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Exorcist steps

Georgetown (Washington, D.C.)Stairways in the United StatesThe ExorcistTransportation in Washington, D.C.Use American English from April 2019
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Exorcist Stairs
Exorcist Stairs

The Exorcist steps are concrete stairs, continuing 36th Street, descending from the corner of Prospect St and 36th St NW, down to a small parking lot, set back from the intersection of M Street NW, Canal Rd NW, and Whitehurst Freeway NW in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., famous for being featured in the 1973 film The Exorcist. The steps were built in 1895 during construction of the adjacent Capital Traction Company Barn for cable cars, serving as a lightwell and public right of way. Before the Exorcist association, the stairs were informally called "Hitchcock steps" for famed suspense and horror film director Alfred Hitchcock.For The Exorcist, the steps were padded with half-inch-thick (13 mm) rubber to film the fall of the character Father Damien Karras. Because the house from which Karras falls was set back slightly from the steps, the film crew constructed an eastward extension with a false front to the house in order to film the scene.In a ceremonial Halloween weekend in 2015 that featured the film's director William Friedkin and screenwriter William Peter Blatty (who also wrote the book on which the film is based), the Exorcist steps were recognized as a D.C. landmark and official tourist attraction by Mayor of the District of Columbia Muriel Bowser, with a plaque unveiled at the base of the steps recognizing its importance to Washington, D.C. and film history.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Exorcist steps (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Exorcist steps
Exorcist Steps, Washington Georgetown

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N 38.905544444444 ° E -77.070163888889 °
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Exorcist Steps

Exorcist Steps
20057 Washington, Georgetown
District of Columbia, United States
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Exorcist Stairs
Exorcist Stairs
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Georgetown Car Barn
Georgetown Car Barn

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. Intended for dual use as a passenger station and as a storage house for the streetcars, the Car Barn began Washington's only cable car system. Almost immediately after the building opened, the system was electrified, and the Car Barn was converted to accommodate electric streetcars. Throughout its history as a terminal and storage facility, the Car Barn was never utilized to the extent anticipated by its construction. The building has undergone several renovations, the most extensive in 1911, when the original Romanesque Revival façade was significantly modified, and the interior was almost completely gutted. Not long after its opening, the building fell into disrepair. 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 used as an academic building by Georgetown University. In 2019, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Key House
Key House

The Key House, also referred to as the Key Mansion, was the Washington, D.C., home of lawyer and poet Francis Scott Key from 1805 to 1830. It was built in 1795 and demolished in the 1940s for a highway ramp. The Key House was built in 1795 by a real estate developer and merchant. At the time the house was located on Bridge Street, since renamed M Street, and included thick walls, long hallways, two parlors, and six bedrooms, in addition to the kitchen and dining room. Key and his wife moved there in 1805 and raised their 11 children in the house; during this time, he wrote the poem that would later be expanded and turned into the national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner". The Keys moved after the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was built directly behind their house, although Francis continued using the one-story addition as office space. The house later became a hotel and restaurant, then a string of commercial enterprises, including a blacksmith shop, and a dry-goods store. With the construction of the Georgetown Car Barn across the street, the area around the house rapidly developed. In the early 1900s, a group of historic preservationists purchased the house and established a museum honoring Key, but within a few years, the building was sold and drastically altered. The gabled roof and chimneys were removed, in addition to other modifications. Many people thought the original house had been demolished and replaced with a new building. When the Key Bridge opened in 1923, it was apparent the house might not survive. This came to pass in the 1940s with the construction of an exit ramp from the Whitehurst Freeway to the Key Bridge. The building was disassembled with plans to rebuild it somewhere else, but during the next several decades, all of the items were used in other buildings or stolen. In 1993, the Francis Scott Key Memorial opened near the Key House site.