The North Gallery’s DC Hall of History engages visitors with a 40-foot panoramic timeline of DC’s history. This introduction to the major moments in our collective past yields surprising facts and makes important connections.
Mondays – Wednesdays, 10 am – 5pm Thursdays – Sundays, 12 – 6 pm
Complementing the timeline are four thematic displays, each based on a subject that is especially well documented in the Kiplinger Research Library of the DC History Center.
Learn about transportation innovations that eventually made modern life possible, from a city-spanning canal to DC’s Metro subway system. We introduce William H. “Pop” Saunders, whose long career at Metro was capped with the honor of driving the first ceremonial Metro train on opening day in 1975.
Working Washingtonians have always enjoyed their off-hours, from roller skating to miniature golf to formal dances. The city’s social clubs, fraternal organizations, and after-hours destinations are made visible here. They remind us, too, how segregation has defined nearly every aspect of life in this city.
Learn about the dramatic efforts to build and remake the city, especially the urban renewal efforts of the 1950s-1970s. Often these bold changes, which regularly ignored the desires of residents, have been the result of the city’s lack of statehood, where congressional overseers who were not elected by Washingtonians make decisions affecting their lives. The Kiplinger Research Library holds documentation of Southwest DC as the Redevelopment Land Agency prepared to knock it down and start over.
Some aspects of our city are no different than you’d find elsewhere around the country. Drawing on the Hechinger and Woodward & Lothrop papers, businesses—and the battles against segregation and for social justice—are highlighted.