Pasta to Go
Deep inside the Woodner building, Fio's Italian Restaurant serves its neighborhood clientele traditional Italian fare in all shapes and sizes. But Woodner residents want three squares a day.
Cover Story
Deep inside the Woodner building, Fio's Italian Restaurant serves its neighborhood clientele traditional Italian fare in all shapes and sizes. But Woodner residents want three squares a day.
Photographs by Charles Steck
Jean Meall has appointed herself guardian of the Woodner apartment building's regal history. A stylish, petite woman from Savannah, Ga., who's partial to vibrant pink lipstick, Meall has lived in the upper 16th Street NW building since 1966--except for a brief stint in the Quebec House in Cleveland Park, which she found "lonesome." From her vantage point in an efficiency apartment on the second floor of the gigantic structure, Meall has watched over the years as the onetime Woodner Hotel has become one of the city's most diverse apartment buildings.
She keeps copies of old menus from the building's now-defunct Regency Room, the majestic Woodner hall overlooking Rock Creek Park where she and her husband-to-be danced and courted back in the '50s to the big-band sounds of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.
She keeps the program of the play Gold in the Hills by J. Frank Davis, which made its premiere at the Woodner Little Theatre in 1974, starring Meall as "Lizzie Jones, a housekeeper." She keeps fond mementos of her neighbor of 20 years, Roberta Smith, who passed away after 31 years as a Woodner telephone operator. And she keeps visiting her buddy Larry Lazzaro, the white-haired beautician at the Beau Monde Coiffures salon in the building's lobby. He's been doing Meall's upswept white 'do for 25 years now. ... Continued 
Issue of Feb. 1 - 7, 2002
News and Features
- Pasta to Go
Cover Story - Co-op d'Etat
The City - Bill of Slights
The City - When Everybody Beat the Wiz
The City - Write It on the Board
The Mail - Paradise Missed
The Mail - Bird of Paradise
The Mail - In Dispute:
The Mail - Grant Us Peace
The Mail - It's All Greek...
The Mail
Columns
- A Matter of Feet
Cheap Seats - God Helps Those Who Help Themselves
City Desk - Photo Spat
City Desk - Candidate-for-Life
Loose Lips
Eats
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- Seer Sucker
Film Review - Time Squared
Film Review - Kung Pow: Enter the Fist
Film Review - Slackers
Film Review
Music
- Drinkin' and Divin'
Music Review - Keyed Up
Music Review - On the Lam
Music Reviews - Cristal: Glass Music Through the Ages
Music Reviews - Miighty Flashlight
Music Reviews - Touch: Ringtones
Music Reviews
Theater
- No Way to Treat a Lady
Theater Review - Bench Warmers
Theater Review
Arts and Events
- Home Alone
Arts - Iron City Lights
Art Review - Sound Waves
Artifacts - Criminal History
Artifacts
City Lights
This week's best in Arts and Entertainment.
- STREB: "Action Heroes"
City Lights - Diane McWhorter
City Lights - David Benioff
City Lights - Susan Smith-Pinelo: Dances With Hip Hop
City Lights - On Track: Transit and the American City
City Lights - Cinemusic
City Lights - Seven Keys to Baldpate
City Lights - Chuck Miller
City Lights - "Art City"
City Lights - Jon Dee Graham
City Lights - "The Coming Tyranny of American English"
City Lights - Rye Coalition
City Lights - Hamiet Bluiett
City Lights - Lawrence Epstein
City Lights
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