“The Belasco Theatre as seen from Lafayette Square, ca 1910,” via the D.C. Public Library Commons on flickr. The photographer is not noted.
The Washington, D.C., theater was called the Lafayette Square Opera House when it was built in 1895. It was renamed the Belasco in 1905. In 1962, it was demolished to make way for the U.S. Court of Claims building.
Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile. . .
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.— Ralph Waldo Emerson, from “The Snow-Storm“
enclos*ure 