Old Patent Office Building

The National Portrait Gallery is a historic art museum between 7th, 9th, F, and G Streets NW in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Founded in 1962 and opened to the public in 1968, it is part of the Smithsonian Institution. Its collections focus on images of famous Americans. The museum is housed in the historic Old Patent Office Building, as is the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, commonly referred to as Electronic Superhighway, is an art installation created by Nam June Paik in 1995. Since 2002, the work has been on display in the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in Washington, D.C. The large video artwork is composed of over 300 television sets, neon tubing, and 50 DVD players, to form a map of the United States. The map contains images on screens that Paik associated with each state. Some of the states display images that are commonly associated with them, while others are more obscure. The SAAM was gifted the work by Paik in 2002, seven years before the museum was given his archive. It has become one of the most popular pieces in the museum's contemporary art section. While the museum was under renovations, it was reassembled and later displayed for the first time in 2006, shortly after Paik's death. There was an exhibition of his work at the SAAM in 2012, which included Electronic Superhighway and items from his archive. After the museum underwent another renovation in the 2020s, Electronic Superhighway is once again available to view. It is among one of many works on display in the contemporary and post-1945 modern art sections that was created by people of color.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's largest and most inclusive collections of art, from the colonial period to the present, made in the United States. The museum has more than 7,000 artists represented in the collection. Most exhibitions take place in the museum's main building, the old Patent Office Building (shared with the National Portrait Gallery), while craft-focused exhibitions are shown in the Renwick Gallery. The museum provides electronic resources to schools and the public through its national education program. It maintains seven online research databases with more than 500,000 records, including the Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture that document more than 400,000 artworks in public and private collections worldwide. Since 1951, the museum has maintained a traveling exhibition program; as of 2013, more than 2.5 million visitors have seen the exhibitions.

Explore! is a children's museum planned for Washington, D.C. by Jane Cafritz, a D.C. area real estate developer and philanthropist. It will be located within a development being erected by Cafritz in the Fort Totten neighborhood.A pre-opening exhibit, also called Explore!, will be held at the National Portrait Gallery. It will include portrait-related exhibits where children can make portraits with media, making self-portraits or portraying their caregivers with portraits involving selfies, or using art supplies. Sponsored by Jane Cafritz and Calvin Cafritz, Morton and Grace Bender, and Paul and Rose Carter, it is slated to run at the Portrait Gallery for a year.

The Eight Hundred Block of F Street NW refers to a collection of five commercial buildings in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of Washington, DC. It currently houses the International Spy Museum and is across the street from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. It also houses a branch of the Shake Shack.

The Daguerre Memorial is a bronze and granite sculpture by Jonathan Scott Hartley in Washington, D.C. It was erected in memory of Louis Daguerre.

The 1836 U.S. Patent Office fire was the first of two major fires the U.S. Patent Office has had in its history. It occurred in Blodget's Hotel building, Washington on December 15, 1836. An initial investigation considered the possibility of arson due to suspected corruption in the Post Office, which shared the same building, but it was later ruled out. The cause was ultimately determined to be accidental. The fire is considered to be a unique point in the historical events of the Patent Office that caused policy changes. Local fire suppression efforts were incapable of preventing the damage due to lack of fire personnel and proper equipment. Many patent documents and models from the preceding three decades were irretrievably lost. As a result of the fire, Congress and the newly legally revamped Patent Office changed the way it handled its record keeping, assigning numbers to patents and requiring multiple copies of supporting documentation.

Kimpton Hotel Monaco Washington DC is a 183-room high end boutique hotel at the corner of 7th and F Streets Northwest in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Kimpton Hotel Monaco DC is one of ten Kimpton hotel properties in the Washington Metropolitan Area and is located across the street from the National Portrait Gallery and the Capital One Arena. The hotel opened in the summer of 2002 and was named one of the eighty best new hotels in the world in 2003 by Condé Nast Traveler. In September 2010, Pebblebrook Hotel Trust acquired the Monaco Washington DC hotel for $74.0 million.

The General Post Office, also known as the Tariff Commission Building, is a historic building at 700 F Street NW in Washington, D.C., United States. Built in 1839 to a design by Robert Mills and enlarged in 1866 to a design by Thomas U. Walter, it is an example of Greek Revival architecture. It was designated a US National Historic Landmark in 1971 for its architecture. The building has housed the Hotel Monaco since 2002.

Penn Quarter is a neighborhood east of Downtown Washington, D.C. and north of Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. Penn Quarter is roughly equivalent to the city's early downtown core near Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th Street NW, The definition of Downtown Washington has expanded to include areas further to the west, such as the Golden Triangle, southern Dupont Circle and West End areas. Penn Quarter has undergone urban renewal over the past several decades, first under the aegis of the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC) and later, following the recession in the 1990s, by the addition of the MCI Center, now named the Capital One Arena, a sports, concert and event arena that opened at 7th and F streets in 1997. Penn Quarter contains many entertainment and commercial facilities such as museums, theaters, cinemas, restaurants, bars, contemporary art galleries and retail shops. The area is also home to a popular farmers market and several food, wine, art, and culture focused festivals.

Parts of F Street and 7th Street, N.W. and nearby blocks have historically been the heart of the Washington, D.C. Downtown shopping district. In the first half of the 20th century there were numerous upscale large department stores along and near F Street, while 7th Street housed more economical emporia and large retail furniture stores. The F street corridor stretches west from Downtown's Penn Quarter and Gallery Place towards 15th Street, while the 7th Street corridor includes the neighborhoods of Penn Quarter, Chinatown and Mount Vernon Square, and extends up to the border of Shaw.

Julius Lansburgh Furniture Co., Inc., also known as the Old Masonic Temple, is an historic building at 901 F Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C., in the Penn Quarter neighborhood.