Qualla: Penn Quarter

Penn Quarter: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wknight94 talk, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the night of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth walked into Ford's Theatre at 10th and F Streets NW, climbed to the presidential box, shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head, leapt to the stage shouting Sic semper tyrannis, and fled east through the alley behind the theater that now bears his name. Lincoln was carried across the street to William Petersen's boardinghouse and died there the next morning at 7:22 a.m. The streets where these events unfolded were, in 1865, the commercial heart of Washington - a dense neighborhood of theaters, hotels, restaurants, and the federal General Post Office building two blocks east. For most of the century after Lincoln's death, that heart slowly stopped beating. By the 1970s, the blocks around Ford's Theatre were one of the deadest commercial districts in any major American city - shuttered storefronts, empty offices, no pedestrians after 5 p.m. The neighborhood that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s, now called Penn Quarter, is one of the most successful downtown revivals in the country.

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Image: Wknight94 talk | CC BY-SA 3.0

Penn Quarter: PADC's Plan

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim1965, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation, created by Congress in 1972 after the abandonment of the demolition-heavy Pennsylvania Avenue plans of the 1960s, drafted a Pennsylvania Avenue Plan that called for a mixed-use neighborhood. The plan required new buildings to be de...

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Image: Tim1965 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Penn Quarter: Lansburgh's and the Shakespeare

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Difference engine, CC BY-SA 4.0. The most consequential single redevelopment within Penn Quarter was the conversion of Lansburgh's department store - which had occupied a full city block at 7th and E Streets since 1916 before closing in the 1970s - into a residential complex with a theater on the ground floor an...

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Image: Difference engine | CC BY-SA 4.0

Penn Quarter: The Verizon Center

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MB-one, CC BY-SA 3.0. The single biggest catalyst for the neighborhood's revival was the opening of what is now Capital One Arena - originally MCI Center - on December 2, 1997. Sports developer Abe Pollin moved the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards downtown from the suburban Capital Centre in...

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Image: MB-one | CC BY-SA 3.0

Penn Quarter: The Booth and the Hoover

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit APK i kissed a girl and i didn't like it, CC BY-SA 3.0. Penn Quarter holds an unusual concentration of monumental and infamous federal buildings. The J. Edgar Hoover Building, headquarters of the FBI, occupies a full block on Pennsylvania Avenue between 9th and 10th - one of Washington's least loved structures, a Brutalist concrete fo...

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Image: APK i kissed a girl and i didn't like it | CC BY-SA 3.0

Penn Quarter: Farmers' Market and Beyond

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Otavio dc at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. On Thursday afternoons in spring, summer, and fall, a farmers market operates on the F Street sidewalk between 7th and 9th Streets, in front of the National Portrait Gallery. The market reflects the larger neighborhood's transformation - 8,000 residents now live in the apartment ...

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Image: Otavio dc at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0