Existing comment:
McPherson Square; further
Another picture of McPherson Square.
The street behind the statue is K Street. Originally, K Street was the dividing line in the city between the lower and the upper classes, with the upper classes taking the areas closest to the White House (on the south side of K Street). Old mansions and townhouses lined the street until development in the area started replacing them with glass box buildings. President Kennedy instituted a preservation program in 1963 to protect the older buildings in the area but all of the area around this statue is just concrete now.
The spires behind and to the right of the statue are the churches that circle Thomas Circle, on the corner of Vermont Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue. The one on the left is the National City Christian Church and the one on the right is the Luther Place Memorial Church.
Also along Thomas Circle is the Vista Hotel International where DC's Mayor Marion Barry was, in 1990, lured by an old girlfriend and filmed smoking crack amid his attempts to bed the woman. This led to his jailing and divorce but, amazingly enough, the city re-elected him as mayor after he got out of jail, something which whites saw as an act of black arrogance and blacks saw as an act of black independence. None of this helped the city of course which increasingly came under Federal receivershop afterward. |