What the Folgers Demolished

From Mike Neuman:

The most recent Capitol Hill Restoration Society News (Feb. 2010) contains an item of interest to docents. Included in Beth Purcell's "Photographs of Capitol Hill" is the following description of what preceded the FSL on East Capitol Street:

"In 1871, Albert Grant built 'Grant's Row' on the 200 block of East Capitol Street. These were some of the most expensive rowhouses built in the city during that time. Grant expected a demand for expensive houses on Capitol Hill. Instead, DuPont Circle became the fashionable neighborhood, and there was little demand for the Grant's Row houses.
They were sold to the Phoenix Life Insurance Co. Henry Folger, President of the Standard Oil Co., bought Grant's Row in 1928. In 1929, the houses were demolished to build the Folger Theater [sic]."

From the online site of the Historical Society of Washington (www. historydc.org), I obtained the image of Grant's Row in the attached one-slide PowerPoint presentation.

(this Power Point Presentation has been uploaded to Docents' Google Docs storage: http://docs.google.com - login as docents@folger.edu, password: FSLd0cents)