On New Year's day the streets downtown were cold and void, seedy, shading to post-Apocalyptic. We drove around looking at shuttered storefronts and quiet construction sites.

The District, in an odd splurge of aestheticism, has illumination two downtown buildings with elaborate and colorful lights. It's really quite bizarre to see an otherwise-drab edifice transformed into a wacky dreamscape backdrop at nightfall. The lights are beamed from four nondescript boxes arrayed on the sidewalk, and they paint the building's forms and features in perfect detail. One site is at the Navy Memorial on Pennsylvania Ave and the other is the Wilson Building on 14th St.

illumination around the Navy Memorial

Along Pennsylvania Avenue we came across an incongruous sight: the last remnants of a building in the last stages of demolition. We were pretty sure this was going to be the location of the new Newseum but couldn't manage to summon a memory of what characterless office building had been here before. One corner of the building was still standing, and from the back we could look into the stacked empty shells of offices, like the rhythmic cells of a wasp nest. From the front, the standing wall seemed almost untouched until it ended in crumbling cement, precariously cantilevered floors, and mangled metal bars. In the failing daylight it was alluring and somewhat haunting.

A tree spreads out against the last exterior wall

Huddled sawhorses blink blithely and wait for daytime