DC Housing History

Every city has had to go through a development boom, usually prompted by WWII, but I find it almost impossible to imagine what Washington was like without the scores of apartment buildings it has today (much less with shoddy temporary housing on the mall). Some of my favorite historic photographs are of cities then and now, with the "then" photos having small, spread-out buildings, unpaved streets, and fields still scattered here and there. Now, American cities couldn't function without towering skyscrapers and socioeconomically defined (and redefined) neighborhoods. Still, though, the common theme between then and now is that housing in the city is still costly, and the best housing can be hard to come by if you don't have the money or enough roommates.