JOHN: The Dupont Circle neighborhood is a pretty recent, uh, invention.

So when Pierre L'Enfant laid out Washington City, his famous plan with the diagonal avenues named after states, all led to these central spots.

They weren't circles; they were just large open spaces.

The one that would become Dupont Circle was really the most northwestern in the whole city, and there was still nothing here through at least the first half of the 19th century.

So Alexander Shepherd started to do a lot of infrastructure improvements.

He built roads out in this area and trees and lighting and it became an area that could be developed as a neighborhood to live in.

In the 1890s or so, became the real height of Dupont Circle's cache.

That's when the really big mansions were built.

It was just, uh, a very bucolic place to live.

We call it Dupont Circle now, but it came to be called Pacific Circle in the early days, and then the Du Pont family paid for a bronze statue of Admiral Du Pont to be placed at the center of this circle.

There were members of the Du Pont family that just didn't like this particular statue.

So the Du Pont family paid for this beautiful marble fountain that was installed in 1921.

Dupont Circle really became a crossroads.

It was used for a lot of different social events.

Concerts were held there.

Social protest, political protest.

In the wintertime, you know, famously they'd have snowball fights whenever the first snow came along, and the LGBTQ community started to come here as early as the 1930s.

Dupont Circle today still is a really important place for the LGBTQ community.

GEORGIA: Annie's is like a gay Cheers, so you walk in, and half the restaurant's like, "Oh, hey."

And it's just a really, really fun, special place to be.

My grandfather, George Katinas, was a Greek emigrant.

His father owned a fruit stand, and then he turned the fruit stand into a restaurant, and then he employed all five of his sisters.

He added Annie's name to Paramount Steakhouse because of the response that she was getting from the LGBTQ community.

She was the original ally: someone who had open ears and open heart and a shoulder to cry on.

One night, there were two men who were here on a date and they were holding hands under the table.

Annie saw them from the bar and went up to them and said, "You don't have to hide that here."

And encouraged them to put their hands on top of the table and show their affection.

And that, at that time, was really unheard of.

Annie's has been in business for 76 years now, and we are absolutely still a haven for the gay community.

The High Heel Race is a drag race that historically was from Annie's to JR's and back, and it just has grown and grown and grown in popularity, and so now the whole street's shut down and it is wild.

It is one of the most fun nights of the year.

We're still really actively participating in the LGBTQ space and we also really work hard to be a pillar in the 17th Street community.