Washington D.C. is a
‘Distinctly Charming’ City

By George Medovoy, Editor

It’s everything you’d ever want in a bookstore: an eclectic selection of books, knowledgeable clerks, a great indoor-outdoor café, a full bar with a computer to check your email, live entertainment and author appearances, and art exhibits.

Kramerbooks & Afterwords Café and Grill is a locals’ hangout that was doing books-and-food 22 years before all those corporate giants arrived on the scene.

And as if all that were not enough, this Washington tradition in the trendy Dupont Circle neighborhood is also known for its leafy streets, historic brownstones and the capital’s largest collection of art galleries.

Like the bookstore itself, the Dupont Circle neighborhood is very eclectic, with private homes, shopping and restaurants, families, gays, and yuppie couples.

After enjoying a hearty Kramerbooks breakfast, I walked to some of the neighborhood’s 21 fine art galleries, which include contemporary painting and sculpture, African and Inuit arts, photography, 19th-century painting and prints, and art produced by artists with disabilities.

At the Addison/Ripley Fine Art Galley, set in an historic house at 9 Hillyer Court, a representative of the Galleries of Dupont Circle Association described the gallery area as "a cross between New York’s Soho and West 57th Street." But the biggest difference is that the Washington galleries are 50 percent less in prices for comparable artists.

My favorite gallery is the Phillips Collection, housed ion a neo-Georgian mansion at 21st and Q Streets, once the home of Duncan and Marjorie Phillips. Duncan and his brother James had collected paintings together until James died at age 34 in the Spanish flu epidemic.

Duncan turned to art for the will to live. "There came a time," he wrote, "when sorrow almost overwhelmed me. Then I turned to my love of painting for the will to live."

Over the years, Duncan and his wife Marjorie collected many works, including French artists like Monet and Cezanne, but they preferred Americans, like modernists O’Keefe, Marin and Dove, and mid-century masters like Lawrence, Rothko and Diebenkorn.

The Washington Historical Society encourages tourists to combine their customary pilgrimage to The Mall – the large, grassy park that stretches from the United States Capitol to the Washington Monument – with excursions into neighborhoods like Dupont Circle, which is an easy walk to hotels and close to the Metro subway system’s Dupont Circle Q Street station.

From the world of art to the world of news requires just a short trip across the Potomac Rover to Arlington, Virginia, where the new "Newseum" is located minutes from the Iwo Jima Memorial and the Arlington National Cemetery.

Even if you’re not a news junkie, the "Newseum" merits a stop on your tour: if only to appreciate how much news figures in our daily lives.

Highlights include a 126-foot-long video display of breaking news; especially fun is the Interactive Newsroom, where they will let you be a TV news anchor. If you like the way you look on TV, you can even purchase the video of yourself announcing the news for a minimal fee.

But for those brought up on the printed word, the pronouncements on the wall are the best, among them this piece of Advice from the Aspen, Colorado Daily News: "If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen."

The centerpiece of the downtown Washington is the MCI Center, a spectacular $200 million sports-entertainment complex, where you can get tickets for everything from Prince concerts to ice hockey and visit the Discovery Channel’s first flagship store, with the largest T-Rex skeleton ever assembled.

More than anything else in the MCI Center, I liked the collection of sports memorabilia, including an actual Babe Ruth bat encased in Plexiglas…but with an opening, so that you can actually touch it! The MCI Center has rejuvenated Washington’s old 7th Street corridor, once a popular shopping destination that went into decline after World War II.

Also a must during your tour of Washington is the FDR Memorial on the banks of the Potomac River. The memorial, defined by walls of red South Dakota granite, is divided into four outdoor galleries, or rooms, devoted to each of FDR’s terms in office, some of them marked by life-size sculptures, including the President and an urban bread line – a stark reminder of the Great Depression.

"I never forgot that I live in a house owned by all the American people," reads one of FDR’s quotes, "and that I have been given their trust."

For more information about Washington, D.C., contact the Washington, D.C. Convention and Visitors Bureau at www.washington.org.