3600 M Street NW, Washington, District Of Columbia. County/parish: District of Columbia.
Added to the National Register of Historic Places August 09, 2019. NRIS 100004248.
1 contributing building. 2 contributing structures.Also known as:
The Georgetown Car Barn, historically known as the Capital Traction Company Union Station, is a building in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in the United States. Designed by the architect Waddy Butler Wood, it was built between 1895 and 1897 by the Capital Traction Company as a union terminal for several Washington and Virginia streetcar lines. The adjacent Exorcist steps, later named after their appearance in William Friedkin's 1973 horror film The Exorcist, were built during the initial construction to connect M Street with Prospect Street.
The Car Barn, built for use as a passenger station and to store streetcars, was also the terminal for Washington's only cable car system. Almost immediately after the building opened, Capital Traction converted its streetcar lines to electrical power and modified the Car Barn to suit. Still, the building was never used to the extent anticipated by its builders.
The building has undergone several renovations. The most extensive, in 1911, modified the original Romanesque Revival façade and almost completely gutted the interior. Changing ownership over time, it maintained its original function of housing streetcars until 1950, when it was redeveloped as office space. Among its occupants was the International Police Academy, an arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, which operated out of the Car Barn in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, it is an academic building owned by Georgetown University. In 2019, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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