Holy Name College and the James Sherwood Farmhouse sit on 10-acres in the Brookland neighborhood. The two-story, wood-frame farmhouse was completed by farmer James Sherwood in 1886 within what had historically been “Cuckhold’s Delight,” a land patent dating to 1686. The Queen Anne style residence, with its corner tower, porch, and decorative wood shingling, is a remnant of the once rural area, when it was known as Washington County. Sherwood lived and worked at his farm, with his wife and five children, until at least 1910. During these years, James, along with his brother Jesse, were also involved in real estate, constructing many houses in the “Sherwood’s Addition to Brookland” subdivision. The land was purchased by the Franciscans’ Holy Name Province in 1920, but James Sherwood continued to live in Brookland (at another address) and eventually became a bank vice president.
Various Catholic monastic orders and institutions were attracted to the area around The Catholic University of America (1889), giving the area its nickname of “Little Rome.” This included the Franciscan Monastery, Marist College, St. Paul's College, St. Joseph’s Seminary, and Holy Redeemer College, amongst other institutions. Almost a decade after the land's purchase, Holy Name College was constructed by Turner Construction Company for the Franciscans between 1929 and 1930. The building was designed by Buffalo-based architect Chester Oakley in a Romanesque Revival style, with Art Deco detailing. The building is rectangular in shape, with a central cloister (or courtyard) and north and south wings extending from the east elevation. The main entrance pavilion is located on the west elevation.
Holy Name College included classrooms, a two-story chapel, a dining room and kitchen, laundry facilities, and dormitories for students and faculty. At the time of the college building's construction, the farmhouse was moved just to the south of the new building, where it was reoriented and renovated, and connected to the college building by a brick arcade. The farmhouse was converted into a convent for the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, and later provided additional dormitory, meeting, office, and storage spaces.
In 1957, enrollment peaked at Holy Name College with 147 students, and then declined as the structure of Catholic theological education changed. In 1984, Howard University purchased the property and then made some alterations to the historic buildings, most notably infilling the enclosed cloister of the former Holy Name College building. The former Holy Name College building was rededicated as Benjamin E. Mays Hall in 1987. Mays was the first dean of Howard University’s School of Religion. From the mid-1980s until 2015, the buildings housed the university’s School of Divinity.
The former college building is connected to 14th Street NE by a long driveway and allée of trees, which terminates at the building’s entrance pavilion, located at the building’s northwest corner. This driveway also aligns with the building’s tower, at the northeast corner, which is capped by a bronze statue of Jesus Christ. The entrance pavilion includes arched doors and windows in the Romanesque Revival style. The building is clad in textured, polychromatic brick in contrasting bonds. The building’s west elevation is notable for its terra-cotta “Heroic Figures” that stand on brick buttresses. The southwest corner features another pavilion, called the Friar’s Entry (St. Francis Corner).
DC Inventory: October 30, 2025
National Register: January 8, 2026
]]>After World War I and II, the American Red Cross saw major growth within the organization, as they expanded their mission from disaster relief in the United States to war relief programs and healthcare for returning soldiers. The new building allowed the DC chapter to consolidate its operations in one building and continue to help those in need. Designed by architectural duo Otto Reinhold Eggers and Daniel Paul Higgins in an Art Deco style, construction began in 1950 and was completed in 1952, with President Truman laying the building’s cornerstone in 1951 and President Eisenhower dedicating the building in 1953. In addition to the building’s architectural design, Eggers and Higgins commissioned sculpture artist Edmond Amateis to create reliefs for the front facade of the building. The reliefs represented the mission of the Red Cross and featured nurses, one aiding a child and the other holding a blood transfusion bottle. Below, the relief reads, “I am with the wounded,” which Amateis quoted from a telegram sent by the organization’s founder during the Spanish American War in 1898. Amateis received praise for the reliefs and, despite some pushback on their placement on the front facade, they were well-received by those involved with the project. After moving into the building, the DC Chapter House was able to vacate the various properties they operated out of throughout the city. Additionally, the national headquarters moved into the chapter’s former office on 17th Street NW near the National Mall. However, in 2017, the chapter sold the building to the General Services Administration with the intent to have the State Department occupy the building.
DC Inventory: October 24, 1996
]]>The Uptown Theater is prominently located along Connecticut Avenue NW in the Cleveland Park Historic District. Designed by John J. Zink – a notable and prolific movie theater architect from Baltimore – the theater’s Art Deco/Moderne design is composed of geometric motifs, buff brick and limestone cladding, and an ornamental metal marquee. With its tripartite composition, the Uptown is similar in style to Zink’s other nearby design, the former MacArthur Theater.
This particular Art Moderne style could be described as “Waterfall Moderne.” Additionally, the theater is part of a Moderne façade that extends along the west side of Connecticut Avenue, between Newark and Ordway streets. The Uptown’s façade has received very few physical alterations, while the interior has been remodeled over the decades and has lost much of its historic integrity.
