This post is a long, long, long time coming—like over a year! My bad, y’all! Whenever I travel, I am so good about snapping pictures and sharing a guide about what I ate, saw, and did. But when I am here in DC living my day-to-day life, I often don’t think about bringing my DSLR camera with me places or snapping “blog worthy” photos. I really love having great photos to accompany my posts, so I dragged my feet on writing this post until I had the perfect photos—but then the other week, I went through my Dropbox and found photos I’ve snapped of Dupont over the last year. While I might not have as many photos or as much diversity in the photos as I would like (I’d love to include more food photos like I do on travel posts!), I had enough to paint a picture of Dupont so decided to go ahead and press publish on this post. Maybe when it’s warmer out, I’ll take my DSLR camera out in Dupont and do a little photoshoot!
Dupont has always been my favorite neighborhood in DC—and I am so glad I was lucky enough to move here. What I love about this neighborhood is that it really feels like a neighborhood—it’s pretty residential, but then also has a great mix of shops, restaurants, and bars, meaning everything I could want is in walking distance. There are streets and streets of beautiful row homes and embassies, and with mature trees, it is such a dream to walk around and take in the beauty.
For those of you less familiar, Dupont Circle is in the area of DC planned by the city’s original architect, L’Enfant, but didn’t become a fashionable residential neighborhood until after the Civil War when the US Army Corps of Engineers began construction on the traffic circle. In L’Enfant’s plan, the circle was named Pacific Circle, but Congress renamed it to Dupont Circle after Samuel Francis Du Pont, in recognition of his service in the Civil War. In the middle of the circle today, fountain constructed in the 1920s stands in his honor. The neighborhood had a decline after World War II, but then in the 1970s, experienced new life as the heart of the gay and lesbian movement in DC. In the following decades, gentrification really excelled, and now it’s one of DC’s most desirable neighborhoods.
Just a housekeeping note before we dive in—for the sake of this guide, I defined Dupont Circle by this map and only included recommendations that fall within this radius. Let’s explore Dupont, shall we?!
