A gas line ruptured around 3:30 p.m. Thursday during construction at the long-shuttered Hotel Harrington at 436 11th St. NW, triggering a power shutoff and a string of street closures across Northwest Washington. Firefighters responded by cutting off the building's gas, while Pepco killed electricity to the site, leaving surrounding blocks in the dark.
Power Cut, Crews Scramble to Respond
Several neighborhoods were left without power after the leak, according to the D.C. Fire and EMS Department, as reported by DC News Now. Firefighters said the rupture occurred during ongoing construction work at the historic hotel, and crews turned off the building's gas supply as a precaution. Pepco then shut off power to the site, a move that rippled out to impact the surrounding blocks.
Pepco service had already been fully restored, the same report said. The outage knocked out several traffic signals at once, and the station's crews on the scene described traffic backed up along 10th and E streets NW as drivers navigated dark intersections without working lights.
Streets Shut to Traffic and Pedestrians
According to DC Police Traffic, a stretch of roadway around the hotel was closed to both vehicles and pedestrians until further notice. That included the 500 through 400 blocks of 11th Street NW, as well as the 1100 block of E Street NW, both shut down as crews worked to secure the area and address the rupture.
The closures left downtown commuters rerouting through an already congested stretch of Northwest D.C. during the afternoon rush, with the traffic light outages at multiple intersections near 10th and E streets compounding the slowdown.
A Storied Building Mid-Transition
The disruption hit a building already in the middle of a major transformation. Hotel Harrington opened on March 1, 1914, at 11th and E streets NW and operated for more than a century before closing on Dec. 12, 2023, after serving more than 10 million guests, according to a history published by Ghosts of DC. The 12-story, 141,000-square-foot building later drew a new owner, with KHP Capital Partners, a hospitality-focused investment firm, emerging as the buyer by this past spring.
Gas-line ruptures tied to construction work are not unheard of in the District. A construction crew broke a gas line in Georgetown in August 2025, leading to nearby evacuations, according to D.C. Fire and EMS as reported by WJLA, and a 2019 natural-gas leak at a building under construction near the White House shut down the 700 block of 15th Street NW for hours along with nearby roads, per The Washington Post. As of Thursday evening, it remained unclear when power, gas service, and the closed streets around Hotel Harrington would be fully restored.
