Located along the west side of 13th Street, the Alden, Babcock, and Calvert Apartments are a group of three early middle-class apartment buildings designed as a unit by architect and developer Edgar S. Kennedy and built in 1904.
The buildings illustrate the evolution of apartment buildings from row house precedents and retain turrets and bays of the Victorian era, but with feature Colonial Revival facades and a front lawn reflecting early 20th-century suburban ideals.
DC Inventory: January 24, 1990
National Register: May 25, 1990
]]>Capitol Park Apartments was built on the site of Dixon’s Court, long considered a notorious alley slum. Photographs of impoverished conditions in the alley with the Capitol dome in the background were widely distributed, and were even used in Soviet propaganda to illustrate “typical living conditions” in Washington. When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev visited in the late 1950s, President Eisenhower personally took him to see Capitol Park, then under construction, to illustrate the nation’s housing progress.
The building is also significant for its role in the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Berman v. Parker, which broadened the interpretation of the “public welfare” to include aesthetic purposes like a better urban environment. The property taken by the government and at issue in the case was part of the apartment building site. It inaugurated Capitol Park, a model complex of apartments, townhouses, and landscape that was hailed in its day as “the first step toward a new Washington.”
The building was also important in the in the career of Chloethiel Woodard Smith, a key figure in the development and implementation of the Southwest master plan. Her success with this project led to further commissions in Washington, and helped make her one of few female architects to achieve renown during the mid-20th century.
The award-winning design incorporates features of avant-garde European modernism that were new to Washington, like raising the apartment block on pilotis, and screening balconies from the sun with terra cotta brise-soleil. The original park at the rear of the building was destroyed by the construction of new apartments in 2003-04, when the pool, vault-roofed pavilion, outdoor hearth, and Dan Kiley landscape were removed and the large mural mosaic by artist Leo Leonni was relocated off the site.
Despite being planned to accommodate residents of a variety of incomes, Capitol Park did not achieve its social goals, and along with the rest of the Southwest urban renewal, it has been symbolic of the huge social costs that were borne most directly by the displaced residents of Southwest, mostly African-American, and by the city at large as the social and physical fabric of entire communities was destroyed.
DC Inventory: April 24, 2003
]]>In its essentially unaltered state, the Wyoming stands as a reminder of the elegance and the quality of design, workmanship, and materials characteristic of the Golden Age of the apartment building in the early years of the twentieth century. The Wyoming Apartments was designed by prominent Washington architect B. Stanley Simmons. Its buff brick and limestone Eclectic Beaux-Arts facade, with its classical details and unusual, elaborate one-story, yet monumental, entrance pavilion, is boldly designed and prominently sited.
The building captures the essence of the early-twentieth century departure from the Victorian styles of the eighteenth century and it stands as a monument to the emerging popularity of apartment living in Washington. Through the years, this stately apartment building has been the residence of a number of military and political figures of national significance.
DC Inventory: July 16, 1980 (amended May 18, 1983 to include interior of entrance pavilion) National Register: September 27, 1983
]]>Originally known as Windsor Lodge, this building was erected in 1910-11. Two years later, U.S. Senator William E. Borah of Idaho moved into apartment number 21E, where he continued living until 1929. Borah was one of the most influential figures in U.S. foreign and domestic policy in the first half of the 20th century, a fixture in the Senate from 1907 until his death in 1940. As leader of the small band of "Irreconcilables" in the Senate who promoted a more isolationist policy and turned the tide of public opinion to defeat Woodrow Wilson's proposal for the League of Nations, Borah commanded significant respect in Republican circles. Historians have noted his great influence on American foreign policy during the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations.
A statue of Borah now stands in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol, and his longtime home has been designated a National Historic Landmark in recognition of his influence on American politics. The building continues to serve a residential purposes and is now a condominium.
DC Inventory: March 3, 1979National Register: December 8, 1976National Historic Landmark: December 8, 1976
]]>The Clifton Terrace Apartment Complex, originally known as Wardman Courts, was constructed between 1914 and 1915, during an era of explosive residential growth in DC. The complex was erected on the site of Belmont House, a Queen Anne style mansion of Amzi L. Barber and designed by architect Theophilus P. Chandler. The house was a neighborhood landmark, but it was razed in 1914 for the construction of Clifton Terrace. The expansion followed into interwar period development of the federal government and the increasing popularity of DC’s street railway system, particularly along Fourteenth Street NW. All three buildings are designed in the Colonial Revival style and are excellent examples of the development corroboration between Harry Wardman (1872-1938) and his architects, Frank Russell White (1889-1961), and Albert Moreland Schneider (1884-1924). The design for Clifton Terrace is a fine illustration of Wardman and his architects’ apartment building designs. The Clifton Terrace Apartment complex is typical of the large numbers of conventional, middle-class apartments that were constructed in great numbers throughout DC in the 1910s and 1920s. During these decades, middle-class interest in apartment living surged as individuals and families competed for moderately priced rental apartments. Clifton Terrace remained a middle-to-upper-middle-class apartment complex until 1962, when it fell into disrepair. DC Inventory: September 26, 2001National Register: December 26, 2001
]]>The Euclid was built between 1919 and 1920 by owner Howard M. Etchison, among the most prominent of Washington’s early-20th-century developers. The architect was Claughton West, who designed more than 600 houses and 40 apartment buildings in his long career. The six-story corner building displays classical Italianate facades of variegated brown brick with limestone trim and an elaborate modillioned cornice. The two-level lobby is also notable for its exceptional herringbone terra cotta floor.
