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Georgetown
250: A View From the Hilltop
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The Georgetown
neighborhood is currently celebrating its 250th anniversary, dating
from an act of the Maryland legislature passed in May, 1751, providing
for laying out and establishing the town. Thus the university, which
dates its establishment to 1789, shares almost the entirety of the
town's history, and an exhibit running in the Gunlocke Special Collections
Room through the end of April looks at the community's history as
it is reflected in the university's rare book, manuscript, and art
collections.
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| Georgetown's
literary lions, ranging from Francis Scott Key to E. D. E. N. Southworth
to Larry McMurtry to William Peter Blatty are all represented, Key
by a handwritten manuscript of his only well-known poem,"The
Star-Spangled Banner," Blatty by a typed filmscript for the most
famous of Georgetown movies, "The Exorcist." Photographs
showing |
Holy Trinity Church, before 1850 |
| various aspects
of Georgetown in the late 19th and 20th centuries are supplemented
by such intriguing records as those of a Georgetown mayor from the
1850s and a manuscript deed for the land on 35th Street on which the
Alexander Graham Bell house stands. The exhibit is completed by a
selection of early Georgetown imprints (some of which were certainly
inspired, if not written, by faculty at the nascent college), and
examples of the work of the unknown "Georgetown binder,"
one of the finest practitioners of bookbinding in America at the beginning
of the 19th century, who did work for Thomas Jefferson among many
others. |
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