dc underground tours

Urban Explorations

A Smithsonian magazine special report

A Long-Forgotten, Underground Tunnel in D.C. Is Finally Getting Some Fresh Air

The 75,000-square-foot space underneath the city’s Dupont Circle will become an impressive new art space

About eight feet below the surface of one of the busiest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., lies a massive series of tunnels. Snaking their way under Dupont Circle and beyond, these dark, concrete passageways and platforms take up about 75,000 square feet of space. Over the past 50 years, with one ill-fated exception, they have lain pretty much unused, forgotten and ignored.  The Dupont Underground  project is trying to change that, with the hope of turning the tunnels into a place where art thrives.

The first  electric streetcar appeared in Washington, D.C., in 1890 . Drawing power from overhead electric wires and, later, ground rails, the cars zoomed around the city, providing a faster and cleaner alternative to the horse-drawn transportation of the past. The streetcars were very popular into the 20th century, but the system soon became congested and plagued by delays and breakdowns. As early  as 1918, Congress issued a report attempting to find ways to alleviate these issues . Despite the problems, commuters continued to use the streetcar system; by the post-World War II era, the congestion had become so bad—especially in the even-then-trendy  Dupont Circle neighborhood —that improvements had to be made.

The city’s solution? Bring part of the system underground. In 1949, Capital Transit and the city worked together to build a trolley station, platforms and tunnels below Dupont Circle, extending from  right above N Street to R Street , where the tunnels connected to the rest of the above-ground streetcar system. While the solution helped to alleviate traffic in the circle and surrounding area, it didn’t last long. In 1962, only 13 years after the underground portion opened, the entire streetcar system shut down  due to declining ridership, labor strife and the rise of America’s car culture . Today,  the District is trying to revive the streetcar system , albeit in a different area of city, though the opening has been delayed several times . 

Since 1962, this vast, unoccupied subterranean space has hardly been touched.  In the 1970s, parts of the tunnels were a fallout shelter , but according to Agnese, the site was used mostly for storing supplies—water, rations and equipment—rather than as a gathering point for people. In 1995, the “Dupont Down Under” transformed the west platform of the Dupont underground station into a food court, which left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths (literally). The project included 12 tenants, all of the fast food variety, and had problems right from the start.

“Apparently the ventilation failed within the first month and the place didn’t smell good ... I know people who went down there during summer months and it just was not pleasant,” said Agnese. It later emerged that the project’s chief architect, entrepreneur Geary Stephen Simon, had been  convicted several times for fraud and other business crimes  and had spent time in jail. (District officials maintained they were unaware of Simon’s history when granting him the lease.) Within months, lawsuits were being filed against Simon for failing to pay bills on the project totaling upwards of $200,000. In less than a year, “Dupont Down Under” closed, leaving the entirety of the tunnels empty once again.

Unlike the food court attempt,  Dupont Underground  isn’t trying to transform the space—instead, they are trying to adapt to it.

Architect  Julian Hunt  moved to the D.C. area from Barcelona over a decade ago .  After hearing about the massive, unused space, Hunt saw it as a chance to develop the city's architectural identity. Said Agnese, “Julian started this all driven out of architecture passion ... there was a very robust architecture design scene in Barcelona that was very involved in the life of the city. He didn’t find that when he came to D.C. … He saw [the Dupont Circle tunnels] as a space to facilitate that kind of conversation and activity that wasn’t going on here yet.” Using  Düsseldorf’s Kunst im Tunnel  (a contemporary art museum underground), the  Brunel Museum Thames Tunnel  and even New York’s above-ground railway  High Line  as inspiration, Hunt started formulating a plan for using these tunnels to turn D.C. into a cultural capital and a “world-class city.”

After sharing his vision of art and culture underground, Hunt brought others on board, including Agnese. The Dupont Underground, which officially formed as nonprofit under a different name in 2003, recently secured a 66-month lease from the District. The short-term plan is to open the former Dupont Station’s east platform by July, and the intention is to open the west platform within a year. When the lease is up, the nonprofit hopes to negotiate a long-term agreement with the city and begin work to “activate” the rest of the 75,000 square feet of tunnels. 

In March, the organization was able to raise enough money (about $57,000) through  crowdfunding  to open the east platform to a limited capacity this summer. Their plan for the east platform is, refreshingly, not overly ambitious. The coalition wants to keep it a “raw space with minimal amenities” in order for the station to “retain the historic character it has today.” While nothing has been made official yet, the nonprofit is in talks with musical performers, theater groups, and the creators of experimental art installations, while also hoping to eventually attract commercial photography, film and television shoots.

