Washington D.C: Pennsylvania Avenue and 4 street (?). Photograph by Francis Frith, ca. 1880.

In the foreground is J. Shillington's stationery shop. "Throughout the nineteenth century, commercial businesses, offices, and entertainment venues sprang up among the hotels, boarding houses, and residences of the Pennsylvania Avenue area. The 1965 National Park Service document, The Pennsylvania Avenue District in United States History, describes many of the notable early commercial establishments situated along the avenue and its environs, including Joseph Shillington's newsstand and bookshop. Shillington's stand was popular with John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay and their congressional colleagues for the purchase of their homestate newspapers. The establishment was located at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and what is now John Marshall Place." (United States Department of the Interior, Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site Washington, D.C.)