What Used to Be at 1331 Connecticut Ave.

Map It:  Dupont Circle 

LATE LAST FALL, as we were walking near the Q Street NW exit of the Dupont Circle station, we were approached by a man looking for "the tattoo shop near Dupont Circle." The man was from Baltimore and said he'd been to it a month earlier. But we couldn't pinpoint the exact location. We knew we had seen a tattoo parlor somewhere near the circle, but our geographic advice in this instance was pretty much useless.

If you walk down the sidewalk on the east side of Connecticut Avenue between N Street and Dupont Circle, it's easy to pass by No. 1331 and not even notice it. In a strip of older and newer buildings that's better known as the home of Heritage India, the Big Hunt and Cafe Citron, you'll find Fatty's Tattooz above a dry cleaners.

According to one of our favorite books about D.C., "Capital Losses," No. 1331 was home to Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. Graham, as you might know, lived in the nation's capital for many years, doing research on behalf of the deaf and hard of hearing at the Volta Bureau, located at 35th Street NW and Volta Place in Georgetown. After deciding that their house on Scott Circle was just a little too roomy, Bell and his wife hired the architectural firm of Hornblower and Marshall in 1892 to design a home more to their liking on Connecticut Avenue near Dupont Circle, then known as Pacific Circle because of how remote it was.

Distant though Pacific Circle may have been, Washington's fashionable set started to leave the Farragut Square area during the latter part of the Gilded Age to build new mansions on the fringe of the original L'Enfant-designed city.

Hornblower and Marshall was known for its residential designs in Washington, and the firm's most notable surviving Dupont Circle structure is the Boardman House, the Richardsonian Romanesque building now home to the Iraqi Embassy at the northwest corner of P and 18th streets NW.

Just as the British Legation (which was across the avenue at N Street) was known during the late 19th century for hosting lovely receptions, the Bells' home was known for entertaining as well, in a specially built wing. But instead of diplomatic functions, the great inventor would gather the era's top scientists and thinkers for his regular "Wednesday Evenings" winter gatherings. According to "Capital Losses," it was in this wing that Bell invented an early form of air conditioning.

The house was torn down in 1930 to make way for the commercial structure we see today. So next time you walk past No. 1331 on your way to happy hour at the Big Hunt or drinks at Cafe Citron, you now know what used to stand on the block.

Photo by Michael Grass/Express