Elliot Carter is a writer and historian in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

Life and career

Carter is a contributing writer for the

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

Politico ''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American political digital newspaper company founded by American banker and media executive Robert Allbritton in 2007. It covers politics and policy in the Unit ...

Washingtonian Magazine ''Washingtonian'' is a monthly magazine distributed in the Washington, D.C. area, with a focus on local feature journalism, guide book-style articles, real estate, and politics. Founded in 1965 by Laughlin Phillips and Robert J. Myers, it descr ...

and

Slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...

. His work has appeared in outlets such as

Atlas Obscura ''Atlas Obscura'' is an United States, American-based travel and exploration company. It was founded in 2009 by author Joshua Foer and documentary filmmaker/author Dylan Thuras. It catalogs unusual and obscure travel destinations via professiona ...

Vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, Habit (psychology), habit or item generally considered morally wrong in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or a bad or unhe ...

, Real Clear Defense, and DCist. His work is heavily focused on Washington D.C.’s architecture, geography and history. In 2016, Carter obtained and published maps of the District of Columbia compiled during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

by a military intelligence office in the USSR. He noted in an interview that the Soviet maps were far more detailed than their publicly available U.S. counterparts, capturing sensitive information about military bases and the layout of utility infrastructure. In 2017, Carter’s research about the atomic bomb-proof vault that protects the

U.S. Constitution The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constituti ...

led to the rediscovery of a refrigerator-sized electrical model of the vault in the basement of the

National Archives National archives are the archives of a country. The concept evolved in various nations at the dawn of modernity based on the impact of nationalism upon bureaucratic processes of paperwork retention. Conceptual development From the Middle Ages i ...

. The device was subsequently restored, and now stands in the Archives building on

Pennsylvania Avenue Pennsylvania Avenue is a primarily diagonal street in Washington, D.C. that connects the United States Capitol with the White House and then crosses northwest Washington, D.C. to Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown. Traveling through So ...

beside a commemorative historical plaque. In 2018 Carter was awarded a grant from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities “to compile a meticulous anthology of all the tunnels in the District — subway and freight rail tunnels, pedestrian passageways, underground steam tunnels, sewage and water pipelines.” According to an article in

CityLab ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 ...

, Carter is using tunnels to explore the “cultural history of the federal government and the city where it sits.”

References

Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) American magazine writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Writers from Washington, D.C. American male non-fiction writers {{US-historian-stub