page_title: Dupont Circle station
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Dupont Circle station / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Dupont Circle Metro Station, South Exit Escalators
context_page_description: Dupont Circle is a station on the Red Line of the Washington Metro in Washington, D.C. Located below the circle of the same name, it is one of the busiest stations in the Metro system, with an average of 16,948 entries each weekday. The station parallels Connecticut Avenue NW between the southern edge of the circle to the south and Q Street NW to the north. The station's southernmost point is slightly more than two-and-a-half blocks north of Farragut North, making the two closer than any other station pairs save Metro Center and Gallery Place.
context_section_description: Dupont Circle station opened on January 17, 1977, the first to open after the original stretch of the Red Line between Union Station and Farragut North. It remained the western terminus of the Red Line until December 5, 1981, upon the extension of the line to Van Ness–UDC. The south entrance was closed from February 1 to October 21, 2012, to replace all three escalators, deemed among the system's least reliable.
  In 2007, a portion of Walt Whitman's 1865 poem The Wound Dresser was inscribed into the granite wall around the north entrance escalators to honor the city's caregivers during the HIV crisis.
  On January 15, 2018, a train headed to Glenmont derailed outside the station. Nobody was seriously hurt.
  In April 2019, construction began on a station canopy for the north entrance, identical to other canopies across the system. Construction is due to be completed in spring 2020. However, construction was delayed due to the contractor that was supposed to provide the custom glass panels went bankrupt.
caption: South entrance escalators
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