismayed both by what I heard and by what I didn't hear.

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The Episcopal Church Welcomes You...if you can find your way in. (Part 1 of 2)

The entrance to the house of worship needs above all to be obvious. Places of worship seem to specialise in grandiose portals – great west doors and the like – which turn out not to be the entrance but...

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The Episcopal Church Welcomes You...if you can find your way in. (Part 2 of 2)

In the previous post, I looked at the way the reconfiguration of worship space inside St. Mark's, Capitol Hill, affects the visitor's experience of arrival. In this post, I turn to Trinity Cathedral,...

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"Suburbs" and the idea of Washington in the late 19th century

from The Washington Post, April 19, 1891 Between the city and suburbia Many of the most contentious subjects in D.C. urbanism and preservation today involve distinctions between the L'Enfant-planned...

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52 Ancestors, no. 1: Morris Klein

Note of explanation: This is a different blogging direction for me – if a person who went a year and a half without posting can be said to have a blogging direction! Genealogy blogger Amy Johnson Crow...

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Chairless at the Cathedral

What if the Cathedral could serve as a liturgical laboratory for the diocese? Last week, the Washington National Cathedral removed all the chairs from its nave and held a series of events to allow...

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52 Ancestors, nos. 2 and 3: Morris Lauter and Julia (Chavid) Rosenfeld

Nothing like a blogging resolution to bring blogging to a halt, eh? I'll play catch-up by doing a couple of ancestors at once.  Morris and Julia* Rosenfeld Lauter were my great-great-grandparents on my...

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A Skylight on Folsom Place (article preview)

Here's an advance copy (PDF) of an article about research in progress for a house history I'm working on in Cleveland Park. This will appear in the forthcoming issue of the newsletter of the Cleveland...

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Improvements in Episcopal Church Wayfinding and Welcome

This is a drive-by post — literally! Brief background: Washington, D.C.'s oldest church, St. Paul's–Rock Creek Parish (founded 1712) sits in the middle of a huge, historic cemetery. The church is not...

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The Needless Death of a Shepherd Park House

Yesterday, a house on my street was demolished. It had become so unstable that it was a danger to the adjacent houses, and there was probably no choice but to tear it down. It had become dangerously...

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Odd Mass

I had a long blog post in the works about church, to be called "Boredom and Reverence," about some of my frustrations with the routine of the main Sunday service. That post is still coming, so I'll let...

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I'm 49 years old. Does the Episcopal Church care that I'm here?

I am feeling a bit battered by the flood of announcements everywhere in my church life about groups and activities and opportunities for formation aimed at people in their 20s and 30s. Young adults'...

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A failure of historical imagination (mine). Or, N.C. Wyeth, streetcars, bike...

I pride myself on having a well-developed visual-historical imagination. What do I mean by that? On the one hand, when I see an historical building or a work of art or a photograph of people from an...

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The Episcopal Church Welcomes You...if you can find your way in. (Part 1 of 2)

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