Marion Barry, 1936-2014

They took his name off the building. In 1986, shortly before winning the third of his four mayoral terms, Marion Barry opened the Frank D. Reeves Municipal Center on 14th and U Street. Tourists en route to Ben's Chili Bowl, and locals on their way to see jazz, could not miss the dedication near the top of the building: "Marion Barry Jr, Mayor." He'd argued for the government building to be erected there, at the center of the 1968 riots that hollowed out neighborhoods for a generation, and he'd gotten his way. He'd said the new office would help reinvigorate the U Street corridor, and was being proven right.

And then he went to jail. On January 18, 1990, Barry was nabbed in an FBI sting at the Vista Hotel, caught on camera smoking crack cocaine after being offered it by an old paramour named Rasheeda Moore. "I had no interest in the drugs," claimed Barry in his 2014 memoir, Mayor for Life, "but I figured Rasheeda would have some good sex with me if I agreed to do it with her."