Dupont Circle

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.

Construction of the traffic circle, originally called Pacific Circle, began in 1871. In 1882, Congress authorized a memorial statue of Samuel Francis du Pont in recognition of his service as a rear admiral during the Civil War. A bronze statue was erected in 1884 in a park at the center of the circle. The Du Pont family moved the sculpture to Wilmington, Delaware in 1920, and commissioned the current double-tiered, white marble fountain from sculptor Daniel Chester French and architect Henry Bacon (the co-creators of the Lincoln Memorial). The fountain was installed in 1921. Three classical nude figures symbolizing the sea, the stars and the wind are carved on the fountain's shaft.

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 present Connecticut Avenue traffic tunnel was built in 1949 as part of the (now-defunct) Captial Transit's Dupont Circle tunnel project. Many incorrectly think the traffic tunnel is where the streetcars operated. However, the streetcar tunnels were built in addition to the traffic tunnel and started a block north and south of the traffic tunnels. The tracks followed the outer perimeter of the circle and paralleled the traffic tunnel north of the circle underneath the Connecticut Avenue service roads. The purpose of the trolley tunnels was to alleviate the traffic congestion created when the streetcars traveled (in both directions) around the circle's western side. The tunnel entrances were filled in and paved over after the demise of streetcar operation in 1962 leaving only the traffic tunnel.

The tunnels (one northbound, one southbound) each contained an underground station (different from the present Dupont Circle Metro station). These stations are no longer used, and their entrances on the east and west sides of the circle are boarded up. An attempt in the 1990s to redevelop the old southbound station as commercial space, called Dupont Down Under, failed.

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.

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.

Dupont Circle neighborhood

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 rowhouses 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, and the Institute for International Economics. Further, the renowned Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), 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.

The Dupont Circle neighborhood is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Books about Dupont Circle

Dupont Circle: A Novel (Houghton Mifflin, 2001), by Paul Kafka-Gibbons
Dupont Circle (Images of America Series) (Arcadia Publishing, 2000), by Paul Williams
Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C. (U.S. Department of Interior, Division of History, Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation, 1967), by George J. Olszewski

External links

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Dupont Circle

Dupont Circle neighborhood

See also

Books about Dupont Circle

External links