Ugh. Olsson’s isn’t just leaving its great Penn Quarter spot. The great local book-and-record chain will soon be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Post writes:

Olsson’s Books, one of the oldest independent booksellers in Washington, plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, founder John Olsson said yesterday.

Pressed by creditors who have filed claims against the company’s inventories and by rising overhead costs, Olsson’s is closing at least one store and will evaluate its ability to operate its remaining five properties, an attorney for the company said.

“The book business is getting a little soft. It’s not selling as much as it used to,” Olsson said. “Our music sales went from 50 percent of our business to maybe 15. We lost a lot of revenue, and at the same time rents went up and real estate taxes went up. I don’t know what we would have done differently. It’s a killer.”

Let’s hope Olsson’s sticks it out. But it sounds like they are done. The chain owes a ton of dough and major publishers aren’t pleased. If one reads the listservs regularly, residents clamor for a lot of things: decent restaurants, good schools, etc. But they are always hungry for a book store. Always.

It’s ironic that this local chain has helped make many a neighborhood liveable–Dupont, Bethesda, Alexandria, etc.–is now slowly dying out. The chain had nine stores in 2002. Now they have five.

*photo courtesy of Keith Stanley.

The Newseum’s restaurant–The Source by Wolfgang Puck–started serving people this fall. The Newseum Residences–135 luxury apartments–already has tenants. And the Newseum’s conference center has been available for events and programs since last summer. Now, it seems all that’s left to open in this Newseum quartet is the actual Newseum itself.

According to an old Newseum press release, the museum, which was once situated in Arlington, was slated to open at its new Penn Quarter location last fall. The new deadline is spring 2008, and Newseum officials will be setting an official date by the end of this month, says museum spokesperson Tina Tate.

According to Tate, most of the exhibits are not in place yet since temperature levels and dust control standards are not set yet. But, here’s one promising sign the Newseum will make good on its spring 2008 opening promise: it’s looking for volunteers. Here’s some info from the museum’s website:

Volunteers are needed to assist Newseum staff in the following areas:

• • Visitor services
• • Public programs and educational workshops
• • Collections management and artifact processing
• • Research and/or writing
• • Word processing, mailings and other administrative functions
• • Testing/evaluating ongoing programs

To learn more about the volunteer program, please fill out the volunteer application form. Or contact the Newseum’s volunteer manager, Ron Crocheron, at 202/292-6516 or rcrocheron@newseum.org.

Jan. 1, 2057—The nation’s capital got a new name today, when the city of Washington was redesignated “Penn Quarter.” The term, which originally applied to a mere 20-square-block area, became so popular that local residents stopped using “D.C.,” “the District,” and “Washington” altogether.

“I’m thrilled at the change,” said Mayor Christopher Barry. “It’s great to give our city a name that was chosen the American way—by a marketing group—rather than by our Congressional overseers. Now if we could only get a vote in the House of Representatives, our long march to self-determination will be complete.”

That change is not gonna come, of course. It’s not likely that the citizens of Georgetown, Anacostia, and other storied neighborhoods will accept a whole new city name. Yet the Penn Quarter tag has partially swallowed “Downtown,” and largely consumed “Chinatown.” What hope do weak formulations like “East End” and “NoMa” have against such a juggernaut?

The confusion actually began in the 1960s, when a new office district fleshed out the spines of K Street and Connecticut Avenue northwest of Lafayette Square. Before then, everyone knew where Downtown was: between 15th and 6th Streets and Pennsylvania and New York Avenues. To some, this area became the “Old Downtown,” as opposed to the “New Downtown.” The latter also became known as “Midtown,” on the Manhattan model.

Both areas have been in a continual state of redevelopment since the late ’70s, and real-estate-industry terms came to apply: The new downtown was called the “Golden Triangle,” a crass nomenclature now enshrined in the name of the precinct’s business improvement district (BID). And the original downtown was dubbed the “East End,” implying that the city’s center was to the west.

