When The Ritz Apartments was completed in the mid-1920s, Washington was growing rapidly and there was a need for high-density, middle-income housing. Buildings like The Ritz were constructed to meet this demand. This six-story apartment building was designed by Louis T. Rouleau in the Classical Revival style for the Ell & Kay Building & Investment Company, and completed in 1927.
The conventional mid-rise apartment building has four courtyards across its mirrored, E-shaped plan. The building is clad in red brick masonry on the first five-floors and tan stucco on the sixth-floor. The top-floor also includes arched window surrounds with shells, as well as spiraled corner columns, in terra cotta. Cast stone is visible on the first-floor, most notably around the grand main entrance on Euclid Street NW. The main entrance features fluted pilasters with Corinthian capitals and an entablature. Above the entablature are bas relief urns, scroll brackets, and four windows with triangular pediments.
The Ritz is located one block west of 16th Street NW in Adams Morgan, within the historic Meridian Hill subdivision. Rouleau also designed The Mozart, located one block to the north at Fuller Street.
DC Inventory: April 28, 2026
National Register: August 7, 2026
]]>When The Mozart Apartments was completed in 1926, Washington was growing rapidly and there was a demand for high-density, middle-income housing. Conventional mid-rise apartment buildings like this were constructed to meet this need. Thus, The Mozart had the potential to house roughly 60-families.
The five-story, brick masonry clad apartment building was designed by Louis T. Rouleau in the Classical Revival style for the Ell & Kay Building & Investment Company. The building has a U-shaped plan and features cast stone accents, including quoins, belt courses, and sills. Stone masonry can also be found on the main entrance’s door surround, pilasters, and entablature.
The building is located one block west of 16th Street NW in Adams Morgan, within the historic Meridian Hill subdivision. Rouleau also designed The Ritz, located one block to the south at Euclid Street NW.
DC Inventory: April 28, 2026
National Register: August 4, 2026
]]>Designed by local D.C. architect Joseph G. Herbert, the Valencia Apartments are representative of interwar urban development in the 1930s. The conventional, low-rise apartment building stands at three stories in an irregular U-shape. The structure includes Moderne stylistic elements, such as angular concrete ornamentation and an asymmetrical footprint. Located at the intersection of streetcar lines, bus routes, and important roadways, the Valencia demonstrates the increased need of new urban residents to have access to transportation networks. Following World War I, the expansion of the federal government resulted in an abundance of new jobs in the District. Due to the necessity of multi-family housing in the city, apartment buildings, originally associated with overcrowding and tenement-style conditions, became much more accepted and commonplace in the interwar years. The Valencia Apartments were constructed as an alternative to single-family housing options for middle-income families. It was built to house 32 families with spacious units, and remains largely the same today.
DC Inventory: July 28, 2016
National Register: January 17, 2017
]]>Designed by local D.C. architect Louis T. Rouleau, these two buildings reflect the development of residential units on New Hampshire Avenue following World War I. Modest in appearance and created for the rental market, The Hampshire reflects renters’ desires to live close to transportation networks within the District’s expanding residential market. Between 1935 and 1941, sixty percent of the funding for residential housing in D.C. was allocated for the construction of apartment buildings. Many of these buildings incorporated stylistic revival-design elements into their architecture while maintaining a modest appearance of affordability. The Hampshire apartments, two three-story brick building with Tudor Revival style adornments, are emblematic of this interwar architecture.
Located on the west side of New Hampshire Avenue NW in D.C.’s Brightwood neighborhood, the Hampshire offered public transport through streetcar and bus lines that ran alongside the apartment building. This proximity to transportation networks became critical for apartment buildings in the interwar period, as the increasing amount of government workers sought easy access to downtown jobs. Federal employees required affordable rental units for their families, nearby commercial establishments (accessible without an automobile), and transportation corridors—the Hampshire is representative of apartment buildings designed for these new federal workers.
