Good Morning, Oppo

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn) 12/12/2018 at 09:05 • Filed to: good morning oppo

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Paging sm70.....sm70 to the front, please.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 12/12/2018 at 09:21

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That appears to have been quite a prestigious repair shop/dealership, given they also have a Packard.

I wonder if one could establish the location of this place from the angle looking up at the hotel? Shorpy says it’s the Wardman Park Hotel.

fintail > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 12/12/2018 at 09:32

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That car with the dual oval rear windows is very familiar too, on the tip of my tongue.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 12/12/2018 at 11:02

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Site information, now that I’ve done some snooping:

My first guess on location in the Shorpy photo is almost exactly due east from the center of Wardman Park, as the sun appears to be directly overhead and at right angles to the building, which means that the wing of the Wardman Park Hotel which is visible would be the one visible at the upper left of this picture. However, this isn’t conclusive, more on that later.

It was at the time an enormous, sprawling thing with six wings.

In the distance aerial shot,the two major roads are Connecticut and Calvert. Shortly after this picture was taken, they put up an additional tower, which is now the only part of the structure remaining.

The tower went up about 1/3 of the way between Woodley and Calvert and about that equal amount back from the road (as visible in modern satellite), which would place it about here relative to the 1922 picture:

In fact, here’s another view showing the whole thing + tower:

So where does that put our prestigious garage? If the east-southeast wing theory is correct, directly south of the tower, I’m afraid.

Gone, completely, in the apron area between the tower and the Calvert House.

In fact, with the height and perspective of the further-back part of the tower visible from 24th street extrapolated to the similar height and perspective of the wing visible in the photo, it would be about 250 ft west of Connecticut Ave.

However, I can’t be sure that I’ve got the correct wing, as I can’t seem to locate something that matches with the Shorpy building in the 1922 aerial photo. The location if would demand is in the woods, yes, but still ought to be more obvious.

The “late afternoon, middle of summer” theory, on the other hand, would be that the shadows are even more abnormally short due to season, and that the location was actually, instead of in the green-looped area, in the blue-looped area:

...and, that due to angle, the other south wing just happened not to be visible.

You can see also that there’s plant or facility south of the south-southwest wing, but I don’t think it matches up at all.

If the late afternoon theory is correct, I don’t think it survived very long either. Looks from the ‘50s (?) picture of the whole complex as through there was some big building that went up around the time of Calvert House on the corner, which would have gone straight through the site. Part of what’s now the Marriott on the site, I believe.

And it would mean that today, it’s very close to the office for Enterprise. Fitting, I suppose.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

ttyymmnn > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 12/17/2018 at 16:18

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That’s some very fine detective work. I’m impressed. And my apologies for not getting to this sooner. I really love these old photos, and figuring out where they were shot just adds so much to it. Thanks!

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > ttyymmnn 12/17/2018 at 16:24

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I’m a little annoyed I couldn’t seem to establish which of the two possible locations it was. But, that’s still locating the garage to within about 350ft, which is not terrible.

Some of the period photos of the hotel, the outside swimming pool in particular, are worth looking up.

ttyymmnn > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 12/17/2018 at 16:32

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I noticed the hotel in the background, and I thought that it almost looked too modern for the era.