Lost Washington, D.C. [Paperback]

Washington seems the eternal and unchanging Federal City with its grand avenues and stately monuments. Yet the city that locals once knew lavish window displays at Woodies, supper at the grand Raleigh Hotel and a Friday night game at Griffith Stadium is gone. Author John DeFerrari investigates the bygone institutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with an engaging collection of new vignettes and reader favorites from his blog The Streets of Washington. From the raucous age of burlesque at the Gayety Theater and the once bustling Center Market to the mystery of Suter's Tavern and the disappearance of the Key Mansion in Georgetown, DeFerrari recalls the lost Washington, D.C., of yesteryear. Books such as DeFerrari's push us to look up from our devices and enter a past that is not visual, but a part of a living city. --Marc Fisher, The Washington Post