Landmarks in Washington DC
26 landmarks to discover with Bad Historian in Washington DC.
Dumbarton Oaks
Dumbarton Oaks. This is the house where the United Nations was invented. Well — invented might be strong. Argued about in a living room? That's closer.
Ford's Theatre
Ford's Theatre.
Ford's Theatre
Ford's Theatre. It's still a working theatre — they stage plays here year-round. The presidential box has been restored to look exactly like it did on April fourteenth, eighteen sixty-five. That night, Lincoln almost didn't come.
Georgetown University
Georgetown University. Look at that building — Healy Hall. Three hundred and twelve feet long. A clock tower two hundred feet tall. Named after the man who built it and nearly killed himself doing it.
Lafayette Square
Lafayette Square. Seven acres, four statues of foreign Revolutionary War heroes, one Andrew Jackson on a horse. It's a nice park. It was also the site of the most violent part of the assassination plot — and nobody talks about it.
Martin's Tavern
Martin's Tavern. If these booths could talk, half of Washington would lawyer up. This is the oldest family-owned restaurant in Washington, D.C. The Martin family — from Galway, Ireland — has run this place since nineteen thirty-three.
Mary Surratt's Boarding House
Six-oh-four H Street Northwest. If you're looking at a Chinese restaurant right now — that's the place. This three-story townhouse was the headquarters of the Lincoln assassination conspiracy.
National Air and Space Museum
The National Air and Space Museum.
National Archives
The National Archives.
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art.
National Museum of African American History and Culture
The National Museum of African American History and Culture.
National Museum of American History
The National Museum of American History.
National Museum of Natural History
The National Museum of Natural History.
Smithsonian Castle
The Smithsonian Castle.
The C and O Canal
The C and O Canal. George Washington's most expensive bad idea, and it starts right at your feet. See those locks — the stone chambers stepping up from the water? There are four of them right here. They climb like a staircase.
The Exorcist Steps
The Exorcist Steps. Ninety-seven of them — dropping sixty feet from Prospect Street to M Street below. Before the movie, people called them the Hitchcock Steps. Not because Alfred Hitchcock ever used them.
The F-B-I Building
Look at this building.
The Georgetown Dead Drop
See that mailbox? The blue one.
The Old Stone House
The Old Stone House. The oldest building in Washington, D.C., on its original foundation — and it's only still standing because of a lie.
The Petersen House
Five-sixteen Tenth Street. The Petersen House. Directly across from Ford's Theatre. After the shot, soldiers carried Lincoln down the stairs and into the street. They didn't know where to take him.
The Soviet Embassy
Look up the hill.
The U.S. Capitol
The United States Capitol. Six weeks before Lincoln was shot, he stood right here — on the East Portico — and took the oath of office for the second time. March fourth, eighteen sixty-five. It had been raining all day.
The White House
Sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House. Lincoln lived here for four years, led a war from the second floor, and — if you believe the staff — never left.
The Willard Hotel
The Willard Hotel.
Tudor Place
Tudor Place. One family lived in this house for a hundred and seventy-eight years. Six generations. Eighteen oh five to nineteen eighty-three. The woman who built it was Martha Washington's granddaughter.
Watergate Complex
The Watergate Complex.
Washington DC Audio Experiences
Visit these landmarks and more on a self-guided audio experience.
Dead Letters and Cursed Gems
Seven museums on the National Mall, each hiding something absurd. A flag stitched on a brewery floor by a widow and a thirteen-year-old. A cursed diamond mailed for two dollars and forty-four cents. A Leonardo da Vinci smuggled in a suitcase under an FBI codename. A college student who got a C and amended the Constitution. And the most important airplane in history, exiled to London over a grudge.
Georgetown Was Here First
The oldest neighborhood in Washington didn't ask permission. Walk from George Washington's bankrupt canal and the Exorcist steps to a university built by a man who passed as white, the Georgetown mansion where the United Nations was invented, and the bar where JFK proposed — through the part of the city that existed before the city did.
Monuments to the Dead
How America learned to remember — by fighting about it every single time. Seven memorials around the Tidal Basin, from the World War Two gold stars to the sinking Jefferson: the lawsuits, the insults, the twenty-one-year-old who got a B-plus, and the long argument a country has with its own memory.
Spies, Lies & Dead Drops
How Washington became the most paranoid city on Earth — and earned it. Walk from Ford's Theatre to the Soviet Embassy through the ugliest building in America, a hotel that smuggled a president, the most bugged address on Earth, an apartment complex where five men got caught with consecutive serial numbers on their bills, a spy's mailbox in Georgetown, and a tunnel that cost hundreds of millions and produced nothing.
The Night Lincoln Died
A comedy, a conspiracy, and the longest night in American history. Walk the assassination hour by hour — from the Capitol where Lincoln took the oath, to the boarding house where the plot was hatched, Ford's Theatre, the tiny room where he died, and the memorial to a man America hated while he lived and sainted the moment he died.
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