Image: The "Republican" Building, from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views

Description: This is in the Capital Losses book as the "Southern Railway Building". It was built in 1871 by the National Republican newspaper, thus the (accurate) name. It was located on the southwest corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 13th Street, NW, architect unknown. The lot had apparently been vacant since 1855 when a fire destroyed the old Apollo Theater. Today, the site would be a corner of the Ronald Reagan building. It was built of brownstone. William J. Murtagh and F. P. Hanscom were the owners of the newspaper, and thus the building I guess (though here are some 1878 Congressional hearings on some of the financing; sounds messy). According to the index to reports of committees of the House of Representatives for the second session of the Forty-third Congress, p. 50, the Lighthouse Board rented a few rooms there. The newspaper moved out in 1880, and sold the building in 1886 to the Richmond and Danville Railroad. In 1893, an addition was added (on the right side from this photo), basically doubling the building. The first four floors looked the same but had a different roof... looks pretty odd. In 1899, it was expanded again, and all the roofs were replaced to make it all look like a single building (photo of that stage here, though the date is wrong). The building was severely damaged by fire in 1916, and was demolished. A blander replacement building was made there (I guess seen here, between the Old Post Office and the en:John A. Wilson Building. The original Republican/Southern Railroad Building was aligned with Pennsylvania Avenue, like the Old Post Office; the photo above would have been taken from the other side of Penn Ave, on the northeast corner of the intersection. The railroad moved out in 1929, and it was sold to the federal government. That building was then torn down in 1971, and was a parking lot until the Ronald Reagan building was constructed.- (lightly edited from remarks by Carl Lindberg, originally made at User talk:Jmabel/Stereo cards of Washington, D.C.)
Title: The "Republican" Building.
Credit: This image is available from the New York Public Library's Digital Library under the digital ID G90F108_020F: digitalgallery.nypl.org → digitalcollections.nypl.org
Author: E. Totherick
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No