"A Century Old, Very Strange Metro Plan from the Washington Post"
The image above was part of an intriguing but strange article published in the Washington Post in 1909. The 1,500 word piece laid out the vision for a subway very different from today's WMATA system. Instead of connecting the city center with suburban communities like the spokes on a wheel, this proposed subway was just a small loop that ran from Capitol Hill to the White House…The proposed subway did have an interesting public-private partnership aspect. "If private corporations were to cooperate in the extension of the system one of the first steps naturally would be to install subway stations conveniently located for patrons of all the leading hotels of the city." The suggested list of stations included the Shoreham, Arlington, Willard, and Raleigh hotels…
The Washington Post saw the Russell subway as a nucleus that could be expanded "from the Senate Office Building to the Union Station, thence to Treasury corner, the White House, the State, War and Navy Building."
Unlike WMATA's massive standalone stations, the Russell subway was "a narrow gauge affair" that ran back and forth from one building to another. The "stations" were really just basement rooms. It is incredible to imagine how that system would look today if it had been scaled up.
https://architectofthecapital.org/posts/2016/6/28/the-washington-posts-unpractical-concept-for-metro-in-1908