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This Week in D.C., Washington D.C., DC (2026)

08/11/2025

Home Rule in D.C. (post 1/7). A woman attending a hearing on Home Rule for Washington, D.C. in 1972.

The sobriquet on her bag fell out of fashion a few years later, after DC regained limited self-government following the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which was passed on December 24, 1973.

From its infancy, the District had different forms of municipal government, but in the 1870s suffrage and self-government were stripped away.

For the next century, Washingtonians labored to restore both but made few gains until the 1960s.

The Home Rule Act of 1973 is justifiably celebrated as a step in the right direction and detested for the sweeping oversight it continues to grant Congress over the District’s budget and legislation.

In light of mr. trump invoking the Home Rule Act to place the MPD under direct federal control, we will re-examine Home Rule in D.C.--why D.C. did not have it for so long, Washingtonians' long struggled to obtain it, and how the Home Rule Act made this present moment possible.

This is obviously not tied to any kind of anniversay date. The following posts are essentially duplicated from a week dedicated to this topic in December 2022.

Some fantastic books were consulted for this week’s posts (and quoted from liberally):

Chris Myers Asch & George Derek Musgrove, “Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital."

Michael K. Fauntroy, “The Evolution of Democracy in the District of Columbia.”

Lauren Pearlman, “Democracy’s Capital Black Political Power in Washington, D.C., 1960s–1970s."

Mark S. Greek, “Washington’s Protests: Scenes from Home Rule to the Civil Rights Movement.”

08/10/2025

The Early Smithsonian (post 7/7): The disinterred remains of James Smithson in Genoa, Italy in December 1903. The remains were dug up by none other than the inventor of the telephone: Alexander Graham Bell.

In the decades following Smithson’s death in 1829, the US Consulate in Italy had been caring for the site of Smithson’s burial, in the British cemetery at Genoa. There his body would have remained, but around 1900 an expansion of a nearby marble mine threatened to violently destroy the entire cemetery.

With little support from Congress, Bell took it upon himself to personally disinter and transport Smithson’s remains to the United States. Through the bitterly cold Christmas season of 1903, Bell trapsed across Europe only to be confronted with a quagmire of red tape imposed by the Italian authorities.

Not wishing to go to prison for a crime as grizzly as graverobbing, Bell sought the help of the American consul in Italy who helped the inventor navigate and bribe the relevant authorities. He also helped Bell quash a years old injunction against moving the body that had been filed by distant relatives of Smithson who had hoped to claim some of his fortune.

After Smithson’s remains were finally disinterred—they were in quite good condition—they were transported by boat to D.C. where the were moved to a tower room in the Castle. A year later they were again moved to the crypt in the Castle where they remain to this day.

A much, much better version of this story, written by Isabel Sans, can be found on Boundary Stones.

Image 1: Library of Congress
Image 2: Alexandr Graham Bell with Smithson’s skull.
Image 3: the Procession of Smithson’s remains in January, 1904. Smithsonian Archives (SI)
Image 4: Smithson’s remains soon after their arrival at the Castle. SI
Image 5: The Smithson Crypt. SI

08/09/2025

The Early Smithsonian (post 6/7): The Smithsonian Castle aflame on January 24, 1865. The smoke and flames were added by the famous, D.C.-based photographer Alexander Gardner.

The cause of the blaze was an incorrectly installed stove, whose stove pipe was connected not into a flue (where the smoke and embers could safely escape) but into a wall space.

In addition to the damage to the building, thousands of artifacts, specimens, and research papers were destroyed. Fortunately, many objects were saved, including many Renaissance-era engravings (some of the first artifacts acquired by the Smithsonian in the 1850s).

The Castle was also a place of residence for the Secretary Joseph Henry and his family, as well as several researchers and assistants on staff at the Institution. Many of their belongings perished, and some of those that were saved were looted as they sat outside.

Image via the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

08/08/2025

The Early Smithsonian (post 5/7): Thaddeus Lowe’s balloon, the “Intrepid,” near the Battle of Fair Oaks during the Peninsular Campaign in 1862. Just over a year earlier, Lowe was invited to D.C. by the Smithsonian to demonstrate the utility of ballons for assessing enemy positions and topography. The successful demonstration was performed near the Smithsonian Castle and soon thereafter Lowe’s Balloon Corps became the first US military air force.

