Existing comment:
Kennedy Center; Front
This area had been the site of the famed Christian Heurich Brewery since 1894. Christian Heurich died in 1945 at the age of 102 and is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery. The brewery itself closed in 1956. The area was then used temporarily for a local fixture called the Arena Theatre. The city condemned the brewery in 1961 and ripped up the area in 1966 to construct the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge and the Kennedy Center.
The Center itself had been given the go-ahead in 1954 but interest in it faded until President Kennedy was killed in 1963 and the center was renamed in his honor. The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts then opened in 1971, providing high art to Washington for the first time. Immediately, tourists started stealing as souvenirs everything that they could including the marble bathroom fixtures which were a favorite.
During 1972, the Center's underground parking lot is rumoured to have been the location where Watergate informer "Deep Throat" met with Washington Post investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. |