Washington D.C. Weird Wendy’s: A Coda

It would have been a stretch to call the Wendy’s at the intersection of New York and Florida Avenues in Washington, D.C., charming even when it still existed. An odd byproduct of the fact that the city limits used to end where it sat, this restaurant, and the intersection (christened “Dave Thomas Circle”), was the bane of many drivers traveling in and around the area north of Capitol Hill.

Yet its quirky placement turned the Weird Wendy’s into an unexpected local landmark. Those of us who lived in the area were thus initially dismayed when the city government bought this Wendy’s, via eminent domain, with plans to raze it and improve the traffic flow of the intersection. We watched its progress from a thriving restaurant, to one in its last days, to a long-lingering husk of its former self. For a long time, it endured in the lattermost state, a relic of a different time in D.C., before the city had fully taken on its modern, all-important status, and when it still had many unplanned oddities and quirks of which to boast. The longer it persisted in this way, the more my initial skepticism that it was even possible to better this intersection seemed vindicated. I wasn’t even sure the building itself would ever be demolished until it finally was about two years ago.

About the Author

Jack Butler

Jack Butler is a former submissions editor at National Review.

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Washington D.C.

It would have been a stretch to call the Wendy’s at the intersection of New York and Florida Avenues in Washington, D.C., charming even when it still existed. An odd byproduct of the fact that the city limits used to end where it sat, this restaurant, and the intersection (christened “Dave Thomas Circle”), was the bane of many drivers traveling in and around the area north of Capitol Hill.

Yet its quirky placement turned the Weird Wendy’s into an unexpected local landmark. Those of us who lived in the area were thus initially dismayed when the city government bought this Wendy’s, via eminent domain, with plans to raze it and improve the traffic flow of the intersection. We watched its progress from a thriving restaurant, to one in its last days, to a long-lingering husk of its former self. For a long time, it endured in the lattermost state, a relic of a different time in D.C., before the city had fully taken on its modern, all-important status, and when it still had many unplanned oddities and quirks of which to boast. The longer it persisted in this way, the more my initial skepticism that it was even possible to better this intersection seemed vindicated. I wasn’t even sure the building itself would ever be demolished until it finally was about two years ago.