The website “The Living New Deal” catalogs the many fruits of the Depression-era federal program.

William Gropper, Construction of a Dam, 1939, Department of the Interior (courtesy of the U.S. General Services Administration, Fine Arts Program) It is likely that most people, including Washingtonians, think about the Department of the Interior rarely, if ever. In fact, the most common response to the sex and drugs scandal that rocked DOI’s Minerals Management Service last fall was probably surprise that something interesting could actually happen in the Interior Department. While those…

Before the rise of the Bush family, the Tafts of Ohio were the most successful political dynasty in the Republican Party. Along with the Democratic Kennedys and flexible Rockefellers, Roosevelts and Adamses, they remain one of the top political families in U.S. history. They are also the oldest still-active family, and longest-running direct descendancy, stretching from Secretary of War Alphonso Taft (1876) to current Ohio Gov. Bob Taft II. The middlemost member of this line,…

First Sandy Berger’s sock incident at the National Archives, then Nicholas Cage breaks into Archives, now there’s a missing portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt from the Archives’ collection, according to WTOP. But there are other items missing, including dozens of presidential pardons. The Archives admits that the FDR portrait may be sitting in a landfill after being accidentally thrown out, but other items have turned up on eBay. We did a quick search on eBay…

Two weekends back, DCist took a trip to the Old Post Office Pavilion. We weren’t there to mingle with tourists in the food court, we went for the view. With the Washington Monument closed for security upgrades, the tower of the Old Post Office is the next best thing. Its free access and normally low traffic is one of the best relatively low-key tourist sites in the city. (Please note that the National Park Service’s…