At the time of the Hampshire’s construction, racially-restrictive covenants were common in D.C. and limited housing based on race. While there is no evidence of explicit racial restriction at the Hampshire, the surrounding areas in Brightwood were limited to white residents until a Supreme Court ruling against restrictive covenants in housing in 1948. However, residency at the Hampshire remained 96 percent white from its opening in 1936 until 1960. Within a decade, following the Civil Rights movement and subsequent white flight into the suburbs, the numbers flipped—with 90 percent of the Hampshire being occupied by Black residents.
Today, the buildings continue to operate as an apartment building, offering 53 residential units within walking distance to metro and bus stations.
DC Inventory: December 16, 2021
National Register: February 4, 2022
]]>The Homestead Apartments were constructed in 1939, one of many multi-unit buildings erected to house working-class and middle-class Washingtonians during the interwar period. Much of this development followed the streetcar lines radiating from downtown, seeking lower land costs to accommodate a burgeoning labor force. This building was designed by French architect Louis de LaDurantaye (1885-1956). LaDurantaye designed dozens of buildings in the District but is not well known.
Fairly conventional in its H-shape plan and four-story height, the Homestead Apartments has quirky, Gothic/Romanesque decoration in the form of corbeling, round arches, basket-weave brick panels, and peaks on the roofline. There are elements that could be interpreted as Art Deco and Moderne as well, such as a stepped parapet at the central bar and projecting brick streamlining at corners and suggested pavilions, but the streamlining is presumably intended as a modern take on quoins, which picks up the classicism of the most notable exterior element of the building, the Renaissance-style hemi-octagonal entrance bay.
The most interesting functional element is the basement-level garage reached via openings off a rear alley, and the at-grade garage supports an exterior patio on its roof. The building’s landscape is notable for the intimate courtyard enclosed by the low stone walls punctuated by piers, the taller of which support a wrought-iron arch. These are echoed by stone piers and gates controlling admittance to the side yards. Stone steps stand at the entrance and at the sidewalk, and one of DC’s typical rustic granite retaining wall supports the central portion of the front yard as the land slopes away to the west.
DC Inventory: November 16, 2017
National Register: February 14, 2018
]]>The Glenn Arms Apartments was constructed in 1916 by J.E. Fox for owner and architect George N. Bell (of the firm Hunter & Bell). It was not known by a name until it and its next-door neighbor, The Fulford, came into common ownership and were collectively renamed The Glenn Arms. Lacking another historic name, 2524 17th Street NW is still referred to as The Glenn Arms.
The Glenn Arms is not only a few years later than its neighbor, the Italian Renaissance-style Fulford, but its expression is quite distinct. Much as the earliest purpose-built apartment buildings in DC were designed like scaled-up Victorian rowhouses, the front block of The Glenn Arms looks similar to semidetached urban Craftsman-style homes, with even a dormered partial attic. The two-story homey architecture belies the extent of the building, an atypical plan, defined by several light courts, stretching nearly the depth of its lot.
Mary Foote Henderson's vision of an elite "Avenue of the Presidents" and embassy row along nearby Sixteenth Street in Meridian Hill had petered out before her death, despite her successful development of several mansions and their inspiration of several more. Notwithstanding her husband's investment in the construction of the Kenesaw, apartments did not fit Mrs. Henderson's vision of development along Sixteenth Street, namely the promotion of a certain scale, the attraction of a certain quality of buildings and residents, and, most important, the protection of views. Yet, while she was still active, apartment buildings sprang up on the margins of her extensive landholdings, taking advantage of the exclusivity of the neighborhood, and would soon fill in among the mansions. Many of these apartments were luxury residences, as the convenience of apartment living increasingly appealed to the affluent.
Farther still on the outskirts of the neighborhood, The Glenn Arms is not a luxury apartment building, but it illustrates middle-class emulation of the acceptance of apartments by the rich, filling a continuum of the apartment building type from the tenements inhabited by the poor. The Fulford’s early tenants were government clerks, professionals, teachers, policemen, construction workers, and service workers. Similar development in this area was spurred by the extension of streetcar lines up Fourteenth Street and Connecticut Avenue at the end of the nineteenth century, resulting in a cluster of apartments between Ontario Road and Fourteenth Street, north of Florida Avenue and south of the Piney Branch stream.