Despite the heroic myths of late-20th-century Washington development, very few of the changes to downtown happened organically. That brings us to “Pennsylvania Quarter,” which was devised by the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC), a federally chartered agency, and five developers the PADC solicited to create a mixed-use community around the intersection of 7th and Pennsylvania. The developers “were every skittish about developing housing” there, recalls Jo-Ann Neuhaus, then the PADC’s director of project development, and wanted to redefine the area.

To support the new instant ’hood, the Pennsylvania Quarter Neighborhood Association (PQNA) was founded by PADC and the developers of such buildings as Market Square and the Lansburgh. Neuhaus became PQNA’s executive director, a part-time position she retains today. The new district’s original boundaries, she says, were 5th, 10th, and G Streets and—oddly—Constitution Avenue.

The precinct’s new moniker was ultimately (if not officially) abbreviated to Penn Quarter, and even found its way onto the name of the Archives/Navy Memorial Metro station. When the PADC perished in 1996, Neuhaus became a consultant to the National Capital Planning Commission, a federal oversight group with offices in, of course, Penn Quarter.

Today, the PQNA defines its turf as stretching all the way from the Center Leg Freeway tunnel west to 15th Street, and north to a jagged line defined by Massachusetts and New York Avenues. The growth wasn’t the result of an expansionist vision, says Neuhaus, but of acknowledging new members outside the original borders, and of adoption of the Penn Quarter tag by developers far from 7th and Pennsylvania.

“I kept seeing what people were calling Penn Quarter,” she says. “If people are buying apartments in what they think is Penn Quarter, then it’s Penn Quarter. We weren’t a leader in that. We were just following.”

They’ve followed so far that Penn Quarter’s footprint has become virtually identical to that of the area native Washingtonians still call “downtown.” But, Neuhaus notes, the BID that covers the area stretches to the southeast corner of 16th & K Streets, several blocks beyond Penn Quarter’s reach—at least for now.

The burgeoning Penn Quarter may someday colonize that block, and beyond, but for longtimers there’s some consolation in what the BID covering the southeast corner of 16th and K calls its territory: Downtown.

Everybody hates K Street, by which most mean those blocks redeveloped with bland International Style knockoffs in the ‘70s and ‘80s. And yet that type of K Street building remains the model for office buildings throughout the city. Given D.C.’s height limitations and zoning rules, as well as developers’ desire to construct every leasable square foot they can, featureless rectangles continue to rise. The brief 1980s and ’90s vogue for historicist designs has had some effect—more masonry, less glass—and some new boxes are partially hidden by preserved historic buildings, or at least their facades. Still, there aren’t a lot of new ideas out there.

Now there’s one, and it’s become common enough in one neighborhood that the area could even named for it. North of Penn Quarter, here comes the emerging Wedgie District.

Secret Service headquarters “wedgie”

The wedgie is an angular bulge from an otherwise banal office block, generally a glass-covered protuberance from a brick- or stone-clad structure. With the addition of a new one at 10th and F Streets NW, there are now three of them in as many blocks.

The first wedgie juts from the building that covers most of the south side of H Street NW between 9th and 10th Streets. (It’s the Secret Service headquarters, although the General Services Administration likes to pretend no one knows that.) The building is mostly tan brick, and basically looks like an outsized ’60s high school. But near the east end, a glassed triangle pokes out, as if the larger building were giving birth to an all-glass K Streeter.

This building was followed by Pepco headquarters, dubbed Edison Place, on the northeast corner of 9th and G. Here the wedgie is on the corner, and has a bit of a curve to it. From the corner, the bowed protrusion actually looks as if it is the building. But move east or north, and it’s revealed as a wedgie.

