Photo by Chris Darmanin

Walk down the 1700 block of 14th Street NW today, and you’ll likely be able to view a blast from the dot-com past. As construction crews demolish the disused warehouse at 1728 14th Street to make way for the corridor’s newest glassy high-rise, the building’s history as a facility for one of the early 2000’s many failed Internet companies has been exposed.

The building once housed an outpost of Kozmo.com, a company that offered one-hour delivery by courier of various consumer products, including books, music, sundries, and food. Kozmo did not charge delivery fees, much to its investors’ distress. Between that and the cost of opening and stocking warehouses in nearly a dozen major cities, Kozmo did not last long. It liquidated in April 2001, barely three years after it launched.

Kozmo left husks of itself around the country, including the facility at 1728 14th Street. While shops, restaurants, and new residential developments have opened all around it, that building remained an empty neighbor.

Perseus Realty LLC is redeveloping the plot now, and has designs on turning the abandoned warehouse into a “boutique” office development with ground-floor retail. Renovations on the building, which is currently assessed at $2,675,170 according to D.C. tax records, are slated to be completed by early 2014.

As for the digital courier industry, Kozmo might have died a typical dot-com death, but the business is having something of a comeback in the app era. EBay recently launched a same-day delivery service—with workers who pick up goods from stores, not warehouses—while a new D.C. company, Urban Delivery, is attempting to offer bike courier services to residents too busy to tend to their own errands.