The Uptown was one of many movie theaters that opened in Washington during the 20th century – with the first, the Star Theatre at 401 D Street NW, dating to 1906. Soon, theaters were being constructed in Downtown Washington – along 9th and F streets NW – and later, throughout the city’s neighborhoods. At the time, Harry Crandall was particularly noteworthy in shaping Washington’s movie theater industry. His Metropolitan (1918) was widely-popular. In 1922, his Knickerbocker Theater was the site of an infamous event. That year, snowpack led to the roof collapsing and the death of 98 attendees.
In his rush to construct theaters, Crandall bought the site that would become the Uptown. However, due to the Great Depression, Crandall’s plan for the site never materialized, and he would soon be eclipsed by Warner Brothers, which purchased the land in 1933. Warner Brothers opened the Penn Theater in Capitol Hill in 1935, followed by the Uptown in 1936. Both were designed in a Moderne style.
With 1300-seats and air conditioning, the first film to screen at the Uptown was Cain and Mabel on October 29, 1936. Following its opening, the Uptown quickly became a popular entertainment destination. Not only was the theater an important place for the Cleveland Park community, but it soon became a destination for residents throughout the District and the metropolitan area. The Uptown’s opening coincided with Connecticut Avenue’s transition from a streetcar thoroughfare to a major arterial serving automobiles and buses – thanks, in part, to the modern, Art Deco style Klingle Valley Bridge, which first started carrying vehicular traffic in 1931. The theater opened six-years after the nearby Park and Shop. The Park and Shop has since been recognized as a significant milestone in shopping center development.
In 1957, the Uptown started screening first-run pictures. Just one-year prior, the theater was upgraded with Todd-AO technology, and by 1962, Cinerama was added. Starting in the late 1960s, the theater was known for screening blockbuster films, including the world premiere of 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, Star Wars in 1977 (one of a limited number of theaters across the country to show the film), and the world premiere of Jurassic Park in 1993, amongst other films. Following ownership by Cineplex Odeon, Loew’s Theatres, and AMC, the theater closed its doors in early 2020.
The red neon sign at the Uptown is particularly well-known. Thanks to community activism in 2017, the sign was saved from being removed and replaced. Instead of full removal of the iconic lettering, the sign was modernized with LED technology.
DC Inventory: May 26, 2022
National Register: December 15, 2022
]]>Designed by William D. Nixon, a self-taught African American architect who was also a social and civil rights activist in DC, this private residence is a notable Art Deco style building in the Palisades neighborhood. The home is significant for both its connection to an individual and its architecture. While Nixon designed the home for his daughter, Ethel Nixon Mounsey, and her family, he also lived in the home from its completion in 1950 until his passing in 1962. During this time, he continued his social activism and organizational efforts targeted at dismantling segregation in the District. Born to formerly enslaved parents Burrell and Martha in 1871, William D. Nixon lived a long life as an educator, activist, and community leader. Raised largely in DC, and a graduate of Miner Normal School, Nixon lived briefly in Detroit for employment purposes before moving back to the District and accepting a teaching job at one of the first public high schools for Black students: M Street High School (later Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School). During his teaching career, Nixon served as president of the Young Men’s Protective League, which promoted social and civic activities for young African Americans in the city. Nixon also served on the board of directors for the Whitelaw Hotel and held leadership positions in the Civilian Defense Committee, Teachers’ Benefits and Annuity Association, and Association of the Oldest Inhabitants (Colored). Throughout his lifetime, Nixon launched and participated in successful campaigns to integrate the DC Fire Department and local restaurants—in addition to pursuing equitable housing for African Americans. His legacy as an activist, community leader, and spearhead for equality stretches across the District. Remarkably, William D. Nixon’s home is one of a limited number of single-family residences in the District designed in the Art Deco style, specifically in the Streamline Moderne variation. Art Deco was more often used in the design of apartment buildings, of which there are numerous examples throughout DC. Appropriately, the nomination calls the home "a well-preserved architectural gem" and emphasizes its high integrity. Today, the home continues to function as a private residence and a physical reminder of William D. Nixon’s powerful and unique legacy.
DC Inventory: March 24, 2022
National Register: May 24, 2022
]]>Designed by noted theater designer John Jacob Zink in the Art Deco Style, the Atlas Theater and Shops were an iconic part of the H Street NE Corridor for 30 years. The building is identifiable through its Art Deco elements, such as zigzag ornamentation on the steel and glass marquee and a vertically aligned neon sign.
Constructed in 1938, the Atlas Theater constituted a gateway to the magical realms of Hollywood movies, and offered daily matinee and evening performances. The surrounding shops contributed to the thriving commercial center of H Street NE, and streetcar lines brought new customers as transportation became more accessible throughout the city in the 1940s and 1950s.
