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Dupont Circle is a Traffic Circle in the Northwest Quadrant of Washington, D.C. , at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue , Connecticut Avenue , New Hampshire Avenue , P Street and 19th Street. The name is also given to the public park within the circle, as well as the surrounding Neighborhood , which is bounded approximately by 15th Street to the east, 22nd Street to the west, M Street to the south, and Florida Avenue to the north. Dupont Circle is served by a Station on the Washington Metro 's Red Line ; the entrances are north (Q Street) and south (19th Street) of the circle. HISTORY The area was a rural backwater until after the Civil War, when it first became a fashionable residential neighborhood. Some of Washington's wealthiest residents constructed houses here in the late 19th century and early 20th century, leaving a legacy of two types of housing in the historic district. Many of the grid streets are lined with three- and four-story Rowhouse s built primarily before the end of the 19th century, often variations on the Queen Anne and Richardsonian Romanesque revival styles. Rarer are the palatial mansions and large freestanding houses that line the broad, tree-lined diagonal avenues that intersect the circle. Many of these larger dwellings were built in the styles popular between 1895 and 1910. One such grand residence is the marble and Terra Cotta Patterson house at 15 Dupont Circle (currently the Washington Club). This Italianate mansion, the only survivor of the many mansions that once ringed the circle, was built in 1901 by New York Architect Stanford White for Robert Patterson , editor of the '' Chicago Tribune '', and his wife Nellie, heiress to the ''Chicago Tribune'' fortune. Upon Mrs. Patterson's incapacitation in the early 1920s, the house passed into the hands of her daughter, Cissy Patterson , who made it a hub of Washington social life. The house served as temporary quarters for President and Mrs. Calvin Coolidge in 1927 while the White House underwent renovation. The Coolidges welcomed Charles Lindbergh as a houseguest after his historic Transatlantic Flight . Lindbergh made several public appearances at the house, waving to roaring crowds from the second-story balcony, and befriended the Patterson Family, with whom he increasingly came to share Isolationist and pro- German views. Cissy Patterson later acquired the '' Washington Times-Herald '' (sold to '' The Washington Post '' in 1954) and declared journalistic warfare on Franklin D. Roosevelt from 15 Dupont Circle, continuing throughout World War II to push her policies, which were echoed in the '' New York Daily News '', run by her brother Joseph Medill Patterson , and the ''Chicago Tribune'', run by their first cousin, Colonel Robert R. McCormick . Strivers' Section The current boundaries of Dupont Circle include a small residential section that was once an overlap between Dupont and the Shaw neighborhood. This section, west of 16th Street roughly between Swann Street and Florida Avenue, is today a historic district called the Strivers' Section. http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/wash/dc49.htm Strivers' Section was historically an enclave of upper-middle-class African American s — often community leaders — in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including a row of houses on 17th Street that were owned by Frederick Douglass and occupied by his son. It takes its name from a turn-of-the-century writer who described the district as "the Striver's section, a community of Negro aristocracy." Today, the Strivers' Section is still largely occupied by the Edwardian residences that have populated the area since its historical roots, along with a number of apartment and condominium buildings and a few small businesses. Traffic circle Construction of the traffic circle, originally called Pacific Circle, began in 1871. In 1882, Congress authorized a memorial Statue of Samuel Francis Du Pont in recognition of his service as a Rear Admiral during the Civil War . A Bronze statue was erected in 1884 in a Park at the center of the circle. The Du Pont Family moved the sculpture to Wilmington, Delaware in 1920, and commissioned the current double-tiered, white Marble Fountain from sculptor Daniel Chester French and architect Henry Bacon (the co-creators of the Lincoln Memorial ). The fountain was installed in 1921. Three classical nude figures symbolizing the Sea , the Star s and the Wind are carved on the fountain's shaft. The present Connecticut Avenue traffic tunnel was built in 1949 as part of the now-defunct Capital Transit project. Many incorrectly think the traffic tunnel is where the streetcars operated. However, the streetcar tunnels were built in addition to the traffic tunnel and started a block north and south of the traffic tunnels. The tracks followed the outer perimeter of the circle and paralleled the traffic tunnel north of the circle underneath the Connecticut Avenue service roads. The purpose of the streetcar tunnels was to alleviate the Traffic Congestion created when the streetcars traveled (in both directions) around the circle's western side. After the demise of streetcar operation in January 1962, the tunnel entrances were filled in and paved over in August 1964, leaving only the traffic tunnel. The tunnel entrances were located where the tree-filled medians now stand north of N Street and between R and S Streets. |
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