The newest wedgie is at 10th and G, part of a new office building stuck crudely behind some older edifices, including the facade of the Atlantic Building (former home of the 9:30 Club). The main structure is remarkably similar to the Secret Service building—same shade of brick—but features several wedgies. One, tall but shallow, towers above the mansard-roofed house at the corner. Another one, bolder but only about a story higher than the house, flares further down 10th Street. These wedgies seem a rude attempt to upstage the existing structures; they clash with the streetscape without creating a rhythm of their own.

816 Connecticut Ave. NW

Ironically, the angle is a naturally occurring shape in L’Enfant’s street plan, and the triangles and trapezoids created by the intersections of streets and avenues have, occasionally, yielded interesting buildings, notably the National Gallery’s East Building. A triangular prow—used in a classical, symmetrical mode—also works well in the skinny ’80s office building at 816 Connecticut Ave. NW.

The wedgie, however, is neither a fundamental principle, as in the East Building, nor a central decorative motif, as at 816 Connecticut. It’s just an offhand gesture in a neighborhood that was remade too hastily, with too little thought, and with only the basic zoning rules as guidance. As on K Street, these buildings were built to maximize rentable space, with any design elements that would hinder that severely circumscribed. That’s why the wedgie comes on like a bold gesture but actually ends up looking weak.

“Journalism” and “fine dining” are not terms usually found in the same sentence, at least not when you’re talking about the disheveled scribblers who actually report the news. For this rumpled lot, upscale eating more likely means microwaving a Hot Pocket while sucking on a Dunhill in the alley. But on Monday, the folks behind the Newseum, that space dedicated to us nattering nabobs of negativism, announced that they had reached a deal with Wolfgang Puck to open a fine-dining restaurant in a 641,000-square-foot retail/residential/museum complex at Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street NW set to open next year. The three-story restaurant, Puck’s first white-tablecloth outlet in D.C., will be called “Source by Wolfgang Puck.”

Charles Overby, chairman and CEO of the Freedom Forum, which funds the Newseum, called Puck the right choice to open a restaurant with a media theme. “He understands media. He is media,” exclaimed Overby. While the cookbook author, TV pot-stirrer, and quality-cookware pusher may not yet be a walking advertisement—his whites did boast a Wolfgang Puck logo on the jacket—Puck does understand the delicate balance of trying to influence the pencil pushers while ingratiating himself to them. “Our ‘source’ is really to use the best ingredients,” Puck said to a room filled more with Newseum employees and executives than working journalists. “We use the best ingredients and try not to screw them up.”

Source, which is scheduled to open next spring ahead of the Newseum’s projected fall debut in the same $435 million complex, will be independently owned and operated by Puck. Tourists visiting the new Newseum (the Rosslyn original closed in 2002) will not be able to access it from the 70,000-square-foot, seven-level museum space; there will be a separate entrance for Source, much like there’s a separate entrance for Zola, Chef Frank Morales’ upscale eatery next to the International Spy Museum. Puck says he plans to raid his menus at Spago, Chinois, and Postrio for dishes at Source, while also purchasing blue crabs, shad, and other East Coast ingredients for more local flavor. But he said it’s way too early to roll out a menu for Source. “If I make up a menu now, I’d be bored with it by the time [the restaurant] opened,” Puck said after the press conference.

The 180-seat restaurant, designed by the California-based Engstrom Design Group, will cover three levels, each connected by a cantilever staircase. Glass will be a major design element, said Jennifer Johanson, the firm’s CEO and design director, because glass implies journalistic ideals such as “transparency” and “the truth getting revealed.” Downstairs will feature private dining rooms, while the main level will be devoted to a more casual bar where a brick-oven pizza and a glass of wine will set you back 15 bucks, Puck sais. The main dining room will be on the third level, where the Italian-, French-, and Asian-inspired dishes will hit you hard in the wallet, to the tune of about $65 to $70 per diner.

A glass-encased, wine-storage wall will span from the base of the second-story bar to the top of the restaurant. This giant structure, Johanson said, will tie together the second and third floors. The wall of alcohol may also be the restaurant’s only nod to the daily lives of working journalists.