The Coolidge Miracle

In Washington, at 1625 K Street Northwest, there stands an unremarkable office building: 12 floors, putty-colored, smallish windows. 

Built in 1941, the Commonwealth Building has been periodically updated over the years to its current state, a nondescript scale on the long snakeskin of K Street lobby and law firms. 

You could walk past the frame shop, the loud silk shirts in the crowded window of the men’s store, and the supplement ads of the GNC on the ground floor 100 times on your way to Connecticut Avenue or the Capitol Hilton and never have the building register in your mind.

But on this day 100 years ago, 1625 K Street NW was very much on the minds not only of Washingtonians, but of all Americans paying attention to the scandals that were burning through the administration of President Warren Harding.