Pretty amazing shot from 2002 by Michael Wilkinson, whose family owns Pete’s Apizza. The picture is from the Tivoli Theater down 14th starting with the intersection of 14th Street, Park Road and Kenyon Street.
As we all know, the change is incredible. The building that now has the CVS and the apartments to the south of it are still there in the distance, as are the two Metro entrances, but pretty much every other lot has changed.
The triangle to the left is where the Civic Plaza is now, and across 14th, where the Vitamin Shoppe corner of DCUSA is, there was a Payless Shoes, something called Value Express, a laundromat, and what looks like an empty building. Payless later moved into DCUSA. There’s a hot dog cart there too, I wonder if that’s the same cart that’s there today.
Everything else is empty. In the full size version, behind the Payless you can see a pile of rubble and the old facade (formerly a car dealership) that was later incorporated into the Best Buy side of DCUSA.
And here’s a similar view of the same intersection on Google Streetview from a few months ago.
Going farther back, Flickr user Rockcreek has this shot of the Vitamin Shoppe corner of 14th and Park in 1912, from the Library of Congress. Peoples later was purchased by CVS. It looks like it’s the same exact building as the Payless above.
And here’s the same corner in 1890, as the home of a John Levi. Interesting that all four times (including today) kept that cut off corner in the building.
