Photo by Wikipedia user AgnosticPreachersKid.

If you’ve ever made the walk from Nationals Stadium to Barracks Row for a drink after a game, or perhaps just live in the Navy Yard area – you’ve certainly noticed the building dubbed “Blue Castle” on the corner of 8th and M Streets SE. It’s a bit hard to miss, an old building painted various shades of blue.

Now the home for two charter schools, the building used to be a railroad car house for the now defunct Washington and Georgetown cable car lines. The Washington and Georgetown Railroad was founded in 1862, and ran two lines through D.C.: one from 7th Street SW up to Boundary Street (which is now Florida Avenue) and one from 8th and M Streets SE up to Pennsylvania Avenue, going all the way into Georgetown. When the cars first started operation, they ran on tracks, but were pulled by horses.

In 1890, the cars switched to underground cables. Soon after the Washington and Georgetown Railroad Car House was built, designed by the Kansas City architect Walter C. Root in Romanesque Revival style. The building, better known as the Navy Yard Car Barn, was used to turn around the cars on the way back on their route. However, the building didn’t operate in its original capacity for very long. Three years later, Rock Creek Railway bought the Washington and Georgetown Railroad and formed the Capital Traction Company. The new company dropped the use of cable cars soon after.

The building was then used as a storage shed. In 1902, it was the site of a fight among rail workers, where one struck the other over the head with an iron bar. The Capital Traction Company went out of business during the depression, and the building eventually was used as a bus garage.

The building is the last standing in D.C. that relates to the cable car era, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006. The Hill is Home notes that the charter schools’ leases run out in 2012, and then the owner plans to turn the Blue Castle into mixed-use development.