The apartment building at 2225 N Street was designed by Eugene Waggaman in an Early 20th Century Vernacular style, with brick masonry walls and a terra-cotta tile roof. This four-story, 32-unit building was constructed by developer Harry Wardman in 1925 and renovated in 1994.
The massing of 2225 N Street reflects Waggaman's predilection toward providing light and air circulation to residents. The original U-shape of the building maximized the amount of light and air. It also provided residents with a view of Rock Creek Park, thanks to the rear court's orientation towards the park's green space. An addition has since filled this court, but the original building's design is still visible.
DC Inventory: May 16, 1990
National Register: September 9, 1994
]]>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
]]>The Bachelor Apartment House is one of the last apartment buildings remaining in what was once a unique residential neighborhood of luxurious single-family homes, apartment buildings, hotels and social clubs which developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the Lafayette Square area convenient to the White House, the State, War and Navy building, the Treasury building, and other government and private offices. Its balanced, varied facade makes interesting use of aterials and detail, enlivening the texture and reinforcing the visual continuity of off-set H Street between Pennsylvania Avenue and Lafayette Square.
The building design presents an interesting solution to a specialized problem, achieving an elegant and intimate residential quality in a commercial multi-unit structure. It is the work of Wood, Donn and Deming, a prominent early twentieth century Washington architectural firm whose work includes the Union Trust Company, St. Patrick's Church and other individually designated landmarks.
DC Inventory: November 2, 1977
National Register: December 8, 1978
]]>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
]]>Vizcaya Apartments, formerly known as the Chilchester Arms, is a conventional low-rise apartment building, built in 1936. Designed with Moderne stylistic elements, such as geometric brick and stone ornamentation and Deco-inspired setbacks, these elements illustrate the restrained emergence of architect George T. Santmyers’ (1889-1960) style away from strictly classical revival forms. The location of the building also reflects the growth of transportation networks and residential construction patterns in the interwar period, as the population of the city expanded north from the center of DC. The building’s location along the bustling corridor of Fourteenth Street is representative of the efficient housing solutions in response to the rapidly expanding DC population. Between World War I and World War II, the federal government’s expansion brought many employees to the area. Without adequate numbers of single-family houses, architects constructed apartment buildings as suitable alternatives, effectively reshaping DC’s once-rural landscape north of Florida Avenue.
DC Inventory: June 8, 2016
]]>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
]]>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
]]>Up until the early twentieth century, the Brightwood area was mostly rural. In the 1820s, Brightwood contained important transportation routes until the road network changed during the Civil War for a line of defensive fortifications. Eventually, the Highway Act promoted construction of streetcar lines and the neighborhood’s population growth took off.
During the interwar period, streetcars, bus lines, and cheap land values induced considerable construction of multi-family buildings. The housing demand and government financing pushed the production of apartment units well beyond that of houses. Constructed and opened in 1939, The Glade Apartments is a three-story building designed by George T. Santmyers (1889-1960) for the the Standard Construction Company. Santmyers designed at least 440 apartment buildings, in addition to single-family homes and other building types; The Glade was one of several of his commissions in Brightwood.
The most notable feature of this site is the unusual orientation of the building oblique the to the street, a consequence of fitting it onto a modest parcel carved out of an irregular "square" bounded by 14th Street, 13th Place, Peabody Street and Fort Stevens Drive. These streets are remnants of the nineteenth-century roads of rural Brightwood.
DC Inventory: November 17, 2016
National Register: January 31, 2017
]]>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 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
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