DC -- Judiciary Square -- 300 Mass. Ave NW (Healey 1890 Bldg):
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon
underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
- Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 3.147.73.35 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
- Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
|
[1] 300MA_180526_07.JPG
|
[2] 300MA_180526_11.JPG
|
- Description of Subject Matter: 3rd St. & Mass. Ave., NW
German Roots in Washington
Once home to Healy's Pharmacy, this corner building at Massachusetts Avenue and 3rd St NW was built by Julius Germuiller in 1890.
This structure -- long vacant and now surrounded by huge new buildings -- is typical of hundreds of houses and commercial buildings in late 19th-century Washington that were built by this Washington-born German-American architect/builder, the son of German immigrants and parishioners at St. Mary's Church.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of Ray Milefsky, we now know considerably more about Germuiller's life and career.
For several years, the mortar and pestle on the rooftop disappeared. It's good to see it has returned to the building.
Julius Germuiller, Architect
Architect Julius Germuiller (originally Germüller) was born in Washington, D.C., March 18, 1859 and died here January 10, 1929. At the time of his death, he was a resident of the Little Sisters of the Poor Home on H Street NE. His father, Francis Germuiller, who operated a saddlery and harness business at 741 7th Street NW, immigrated to Washington from Bavaria in 1850. The Germuiller family is interred at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery, Washington, DC.
It is believed that Julius Germuiller received some of his early education at St. Mary's Catholic School; however, that fact has not yet been confirmed. Germuiller was first listed as an architect in the Washington City Directory of 1879, when he would have been only twenty years of age. He continued to practice his profession until the mid 1920's. His various offices, located at 513 7th Street NW, 615 E Street NW, 456 Louisiana Avenue NW and 402 6th Street NW, have all been demolished.
Germuiller's practice was largely confined to residential structures. Between 1879 and 1923, he designed over 300 houses which were built in every quadrant of Washington city and also in Georgetown, Mount Pleasant, Bloomingdale and Brightwood Park, both for individual owners and for speculators. Chief among the latter were builder Diller B. Groff and real estate man A. Behrends. Among his individual clients were John Sherman, Gen. A. D. Hazen, Philip Larner and William Holmead.
Most of the Germuiller-designed structures in the near northwest, in Swampoodle and in the Northern Liberties have been demolished as have the buildings in southwest. The largest group of Germuiller buildings extant is on Capitol Hill, primarily in the near northeast. A few remain also in Georgetown and near Dupont, Logan and Washington Circles. Many of the Brightwood Park and Bloomingdale houses are also extant. However, a small church which he designed in Brightwood Park was demolished about 1950. A very few small commercial buildings are still to be found along D Street NW and H Street NE. A small department store at the southeast corner of 8th and I Streets SE also remains as does a small apartment house at 462 K Street NW. The home which Germuiller designed for his father at 611 I Street NW and his own home at 122 Florida Avenue NW both have been demolished.
Julius Germuiller's buildings are distinguished by the use of ornamental details executed in moulded brick and carved stone. He often used slate roofs. Germuiller-designed buildings were usually brick, although a number were constructed of a combination of stone and brick. The façade of one house on N Street in Georgetown is built entirely of stone. Several houses in Brightwood Park were frame. An unusual feature of some of his semidetached houses in Brightwood Park is the use of the hipped roof, a roof style seldom seen in Washington architecture after the Civil War. Germuiller had considerable success in designing buildings for unusually shaped corner lots, using to bests advantage the corner tower, sometimes round and sometime octagonal. He was one of the first architects to use the oriel on Washington row houses.
Most of the speculative houses Germuiller designed for Diller Groff were modest two- or three-story bayfronted row houses. Even these have better than average architectural details. Probably the finest row of extant houses done for Groff is located on the south side of the 600 block of Maryland Avenue NE.
Prepared for Traceries
By Hazel P. Kreinheder
May 15, 1979
The above was from https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/kul/sup/deu/was/3rd.html
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
- Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].