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Metropolitan Square incorporates three landmarks and weaves the Garfinckel's Department Store building and several others into a complex covering an entire block. The project grew out of an eleventh-hour confrontation between the developer and the historic preservation community. The surviving buildings on the block, the Metropolitan Bank Building and the Keith-Albee Theater were preserved as facades in front of a new twelve-story structure because review bodies preferred a continuous wall of Beaux-Arts facades along 15th Street. The third landmark, the interior of Old Ebbitt Grill, was located behind the Keith-Albee triple-arch entry arcade.