Washington's last great newsstand endures in Dupont Circle

The Newsroom still stands at 1728 Connecticut Avenue NW, a cramped and cluttered reminder that some Washington readers still want to stumble onto a paper they did not know they were looking for. In a neighborhood where the business district lists print newspapers, magazines and publications from around the world, the shop has held on as one of Dupont Circle’s most visible holdouts for physical browsing.

Inside, the appeal is quantity and surprise. One business listing describes the store as a browser’s mecca, with hundreds of magazines and journals, including foreign-language titles and newspapers from other U.S. cities. Another listing says the shop can print on demand from a catalog of about 400 non-U.S. newspapers, turning a visit into a search for something that rarely appears in an algorithmic feed. That mix has made the store a destination for people who still trust serendipity more than a search bar.

The setting matters. Dupont Circle Business Improvement District describes Dupont Circle as a destination neighborhood that is ever changing, but it also places the area within a specific civic history tied to feminist history, LGBTQ history and progressive political culture. The Newsroom sits within that larger identity, alongside other independent books-and-magazines retailers in the district’s directory, including Kramer Books, Second Story Books, Fantom Comics and JF Books. In that company, the newsstand reads less like a leftover than a surviving piece of the neighborhood’s street-level culture.

Its durability is especially striking because local posts once portrayed the shop as closing in 2018, yet later remarks in 2025 still pointed to a secret used-books spot there, suggesting the business continued in some form. For a store built around print, that kind of uncertainty is part of the story. In an age when news travels instantly and disappears just as fast, The Newsroom keeps alive the slower habit of browsing, where a magazine spine, a foreign daily or a stack of old books can still stop a passerby in Dupont Circle.