By the 1860s, the area south of Pennsylvania Avenue and just a few blocks east of the White House had become a disreputable slum harboring an extensive criminal underclass and dozens of brothels. The neighborhood was roughly bounded by Constitution Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, and 13th and 15th Streets NW -- close enough to the executive mansion that a president could have heard the commotion on a quiet night. The name "Murder Bay" was not metaphorical; violent crime was routine in these narrow, unlit alleys where law enforcement rarely ventured. During the Civil War, the situation intensified dramatically. Tens of thousands of Union soldiers passed through Washington, and so many prostitutes took up residence in Murder Bay to serve the troops of General Joseph Hooker's Army of the Potomac that the area became known as "Hooker's Division" -- a nickname whose legacy has persisted in American slang, whether or not the etymology is apocryphal.

Not all of Murder Bay's establishments were cheap. Two trapezoidal blocks sandwiched between Pennsylvania Avenue and Madison Drive -- now the site of the National Gallery of Art -- hosted brothels so lavish they earned the nickname "Marble Alley." At the opposite end of the spectrum, a large house known as Bull's Head stood at the rear of what is now the Old Ebbitt Grill, marking the northwest corner of Murder Bay. Bull's Head housed prostitutes and contained a large lower-class gambling den. Between these extremes, the neighborhood offered every possible vice to soldiers, government clerks, and anyone else drawn to the capital's dark side. By the late 1890s, the area had diversified slightly: the Electric Vehicle Company established a circular showroom and service center at 15th Street NW and Ohio Avenue, an oddly forward-looking enterprise in a district otherwise trapped in the 19th century.

Murder Bay's reckoning came in stages. In the mid-1910s, the federal government began acquiring land along Pennsylvania Avenue between 14th and 15th Streets, though demolition was years away. By the 1920s, planners had conceived a massive redevelopment of the entire area -- what would become the Federal Triangle, ten large city and federal office buildings arranged in a grand neoclassical ensemble. In 1926, the first contracts were issued for razing buildings along Constitution Avenue to make way for the new Internal Revenue Service Building. Congress began appropriating funds for additional land purchases in 1927, and the acquisitions took several years to complete. Construction accelerated through the late 1920s, with most buildings finished by 1931. The Department of Commerce Building opened in 1932, followed by the Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Interstate Commerce Commission, and National Archives buildings in 1935.

The transformation was total. Every trace of Murder Bay -- the brothels, the gambling dens, the cramped alleys -- vanished beneath limestone facades and manicured plazas. Where Bull's Head once sheltered card cheats and pickpockets, federal employees now file through security checkpoints. Where Marble Alley entertained Washington's powerful behind drawn curtains, schoolchildren line up to view the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives. On March 25, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson established the Temporary Commission on Pennsylvania Avenue, and later that year the Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site gave historic status protection to the culturally significant structures that had replaced the slum. Today, tourists photograph the grand buildings of Federal Triangle without knowing they stand on ground that was once the most dangerous few blocks in the nation's capital. The contrast captures something essential about Washington itself: a city perpetually reinventing its surface while its buried stories wait beneath the marble.