This elegant structure typifies the mid-rise apartment buildings that became increasingly popular in streetcar suburbs of early-20th-century Washington, especially after the city’s exponential growth during World War I. Multi-family dwellings had been slower to gain acceptance in Washington than in other cities like Boston, New York, and Chicago, but once accepted, apartment buildings became a major component of the city’s architectural fabric and heritage.
DC Inventory: September 24, 2009
National Register: April 29, 2010
]]>In February 1931, D.C. Permit to Build #140167 was issued to Kennedy-Warren, Inc. to erect an eight-story apartment hotel at an estimated cost of $3,200,000. Architect Joseph Younger's original design of the Art Deco-style Kennedy-Warren apartment building included 441 apartments, with a total of 2,029 rooms, but the Great Depression and the financial difficulties it created resulted in only half of the original design being built.
A pre-construction Washington Star article noted an "ultra modern innovation" in the design: a circulation system that would pull cool air from the adjoining parkland and pump it into the building during the hot summer months. When the Kennedy-Warren was completed, it was considered the largest and most architecturally significant apartment building in the city.
In 1935, the Kennedy-Warren received a rear left wing addition. The supervising architect for the addition, A.H. Sonnemann, followed Joseph Younger's original design and constructed a portion of the uncompleted half. This addition brought an end to an unofficial hiatus on large-scale apartment building construction that had followed the completion of the original section of the Kennedy-Warren. It added 107 units to the original building, bringing the total to 317 of the planned 441. The Kennedy-Warren was the grand finale of pre-World War II development in the Connecticut Avenue apartment building corridor, and presently stands in excellent condition.
DC Inventory: January 17, 1990
National Register: September 7, 1994
]]>The McCormick Apartments is a landmark apartment building on Embassy Row whose inhabitants once included Andrew W. Mellon. It consists of four stories, a mansard, and a raised basement. The top-floor apartment commemorates Andrew Mellon's national significance. Mellon lived on the top floor from 1922 to 1932 while serving as the Secretary of the Treasury under Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, and he continued to occupy it intermittently until his death in 1937. Here he planned the National Gallery of Art and assembled the collection of artworks that he gave the Federal Government for display in the gallery. Mellon is remembered as Secretary of the Treasury for his financial program, dubbed the "Mellon Plan," which stimulated the economic boom of the 1920s.
At the time that Mellon moved into the McCormick Apartments, the building was about five years old. Around 1915, Stanley McCormick, a businessman who had purchased a large single-family house on this corner lot in 1906, decided to raze that dwelling and erect a luxury apartment building, one of Washington's first. McCormick commissioned French-born architect Jules Henri de Sibour to plan the apartment, and de Sibour designed a five-sided, semidetached edifice that was well suited to its trapezoidal site. Inside, the first floor was divided into two apartments. Each remaining floor held one apartment, and servants' sleeping quarters occupied mezzanine levels. Rentals began in 1917, and in addition to Mellon, at various times, such illustrious figures as Robert Wood Bliss and Pearl Mesta occupied the building.
Once occupied by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the building is now owned by the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: April 3, 1973
National Historic Landmark: May 11, 1976
]]>One of the city's finest apartment hotels when opened, Meridian Mansions was built between 1916 and 1918, following the designs of A.H. Sonnemann. This prestigious address has served as home to numerous senators, congressmen, and diplomats. Notably, the founding of Czechoslovakia occurred here in 1918.
The lobby features massive marble columns and elaborate ornamental molding. The roof pavilions and lamp standards were removed circa 1963. Meridian Mansions was renovated in 1981.
DC Inventory: December 9, 1982
National Register: July 28, 1983
]]>The Northumberland, designed by Albert H. Beers and built between 1909 and 1910 by Harry Wardman, presents an eclectic classical facade that blends harmoniously with the buildings that surround it along New Hampshire Avenue. The building remains an unaltered element in a neighborhood whose architectural identity was created by Victorian row houses, large apartment buildings, churches, and institutional buildings.
The Northumberland embodies the distinctive characteristics of an early-20th-century luxury apartment building. It is a rare example of such a building that has retained its integrity of location, design, materials, and workmanship. Both its exterior and interior, which is notable for its rich variety of decorative detailing, sumptuous materials, and skilled craftsmanship, remain essentially unaltered from their original construction. The Northumberland is an early work of Harry Wardman.
In 1920, the building became a cooperative apartment building. As the oldest, continuously self-managed cooperative, it was a pioneer in a field of housing new to the District of Columbia in the early years of this century.
DC Inventory: November 21, 1978
National Register: March 25, 1980
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