Except of a few isolated experiments with signal towers and assessing some naval innovations towards the war’s end, the Smithsonian made few other contributions to the war effort. Some at the time alleged this was because the questionable the Smithsonian’s Secretary, Joseph Henry, had questionable loyalties. Henry was indeed a skeptic of the war, a good friend of Jefferson Davis, and was highly disgruntled about the Castle hosting an abolitionist lecture series. However, real reason the Smithsonian engaged in so little war-related research was simply because Congress believed the war would be short and thus saw no need to invest in scientific research for military purposes.

The war had more of an impact on the Smithsonian than the other way around. Many of the Institution’s regents defected to the Confederacy, most notably Jefferson Davis. At the same time, the transmission of reports and specimens from the South almost completely stopped. Even worse, funding for the Smithsonian—Congressional appropriations, the interest on state bonds invested in seceded states—decreased appreciably.

Image from the Smithsonian Institute Archives

08/07/2025

The Early Smithsonian (post 4/7): Installation of the Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy Exhibits at the United States National Museum in 1881.

Exhibits like this have always played an important role in the fulfillment of the Smithsonian’s mission to increase and disseminate knowledge, and are made possible by the “system of exchanges” established by the Institution’s first secretary, Joseph Henry (1848-1878—see Slide 7 For a photo of Henry’s statue being installed in 1934).

From all over the world the Smithsonian soon began acquiring not only exotic art, artifacts, specimens, and minerals, but also thousands of volumes of research papers. The Institution did its best to make all of this as available to the public as possible, but as slides four and nine suggest, its were often inundated by the sheer amount of materials they had to process.
Additionally, Henry also established the Institution’s own “research program,” employing researchers (across many disciplines) to contribute to the “Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,” a journal that ran from 1848-1916.

Slide 1: Smithsonian Institution Archives (SIA).
Slide 2: Fisheries Exhibit in 1886. SIA
Slide 3: Famous taxidermist, William Temple Hornaday, working on a tiger model in 1902. SIA
Slide 4: International Exchange Service, circa early 1900s. SIA
Slide 5: Buffalo at the Castle (1886-1889). SIA
Slide 6: Visitors in the Great Hall of the Castle, 1867. SIA
Slide 7: SIA
Slide 8: Library of Congress.
Slide 9: Deliveries for the International Exchange Service, 1904. SIA

08/06/2025

The Early Smithsonian (post 3/7): A couple stand before the “Castle” in 1859, just four years after its completion.

The Castle, as the name suggests, was (and remains) quite unlike other public buildings in D.C. While the likes of the Capitol, the White House, or the Old Patent Office Building all incorporated neoclassical styles, denoting the young republic’s ideological connection to Europe’s ancient democracies, the Castle took an entirely different form.

Intending to draw a different connection, this time to late-medieval universities like Oxford, the Smithsonian’s planners mandated that thew Institution's physical core be built in a medieval revival style. See slides 3-5 for Robert Mills' early intentions for the Smithsonian.

A national design competition was held in 1846 and won by James Renwick who submitted a Gothic Revival design which you can see in Slide 6. Renwick's original intentions obviously underwent significant revision.

Another striking difference between the Castle and other large D.C. buildings of its era was the use of red sandstone, instead of white marble or yellow sandstone. Coincidentally, enslaved descendants of George and Martha Washington worked at the quarry in Seneca, Maryland where this sandstone was procured.

Slide 1: Unknown Photographer, Library of Congress
Slide 2: Proposed design in a medieval revival style of the north facade for the Smithsonian Institution Building by Robert Mills, 1846. Smithsonian Institute (SI)
Slide 3:” Picturesque View of the Building, and Grounds in Front,” Robert Mills, 1841. Nat. Archives.
Slide 4: “Elevation of the South Front/Elevation of the front facingNorth,” Robert Mills, 1839. Nat. Archives
Slide 5: James Renwick’s design submission for the Smithsonian Institution Building competition in 1846. SI

08/05/2025

The Early Smithsonian (post 2/7): James Smithson’s 1816 portrait by Henri-Joseph Johns.

