Unearthing story behind US capital's 'mystery tomb'

Washington

IN A CITY where it is tough to throw a rock without hitting a civic building, it is easy to pass the windowless, Vermont marble structure at 2215 Constitution Avenue without giving it a second thought.

Passers-by who do notice the Beaux-Arts building, flanked by classical vases, offset by expansive stairs, and evoking a neoclassical mausoleum, probably mistake it for yet another museum overlooking the National Mall.

But that plot on the Mall's north-west corner since 1934 has been the home of the American Pharmacists Association (APhA). The land once belonged to a man nicknamed the "Quinine King" for the antimalarials that he sold Union soldiers during the Civil War, and taxi…