As for the larger west platform, the former home of “Dupont Down Under,” Agnese says: “The one saving grace that the food court existed at all is that it gave us infrastructure. It’s got the power, water, sewer lines, sprinkler system, and we may even be able to salvage the AC.”  The plan is turn the west platform into a main event space, with enough room to fit 500 to 1,000 people. The organization is now mounting a larger capital campaign—targeting philanthropic, corporate and sponsorship dollars—to help make that happen.

Much like their European counterparts, as American cities age and grow, there’s often less and less room to build up and out. In some cases, the best solution for the space problem may be to aim down. Plus, as Agnese points out, being below the surface has always been part of the human experience: “Underground spaces have a long history in the psyches of humans as both points of attraction and mystery ... there’s this great tension.”

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Matt Blitz | | READ MORE

Matt Blitz is a history and travel writer. His work has been featured on CNN, Atlas Obscura, Curbed, Nickelodeon, and Today I Found Out. He also runs the Obscura Society DC and is a big fan of diners.

Freedom Trail: A New Walking Tour of the D.C. Area's Underground Railroad

A new guided walking tour near Washingon, D.C., explores the area's African American history and hidden connection to the Underground Railroad. 

By Zac Thompson

October 30, 2020

“$200 Reward.—Ran away from the service of the Rev. J. P. McGuire, Episcopal High School, Fairfax county. Va., on Saturday, 10th inst. Negro Man, Oscar Payne, aged 30 years, 5 feet 4 inches in height, square built, mulatto color, thick, bushy suit of hair, round, full face, and when spoken to has a pleasant manner—clothes not recollected.”

That advertisement from the 1850s was reprinted in Still’s Underground Rail Road Records , an invaluable resource that inspired a new guided walking tour in  Alexandria, Virginia , the history-rich city along the Potomac River about 5 miles south of  Washington, D.C .

Debuting November 1, the Underground Railroad tour is the latest offering from Manumission Tour Company , which is dedicated to bringing to light the region's Black history for travelers and locals alike.  

The writings of 19th-century Abolitionist William Still proved an essential jumping-off point in creating the walk. Still chronicled the experiences of formerly enslaved African Americans who escaped to freedom via the Underground Railroad, the secret network of homes and churches where anti-slavery "conductors" helped usher enslaved people to the North.

Still took meticulous notes on more than 600 lives he touched while working with the Railroad in Philadelphia, publishing his archive in several editions starting in 1872 (you can read an excerpt at the history website Encyclopedia Virginia ).   

Oscar Payne, the man advertised above, made it to Philadelphia despite the bounty on his head. Still allows him to speak for himself—and to us, across a canyon of time and forgetting.

“No privilege was allowed me to study books,” Payne says of his bondage. “Three brothers and one sister have been sold South, can't tell where they are.”

The private boarding school where Payne was enslaved—but denied an education—is still in operation in Alexandria. In fact, much of the city is well-preserved, especially in Old Town , where brick walkways and 18th-century row houses haven’t changed much since George Washington hung out here (his Mount Vernon estate is less than 10 miles away).

Yet not all aspects of the past have been remembered in full, according to John Taylor Chapman, a fourth-generation Alexandrian, city council member, and founder of Manumission Tour Company.

Chapman ( pictured at top on the left ) says that the stories of Payne and other figures who escaped slavery in the area are in danger of being lost—even to Alexandrians. 

“I had one of the elders in the community, who I have great respect for, tell me there was never an Underground Railroad here,” Chapman told us. "Not only do we know of folks who came through here, but we know of folks who left from here and made it to freedom. I wanted to dispel some of the myths.”

That’s a big reason why he put together Manumission’s new 90-minute guided walk exploring Underground Railroad sites in Alexandria. From Still’s records, Chapman was able to identify 20 people who escaped from Alexandria—including Payne as well as stepbrothers Oscar and Joseph Ball, who ran away from one of those handsome brick houses ( 505 Cameron St. ), and the Viney family, in whose rescue Harriet Tubman is believed to have played a role. Those lives form the basis of the tour. 

In the years before the Civil War, the slave trade was big business in Alexandria. The Franklin & Armfield Slave Office ( 1315 Duke St. ) was once the country’s largest firm specializing in domestic trafficking, sending at its height in the 1830s an estimated 1,800 enslaved people per year to the Deep South, where cotton production depended on huge amounts of captive labor. The site's “slave pens,” where the human merchandise was corralled like cattle, were eventually destroyed. Today, the interior’s Freedom House Museum documents the horrors that took place there.

