Jun 19, 2009  |  By: Paul K. Williams  | COMMENTS     

With the confirmation that MTV’s “The Real World” will begin filming its 23rd season in and around Dupont Circle early this summer, any LGBT cast members should feel right at home. That’s because the mansion where they will live — at 2000 S St., N.W. — is located in a block that can trace its history to the very early gay and lesbian epicenter of Washington, beginning in the early 1970s. In fact, the house itself briefly served as a lesbian bar and restaurant coined the Hear & Now, which opened in March 1979.                

The four-story, red brick and brownstone mansion is undergoing a complete transformation from office building to stage set, having been gutted of its historic interior about 20 years ago. Owned by Douglas Development since 1998, it was most recently rented to the Sorg & Associates architectural firm. 

At least one of the eight cast members is certainly gay, as both Halo and Town have reportedly signed contracts with Bunim/Murray Productions for filming at their locations. The first season of “Real World,” set in New York City, debuted in 1992.         

The house, located on the corner of 20th and S Streets, N.W., was constructed by real estate developer Theodore A. Harding beginning in September of 1890. The 11,000-square-foot dwelling was designed by architect George S. Cooper and built at a cost of $23,000, then a small fortune, but a far cry from its yearly tax bill of $57,720 today. The house itself is valued at about $5.7 million, according to tax records. After its completion in 1891, it became home to newlyweds Minnie and James Mosher, head of the freight division of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad.           

Adjacent to the house, the 1700 block of 20th Street began as a haven for counter-culture groups and a series of craft stores beginning in the 1960s.  One of the craft stores, the Alternative at 1724 20th St., was purchased “for a few hundred dollars” by Deacon Maccubbin in 1971. Alternatives was one of the distribution points for such underground newspapers as the Quicksilver Times. He renamed the business Earthworks, which featured a gay bookstore section in the corner that spun off as its own business called Lambda Rising just three years later, in 1974.

Earthworks served as the de facto gay community center when the Gay Activists Alliance’s Gay Community Center on 13th St., closed that same year.  The former townhouse at 1724 20th St., housed the offices of the Gay Blade (precursor to Washington Blade), a gay call center, a youth outreach organization and many other gay-centric organizations in their infancy.      
       
In 1975, the first official Gay Pride event in Washington was organized by Maccubbin, which took place in front of the store, and in subsequent years, grew to spill around the corner of S Street, in front of the “Real World” house.  In 1977, Lambda Rising began renting a two-story building at 2012 S St., adjacent to the “Real World” location, and now part of the TD bank building. 

The house was owned by the Gospel Spreading Church until 1974, when it was converted into an office building upstairs, eventually housing La Labela, an Ethiopian restaurant in the 1980s, and later a Blockbuster video store located on the lower level throughout the 1990s.         

Within several blocks of the house is a variety of hip restaurants, bars, shops, the massive Hilton Hotel, a strip club, the Gay Pride parade route and institutions such as the Church of Scientology and St. Margaret’s Church, all of which no doubt appealed to the producers hoping for a setting both historic and unique for viewers that tune into the show that will air in early 2010.      

Paul K. Williams is an architectural historian and currently serves as the executive director of the non-profit Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets.