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Do you know the obscure story of DC’s ‘Phantom Tollbooth?’

If you stroll a little ways down from the Lincoln Memorial — and stop short of the incoming traffic — you’ll find a wooden structure that looks like a toll booth.

The brown shack sits on the corner of Independence Avenue and 23rd Street SW, right before cars that whiz by it round the bend en route to the Kennedy Center.

Once a tiny shack for police tasked with directing traffic on Rock Creek Parkway, D.C.’s “Phantom Tollbooth” may never have been used to collect tolls from ghosts, but it certainly has a mystical look about it — and some fascinating history.

Find out more about how this structure, one that hardly anyone who drives by notices, has survived through the years in today’s episode of “Matt About Town!”

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Why preserving Shakespeare is still important today

Follow WTOP’s Matt Kaufax as he explores hidden gems, local landmarks and unique stories across the D.C. area every week. New episodes of WTOP's "Matt About Town" segment are released each Tuesday and Thursday. Why Shakespeare? The answer to that question is a deeper one than you think. Over the past two weeks on "Matt About Town," WTOP's Matt Kaufax took you behind the scenes at D.C.'s Folger Shakespeare Library — with videos looking at the earliest published collections of William Shakespeare's most famous plays, the library's rare vaults where these works are stored, and even how these books are preserved.
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