DC Inventory: December 21, 2017
National Register: March 6, 2018
]]>The Fulford was constructed in 1911 and named upon its completion. Its architect was Carroll Beale (1882-1942), a self-employed civil engineer, residential builder and innovator in concrete construction. The four-story brick building has an Italian Renaissance façade, a popular revival style for such buildings during that period, but likely here adopted in emulation of the first mansions and embassies erected in Meridian Hill during the previous three years. It is located next to the Glenn Arms Apartments, and both buildings have been referred to as the Glenn Arms, due to their common ownership.
Mary Foote Henderson’s vision of an elite “Avenue of the Presidents” and embassy row along nearby Sixteenth Street in Meridian Hill had petered out before her death, despite her successful development of several mansions and their inspiration of several more. Notwithstanding her husband’s investment in the construction of the Kenesaw, apartments did not fit Mrs. Henderson’s vision of development along Sixteenth Street, namely the promotion of a certain scale, the attraction of a certain quality of buildings and residents, and, most important, the protection of views. Yet, while she was still active, apartment buildings sprang up on the margins of her extensive landholdings, taking advantage of the exclusivity of the neighborhood, and would soon fill in among the mansions. Many of these apartments were luxury residences, as the convenience of apartment living increasingly appealed to the affluent.
Farther still on the outskirts of the neighborhood, The Fulford is not a luxury apartment building, but it illustrates middle-class emulation of the acceptance of apartments by the rich, filling a continuum of the apartment building type from the tenements inhabited by the poor. The Fulford’s early tenants were government clerks, professionals, teachers, policemen, construction workers, and service workers. Similar development in this area was spurred by the extension of streetcar lines up Fourteenth Street and Connecticut Avenue at the end of the nineteenth century, resulting in a cluster of apartments between Ontario Road and Fourteenth Street, north of Florida Avenue and south of the Piney Branch stream.
DC Inventory: December 21, 2017
National Register: March 6, 2018
]]>Duvall Manor was designed and built specifically to function as a multifamily residence of at least two and no more than four stories in height with no elevator. Although the type most often has a single main entrance, Duvall Manor presages later apartment design, instead reflecting garden-apartments with multiple entrances into stairwells, which would obviate the need for a single lobby. Duvall Manor is set back within a broad lawn, a treatment which distinguishes it from many contemporary apartment buildings. The wings frame an expansive garden with a single central tree and evergreen shrubs at each entrance.
Duvall Manor embodies the distinctive characteristics of the Colonial Revival style with its brick facades, rigid symmetry, pedimented door surrounds, keystone lintels, and belt courses. Like later walk-up apartments, each block of the large U-shaped building functions as an independent unit, containing six to eight apartments. Their staggered arrangement allows for an additional window in each unit, while also adding visual interest by breaking up what would be a long plane of brick wall. This plan also allowed for construction in stages as each section could be individually built.
The building was designed by Evan J. Conner and constructed in 1949 for owner A. Clyde Duvall. It followed on the heels of rapid apartment construction in the immediate Greenway area, spurred by wartime housing shortages. Made possible by streetcar connections and the construction of a new Pennsylvania Avenue bridge in 1939, the Greenway area was the site of several large federally supported apartments constructed during WWII. After the war, DC’s population continued to grow, with more apartments like Duvall Manor providing housing opportunities in accessible parts of the city.
DC Inventory: December 21, 2017
National Register: June 1, 2018
]]>As an example of the purpose-built, low-rise apartment building, Texas Gardens was constructed to meet the challenges of housing the Washington region’s rapidly expanding population during the interwar period. Built in the Randle Highlands subdivision, part of the working-class Anacostia community which developed primarily between 1920 and 1950, Texas Gardens provided housing for a range of both single and married workers, who were indicative of DC’s economic diversification during this period.
Designed by Charles E. Marzadro, the building also embodies the defining characteristics of the Art Deco style and serves as an excellent and noteworthy example of the early modernist aesthetic—part of a broader modernization impulse that was transforming American tastes, perceptions, and lifestyles during the mid-twentieth century.
