The Smithsonian Quadrangle features four buildings in a campus-like setting on the south side of the National Mall: the Smithsonian Castle (1847-55), the Arts and Industries Building (1879-81), the Freer Gallery of Art (1923), and the largely…

Federal Office Building No. 6, now known as the Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building, received its original moniker as one of fifteen new office buildings of the 1956 plan for federal government facilities in Washington, DC. The…

William Syphax was born in 1825 to Charles Syphax and Maria Carter. Charles, Syphax’s father, was enslaved by a man named George Washington Parke Custis, grandson and adopted son of George and Martha Washington. Maria, Syphax’s mother, was also…

The Saint James Mutual Homes represents a milestone in the development of planned housing for persons of moderate income, and the evolution of the "sanitary housing" movement, an important force in the residential development of Southwest.…

The Control Point Virginia Tower is a two-story, late Victorian railroad interlocking control tower. It was erected circa 1905 as a railroad interlocking station, responsible for mechanically switching trains between the First Street tunnel…

The Fish Market Lunchroom and its associated Oyster Shucking Shed were built between 1916 and 1918, in conjunction with the construction of the Municipal Fish Market in the area now known as The Wharf.Although they are now attached, the lunchroom…

Built to house the international exhibits left over from the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, the Smithsonian Institution's Arts and Industries Building reflects the three principal requirements of buildings constructed to house world's…

This elaborate tiered cast iron fountain by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, sculptor of the Statue of Liberty, has graced the grounds of the Botanic Garden since 1878. It was purchased by the federal government for $6,000 after being exhibited to great…

Perhaps no Southwest resident is more emblematic of the dream of social and economic ascension than James C. Dent. Born into slavery in 1855, Dent grew up a farm laborer in the tobacco country of southern Maryland. He eventually made his way to…

The Edward Simon Lewis House, probably erected in 1817, is an early nineteenth-century Federal-style house in Southwest. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, urban renewal efforts in Southwest DC led to the demolition of many of the buildings that…