The 15th Street Historic District, located just steps from the White House and The Mall, is most likely overlooked by most that visit downtown DC. This corridor aligns and in some cases facades face, the historic Treasury building in Beaux Arts and Queen Anne styles. The photo here, the former National Savings and Trust Bank (now Truist), anchors the corner of 15th and Pennsylvania — its windows keeping solid watch in roundabout fashion toward the southwest and southeast, a day and night watch on an ever challenging streetscape.
Guarding this corner since 1888, it is hard to grasp the sheer number of people that have entered its doors, worked inside, and passed by on its sidewalks. Riots, protests, government shutdowns, pandemics; digging of Metro tunnels, motorcades, inaugurations and funeral processions — all have passed within site of these windows and those that look down to the streetscape from the comfort of being behind the glass. The stoner skateboarder kids clack and crack over the words of Walt Whitman, “Never, til the capital had cost the life of the beautiful and the brave of our land , did it become to the heart of the American citizen” and Frederick Douglass, “Washington has certainly an air of more magnificence than any other American town. It is mean in detail, but the outline has a certain grandeur about it.”
The windows see it all — and hold it all, the words, the clacks and cracks surrounded by a protective glaze of age– perhaps these windows are the heart of Washington: names (and allegiances change), while patina shines despite the rains and hardships that any window must endure.
3 Coffees A Day 