No one knows for certain why in 1826 Smithson, a British scientist, bequeathed much of his fortune to the United States, a nation he had never visited, for the purpose of founding “at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge among men.”

Some claim that by giving his fortune to the democratic, relatively egalitarian (by the standards of the time), and increasingly powerful United States, Smithson was giving a giant middle finger to Great Britain and its rigid system of aristocratic privilege. A system that he—as the illegitimate son of nobility—had chaffed under his whole life.

The money Smithson left—105 sacks of gold sovereigns that had to be retrieved by a representative of the US government—amounted to $500,000. That would be equivalent to $15,000,000 in 2024. However, historian Mary Ewing makes the important point that if one takes into account Britain’s GDP at the time, the real value of the sum could be about $220 million (as of 2007).

Image 1: National Portrait Gallery
Image 2: A young James Smithson in 1786, upon graduating from Oxford. James Roberts. National Portrait Gallery (currently on display in the East Gallery)
Image 3: Copy of Johns’ portrait by Hattie Elizabeth Burdette. National Portrait Gallery.
🎨

08/04/2025

The Early Smithsonian (post 1/7): The Smithsonian Castle, photographed by Matthew Brady in 1865.

179 years ago this week (August 10, 1846) President James Polk signed the legislation that established what would become the world’s largest museum and research institution.

This came about eight years after the United States government unexpectedly received $500,000 from James Smithson, a British scientist who bequeathed the funds to the US government to establish a center of learning and knowledge in Washington D.C.

In the intervening years Congress bitterly debated what do with Smithson’s gift.
Some wanted to establish a National University. Others felt that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to accept such a gift. The fiercest of these objectors came from Senator John C. Calhoun who, characteristically, argued that it was not only beneath the dignity of the US to accept such a gift but that doing represented a power grab by the federal government:

“We accept a fund from a foreigner and what we are not authorized to do by the Constitution…we would enlarge the grant of our power derived from the States of this Union.”

The Smithsonian has been in the news of late, and while this week's post were written before that was the case, the Institution is no stranger to controversy and I hope to explore a few of those in future posts...

Image 1: Library of Congress (I think it is from 1865, but could be from as early as 1863 according to the LoC website).
Image 2: “Panoramic view of Washington City” with the
Castle in the background. Edward Sachse, 1856. LoC
Image 3: West-southwest view with Maryland Ave. SW and B Street SW. LoC
Image 4: Brady-Handy photograph collection. LoC
Image 5: The Castle in 1860. LoC.

08/03/2025

Early Patent Office Submissions (Post 7/7): Not sure how much demand there was for sunken vessels in the early nineteenth century...

Nonetheless, in December 1835 William Atkinson and Ebenezer Hale submitted a patent application for an "Improvement in Raising Sunken Vessels."

Like most of the "X-Patents" at the National Archives, there is no detailed description, but it seems as though the "globes" were filled with air before being sunk and then attached to the sunken vessel by a diver.

08/02/2025

Early Patents (Post 6/7): Not much to say here. Pretty self-explanatory.

There are a few of the mechanically-powered fans in the X Collection at the National Archives. I'm assuming the inventors imagined they are powered by animals?

Interestingly, the reading material next to the couch is titled the "Hardworking Men Journal."

☀️

08/01/2025

Early Patents (Post 5/7): Any guesses for what this is?

This is a "vapour bath," so essentially a personal sauna. Connected to the device in question are a number of tubes and pipes that essentially push steam into the bed under the opccupant.

Interestingly, the first two drawings were submitted by the same inventor one year apart.

Image 1: "Boyd Reilley's Patent Drawing for a Vapour Bath, July 31, 1832"
Image 2: "Boyd Reiley's Patent Drawing for a Medicated Steam Bath, Feb. 5, 1831"
Image 3: "Samuel K. Jenning's Patent Drawing for a Portable Warm and Hot Bath, Jan. 21, 1814"

This Week in D.C.

08/11/2025

08/10/2025

08/09/2025

08/08/2025

08/07/2025

08/06/2025

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