Not far away on Duke Street stands the two-story, Federal-style brick building known as Bruin’s Slave Jail ( 1707 Duke St. ), where African Americans were imprisoned by slave trader Joseph Bruin while he looked for buyers. (The building now houses business offices and is not open to the public.)

Underground Railroad sites, by contrast, were necessarily clandestine, but Chapman argues that the evidence suggests Alexandria was a stop for those on the run before crossing the Potomac to reach the nation’s capital and other points North. In addition to paying visits to the historic homes in Old Town from which the enslaved escaped, Manumission's tour guides point out the places where, historians believe, conductors temporarily hid people fleeing slavery in North Carolina and other parts of Virginia.     

“A couple steps from our City Hall [ 301 King St. ], there is a former safe house that’s still standing and has now been reused as a modern home,” he says. “We do still have this history among us even if we don’t know it.”

Free Black families and members of the Quaker community in Alexandria likely worked as Underground Railroad conductors. Anti-slavery Quaker activist Henry Hallowell is thought to have used the Lloyd House ( 222 N. Washington St. ), where his father taught school, as another secret way station. 

Chapman sees it as his mission to reclaim these often overlooked figures—brave seekers and abettors of freedom, as well as those crushed under a barbarous system—and restore them to the American story. 

“Young people growing up now are going to hear and be able to see a more complete picture of history,” he says, “and understand that there weren’t just George Washington and his contemporaries. There were free Blacks and enslaved people as well. Being able to know what their contributions were to building up this community is important.”

Manumission Tour Company’s Underground Railroad walking tour of Alexandria, Virginia, is available on weekends. The cost is $15 per person. To make a reservation, learn about the company’s other guided tours, and familiarize yourself with required Covid-19 precautions such as masks and social distancing measures, visit ManumissionTours.com .

Alexandria’s Old Town neighborhood can be easily reached from Washington, D.C., via car (take Interstate 395 south), Metro train (take the Blue or Yellow line to the King Street-Old Town station ), or water taxi (try the Potomac Riverboat Company , especially on one of the region’s perfect spring days).

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Book a Tour

Reservations are recommended .

The Capitol Visitor Center is open Monday-Saturday from 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Tours begin every 10 minutes until 3:20 p.m. All tours are led by our professional tour guides and visit the  Crypt , the  Rotunda  and  National Statuary Hall . The tour does not include the  Senate and House Galleries . The tour route is subject to change.

Reservations are recommended, but not required. Visit the  schedule a tour  page to select a day/time for a reservation. Same day passes may be available. Visitors without reservations are encouraged to arrive at the Capitol Visitor Center as early in the day as possible, but no later than 2:30 p.m., to obtain passes.

All tours, programs and activities are free of charge.

Visitors enter through the Capitol Visitor Center, located underground on the east side of the Capitol. Please leave time to go through security and review the U.S. Capitol’s  prohibited items list  before your visit.

You can begin your Capitol experience at the Visitor Center by visiting Exhibition Hall , perusing our Gift Shops or getting a bite to eat at the Capitol Cafe.

For information on tours offered in Mandarin and Spanish, please view the Foreign Language Tours page.

How Do I Cancel My Reservation?

You can cancel your reservation through your account in the Capitol Visitor Center’s online reservation system.

• Go to  https://tours.visitthecapitol.gov  (A new page will open.)
• Beneath the blue banner reading “Reserve a Tour of the Capitol,” click on the link to log in. (A sign in/signup dialog box will open.)
• In the sign in section, log in with your email address and password.
• Search for reservations by clicking “More” in the “My Reservations” tab.
• Once you have located your reservation, click the link to “Cancel.”

Underground Donut Tour

The underground donut tour is dc's only food tour solely focused on everyone's favorite pastry, donuts.

Join us for a historic donut adventure through our nation’s capital, Washington DC. Our tour begins in Western Market, which has a legacy dating back to 1802! There we will sample donuts made from a business that’s been in the same family for five generations. From there we’ll head downtown, where we’ll see a restaurant favored by a former President before passing by the White House itself for a perfect photo op. After soaking in some history at Lafayette Square, we’ll head deeper into DC to try some local fan-favorite donuts from local celebrities. From there, we’ll head down Palmers Alley, the most Instagrammable spot in DC, where we’ll end our adventure with delectable donuts with an international flavor. By the end, you’ll have made some great friends and enjoyed some incredible donuts and history. We hope you can join us today!

• Open to public

United States

(844) 366-8848, [email protected].

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Underground Donut Tour - NOLA, Nash, Bost, Chi, Miami - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)