BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Foggy Bottom -- Liberty Plaza (between USTR and CFPB on 17th St. NW)

DC -- Foggy Bottom -- Liberty Plaza (between USTR and CFPB on 17th St. NW):

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.

Spiders: The system has identified your IP as being a spider. 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, a number of 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 excited for 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]

Share: Facebook Twitter Digg
[1] LPLAZA_200226_01.JPG	[2] LPLAZA_200226_05.JPG	[3] LPLAZA_200226_09.JPG
[4] LPLAZA_200226_14.JPG	[5] LPLAZA_200226_22.JPG	[6] LPLAZA_200226_26.JPG
[7] LPLAZA_200226_31.JPG	[8] LPLAZA_200226_34.JPG	[9] LPLAZA_200226_37.JPG
[10] LPLAZA_200226_40.JPG	[11] LPLAZA_200226_44.JPG	[12] LPLAZA_200606_01.JPG
[13] LPLAZA_200606_08.JPG	[14] LPLAZA_200606_11.JPG	[15] LPLAZA_200606_14.JPG
[16] LPLAZA_200606_15.JPG	[17] LPLAZA_200606_18.JPG	[18] LPLAZA_200606_20.JPG
[19] LPLAZA_200606_24.JPG	[20] LPLAZA_200606_26.JPG	[21] LPLAZA_201102_01.JPG
[22] LPLAZA_201102_05.JPG	[23] LPLAZA_201102_10.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. LPLAZA_200226_01.JPG: Riggs Bank Medallions Notable architectural features comprised the Washington Loan & Trust Company Building, which originally stood at the corners of 17th and G St Northwest. Decorative elements from the bank building included the four medallions displayed here. Each medallion was carved from sandstone. Two of the medallions represent George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, commemorating the first U.S. President and Secretary of the Treasury. The remaining medallions represent Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom and sponsor of trade and commerce; and Mercury, the patron Roman God of Finance and Commerce, with his winged hat and a wooden sailing vessel and staff. More information about the historical Washington Loan & Trust Company Building is included in the adjacent panel to your left.
2. LPLAZA_200226_09.JPG: Riggs Bank Medallions Notable architectural features comprised the Washington Loan & Trust Company Building, which originally stood at the corners of 17th and G St Northwest. Decorative elements from the bank building included the four medallions displayed here. Each medallion was carved from sandstone. Two of the medallions represent George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, commemorating the first U.S. President and Secretary of the Treasury. The remaining medallions represent Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom and sponsor of trade and commerce; and Mercury, the patron Roman God of Finance and Commerce, with his winged hat and a wooden sailing vessel and staff. More information about the historical Washington Loan & Trust Company Building is included in the adjacent panel to your left.
3. LPLAZA_200606_20.JPG: Riggs Bank Sculptural Elements In 1923, The Washington Loan Trust built a new, one story stone bank at the corner of 17th & G Streets, N.W. but in 1974 the building was razed for the construction of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board building that currently stands at this location. Eleven sculptural elements from the Washington Loan & Trust Company Building are arrayed here. They depict animals carved from sandstone blocks. Seven of the ornaments had been carved into column capitals on either side of the building's window arches. These female lions once faced each other and still stand atop a group of acanthus leaves. Four owl figurines were salvaged from the keystones capping large windows. Symbolic imagery was regularly employed on financial institutions, to emphasize wisdom (owls) and strength (lions).
Description of Subject Matter: Designed in 1977 by Sasaki Associates, this 5,000-square-foot, public plaza is located between the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) Building and the Winder Building on 17th and G Streets NW. The FHLBB Building, designed by architect Max Urbahn, is composed of a series of Brutalist concrete slabs and columns filled in with dark-tinted glass. Its adjacent plaza was one of the first spaces created under the Public Buildings Cooperative Use Act of 1976.
Sasaki Associates, likely with Masao Kinoshita, Tom Wirth, and Neil Dean, designed a rectangular sunken plaza, accessed via a set of brick steps on 17th Street and from the surrounding buildings. A winter ice rink/summer open pool occupied the center of the plaza, with shops and cafés lining its perimeter. The ice rink/pool was later replaced with an expanse of brick pavers.
The western end of the plaza is defined by a 50-foot-wide, two-tiered waterfall. Water cascades over a roughly hewn, granite wall on the plaza side and projects from eight bronze-colored jets, resembling fire hoses, into a lower pool on the sunken interior side. The north side is framed by a raised viewing terrace, with low brick steps, wall-mounted benches, and deciduous trees in brick planters set at acute angles to the plaza. The south side is defined by an arched steel-and-glass galleria, which once included tables and chairs, hanging vine baskets, potted exotic trees, and a vending area. Circular brick planters filled with seasonal plantings are sited at the 17th Street entrance.
The above was from https://tclf.org/landscapes/liberty-plaza
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].