Description

“The model of what a concise, attractive guidebook should be.”—Mid-Atlantic Country

This lively and informative guide offers tourists, residents, and architecture aficionados insights into nearly 450 of Washington, DC’s, most noteworthy buildings and monuments. Organized into 19 discrete walking tours, plus one general tour of peripheral sites, this thoroughly revised sixth edition features projects ranging from early federal landmarks to twenty-first-century commercial, institutional, and residential buildings. It includes some 80 new entries covering dozens of recently completed buildings, along with some historic structures that may have been overlooked in the past. The guide also has updated maps, and many existing entries have been rewritten to reflect recent renovations, changes to the buildings’ contexts, or additional scholarship.

G. Martin Moeller, Jr., blends informed, concise descriptions with engaging commentary on each landmark, revealing surprising details of the buildings’ history and design. Every entry is accompanied by a photograph and includes the structure’s location, its architects and designers, and the corresponding dates of completion. Each entry is keyed to an easy-to-read map at the beginning of the tour.

From the imposing monuments of Capitol Hill and the Mall to the pastoral suburban enclaves of Foxhall and Cleveland Park, from small memorials to vast commercial and institutional complexes, this guide shows us a Washington that is at once excitingly fresh and comfortably familiar. The additions and revisions incorporated into the latest edition illuminate broader demographic and physical changes in the city, including the emergence of new neighborhoods and the redevelopment of once-neglected areas.