As the heart of Washington’s business district, K Street constantly evolved, stripping it of historic character long before historic preservation laws took hold. “Even in the ’60s if people had been thinking about the K Street area for protection, there wasn’t a whole lot there,” said Steve Callcott, the D.C. Office of Historic Preservation’s deputy historic preservation officer. “It was really pockmarked.”

But that made it a prime candidate for several sacrifices to ensure other parts of the city’s character were preserved. Preservationists point to F Street as a shining example of what protected buildings can do for a neighborhood — but it took leveraging D.C.’s already destroyed business district as bait.