MarieJudith.com: December 2014

The Dupont Circle is a great place to sketch. It has a beautiful fountain right in the middle of it, dedicated to Samuel Francis Du Pont, an American Naval officer. There used to be a statue of him instead of the fountain, but it was replaced in 1920. The fountain, depicting three statues representing the sea, the stars and the wind, was designed by architect Henry Bacon and sculptor Daniel Chester French, who also created the Lincoln memorial.

Since it wasn't too cold that day, I decided to sketch the fountain. While I was sketching, there was a couple of kids trying to give free hot chocolate to passerby, but no one seemed to be interested. Some of the kids who were probably bored, decided to run around the fountain and one of them actually fell in the water. I can imagined, it probably wasn't fun, but it cooled him down.

I wish I could have stayed a little longer to draw the other sides, but it was starting to rain and getting colder, so I took a couple pictures and redrew each statues in the hotel room later that day. I wonder what was going through the sculpture's mind when he created them :

The one with the man standing in front of what looks like a sail boat and holding a conch represents Wind.
The one with the woman holding what looks like a planet (maybe Saturn, because of the ring) and holding her hair up on one side is said to represent the Stars.
The one with the woman holding something that resembles a boat, with a bird on one shoulder while stepping on a fish, is said to represent the Sea.

Urban Sketching, Dupont Circle Hotel Lobby, Washington DC

While we were in DC, we stayed at the Dupont Circle Hotel, a little north west of the White House. It's a "boutique hotel" with a seemingly popular bar amongst the locals on Fridays and Saturday night. I didn't spend a huge amount of time in the hotel but I did sketch the lobby sitting room, next to the bar, where people gather to meet friends or coworkers. This particular space had a contemporary feel to it and was comfortable. There's even a fire place on the other side.

In terms of design, it's not the worst hotel I've been to so far but not the best either. There were a couple hits and a couple misses. For example, the layout of our room (No 336) was weird, even for an accessible room. Mind you, we didn't need an accessible room but that's the one we got. The was a lot of "wasted" space and a lot of cramped spaces at the same time. It's the first time I got to see an accessible version of a boutique hotel room first hand and it's sad that the design level goes down for people on wheel chairs. The design of the sink was a great example of that. It had a very utilitarian look that clashed with the concept of the hotel shown in the advertising photos. On the plus side, the bathroom had heated floor tiles.

There was a lot of space in the bathroom, I'm assuming so that a wheel chair can move around in it, but very little space to get to the bathroom. The door would basically touch the bed when it was open and I don't think a wheel chair would be able to go on the other side near the window, due to the position of the desk essentially blocking the other side of the bed. Mind you with a view like this (picture below), it's probably not a bad thing. lol. One way to improve the view, in my opinion, would be to add some decorative fences or, better yet, sound barrier walls around the HVAC units and some plants for a more pleasing view. Understandably, not every room can have a view of the Dupont Circle, but it doesn't mean that the view in the back has to be ugly. Good thing the sound didn't bother us but if you're sensitive to sound, you might want to avoid this side of the hotel.

Dupont Circle Hotel, Dupont Bar, Washington DC

On the plus side, most of the food we got from the bar was great. I recommend the Dupont Fries, Grilled Chicken BLT, and the Truffled Chicken Wrap. I would stay away from their watery cappuccino (I actually had to send it back) and the pretty but overly sweet brownie. We went there quite often during our one-week stay. The main downer was the trouble they seem to have with separating the bills when we were in a bigger groups depending on who we had as our server, some are amazing and some seem not cut out for the service industry. On two occasions, we ended up having to recalculate everything at the end of the night, listing everyone's orders for the waiter. Overall, it was an interesting and insightful experience.