The land on which the Texas Gardens apartment building is located was first subdivided in 1891. A group of investors consisting of sugar magnate John W. Havemeyer, Congressmen Thomas J. Clunie and Archibald M. Bliss, and New York businessman Erwin C. Carpenter purchased the land in 1889. Three years later they subdivided the tract, historically part of the Naylor Farm, to form the East Washington Heights subdivision. In 1903, Arthur Randle purchased a large portion of the stalled East Washington Heights subdivision, and renamed it Randle Highlands. To provide streetcar access to the subdivision, Randle, in 1898, received a Congressional charter to establish the East Washington Heights Traction Railroad. The line was operational by 1905, and ran across the Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge, terminating at Minnesota Avenue SE.
Substantive residential and commercial development; however, did not occur in the neighborhood until the mid-twentieth century. By 1919, the path of Texas Avenue had been laid out, but the squares situated to the east of Twenty-Fifth Street and to the south of Pennsylvania Avenue remained undeveloped. While building permits reveal that some construction was taking place during the 1920s in the area east of Twenty-Fifth Street, map review suggests that extensive building did not occur in this area until the World War II years and afterward. This activity was in part stimulated by the construction of a new Pennsylvania Avenue bridge in 1939, and during the 1940s the intersection of Pennsylvania and Minnesota Avenues SE, known as L’Enfant Square, emerged as a flourishing commercial district. This shopping district was anchored by the distinctive Art Deco-style Dobkin’s clothing store at 2324 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Like Texas Gardens, the striking brick two-story commercial building incorporates Art Deco elements into its design such as geometric panels and streamlining. Programs initiated by the Federal Housing Administration during the 1930s, intended to promote consumer activity through retail façade modernization, employed a spirited public relations campaign which vocally advocated for modernism in residential and commercial architecture during the Depression, in particular endorsing the streamlined aesthetic that was transforming the design of everything from automobiles and ocean liners to the packaging and design of consumer products.
DC Inventory: September 20, 2017
National Register: June 1, 2018
]]>The Wardman Flats are the first large-scale development project of DC's most notable developer, Harry Wardman (1872-1938). Throughout the 1890s, Wardman transitioned from carpenter to builder, largely building residential rowhouses for other developers. He also built "sanitary housing," consisting of two-story duplexes, for the Washington Sanitary Improvement Company (WSIC). By 1899, Wardman made his foray into the developer field by building two frame houses on speculation in Brightwood. Over the next few years, Wardman would operate as developer on several other small projects, while continuing his association as builder with other developers.
In 1902, Wardman undertook his first major development project, the Wardman Flats, consisting of several groups of twenty-seven rowhomes. Built by Wardman and designed by Nicholas R. Grimm, the buildings were all designed as two-unit flats for two families, with one on each floor. Unlike the earlier sanitary houses that Wardman built for WSIC that had two separate entrances, these flats were creatively designed with only one entrance, giving the flats the outward appearance of being single-family dwellings. By building Wardman Flats, Wardman established, for the first time, a system of construction with an economy of scale and vertical integration that came to be known as "the Wardman method" and defined Wardman's success as a developer. Wardman Flats catapulted Wardman into the development world and contributed importantly to a city-wide boom in the construction of flats. By 1905 Wardman became a developer exclusively. He developed and built so extensively over the next several decades that at his death in 1938, it was estimated that ten percent of the District’s population lived in a building constructed by him.
The Wardman Flats were built at a time of growth in the federal government and a need to house the growing numbers of government workers. This growth included both white and blue-collar workers, who could not afford to buy single-family dwellings. Nonetheless, they aspired to housing that met modern standards of comfort and sanitation, and some social standing. Recognizing the limitations in the rental housing market—apartment buildings were not always family friendly, boarding houses were transient in nature, and "sanitary housing" was intended for the city's poorest residents—Wardman offered an important rental housing option by building rowhouse flats, and in the case of Wardman Flats, almost an entire block of them. Once completed, Wardman marketed his flats to investors who then rented them out. Overall, the residents of the Wardman Flats met the profile of the new wave of federal government workers; they were native-born whites who held white and blue-collar jobs.
DC Inventory: September 28, 2017
National Register: October 10, 2019
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