In 1968, the riots that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination devastated H Street’s thriving businesses, including the Atlas. Despite offering movies on the weekends, the theater closed in 1976 and stayed vacant until renovations in 2004. The surrounding shops remained in business until the 1990s. Following rehabilitation of the space in the early 2000s, the storefront space reopened to once again serve the community.
The Atlas Theater is now home to the Atlas Performing Arts Center, a non-profit that provides performance space, theater events, and arts education on H Street.
DC Inventory: October 24, 2002
National Register: November 10, 2010
]]>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
]]>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
]]>Founded in 1891, the Potomac Electric Company merged with the Washington Railway and Electric Company to become the Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO) in 1902. In 1907, PEPCO established a new central generating power plant along Benning Road, and a series of substations to distribute the electricity throughout the city. Mostly, the substations are responsible for reducing the voltage transmitted from the generating plants and feeding the power to transformers near customers. Much of the sensitive equipment had to be placed under cover to protect it from the weather, while providing additional security and visual screening.
The styles of PEPCO’s substations reflected popular architectural philosophies of the time. For example, the earliest stations, built before 1928, were generally utilitarian buildings, or extensions of existing streetcar barns. But as PEPCO erected independent substations in the city’s expanding neighborhoods, it developed a policy of designing them with architectural sensitivity to the surroundings. This policy emanated from a 1906 proposal for this substation at Harvard Street and Sherman Avenue, which initially met community opposition.
In the period between 1929 and 1939, PEPCO hired architect Arthur B. Heaton (1875-1951) to design its buildings. Heaton elevated the company’s architectural standards and introduced a consistent Art Deco/Industrial Classicism, unifying them with a sort of corporate branding. This new aesthetic commenced with Heaton’s designs for PEPCO Substation No. 16 (1929; demolished) and No. 25 (1930) and continued through the decade.
As the development of suburban areas added to the demand for electrical distribution, PEPCO increasingly sited and designed substations to fit their neighborhoods. With World War II looming, the company showed a new sensitivity to system security. From 1939 to 1960, PEPCO architects designed substations to blend in architecturally with their surroundings and to decrease public awareness of them through the art of deception. Often designed to look like houses, substations might even have curtains and blinds in the windows, making it appear as if they were occupied by families. Commercial look-alike buildings, such as the Harrison Street substation, had display windows with changing displays advertising PEPCO, appliances, holidays, or the war effort. PEPCO constructed substations that blended into their surroundings throughout World War II and into the Cold War.
After 1960, PEPCO-designed substations no longer followed any prescribed aesthetic. The company continues to consider location, the character of the neighborhoods, and the technical requirements for delivering reliable electrical service in its design of new buildings.
DC Inventory: November 16, 2017
]]>Founded in 1891, the Potomac Electric Company merged with the Washington Railway and Electric Company to become the Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO) in 1902. In 1907, PEPCO established a new central generating power plant along Benning Road, and a series of substations to distribute the electricity throughout the city. Mostly, the substations are responsible for reducing the voltage transmitted from the generating plants and feeding the power to transformers near customers. Much of the sensitive equipment had to be placed under cover to protect it from the weather, while providing additional security and visual screening.
The styles of PEPCO's substations reflected popular architectural philosophies of the time. For example, the earliest stations, built before 1928, were generally utilitarian buildings, or extensions of existing streetcar barns. But as PEPCO erected independent substations in the city's expanding neighborhoods, it developed a policy of designing them with architectural sensitivity to the surroundings. This policy emanated from a 1906 proposal for this substation at Harvard Street and Sherman Avenue, which initially met community opposition.
In the period between 1929 and 1939, PEPCO hired architect Arthur B. Heaton (1875-1951) to design its buildings. Heaton elevated the company’s architectural standards and introduced a consistent Art Deco/Industrial Classicism, unifying them with a sort of corporate branding. This new aesthetic commenced with Heaton's designs for PEPCO Substation No. 16 (1929; demolished) and No. 25 (1930) and continued through the decade. As the development of suburban areas added to the demand for electrical distribution, PEPCO increasingly sited and designed substations to fit their neighborhoods. With World War II looming, the company showed a new sensitivity to system security.
From 1939 to 1960, PEPCO architects designed substations to blend in architecturally with their surroundings and to decrease public awareness of them through the art of deception. Often designed to look like houses, substations might even have curtains and blinds in the windows, making it appear as if they were occupied by families. Commercial look-alike buildings, such as the Harrison Street substation, had display windows with changing displays advertising PEPCO, appliances, holidays, or the war effort. PEPCO constructed substations that blended into their surroundings throughout World War II and into the Cold War.
After 1960, PEPCO-designed substations no longer followed any prescribed aesthetic. The company continues to consider location, the character of the neighborhoods, and the technical requirements for delivering reliable electrical service in its design of new buildings.
On the north elevation of the substation was the Unity Mural (1982), which was significant to DC's Latino community. In summer 2026, it was demolished, as part of a modernization and expansion of the substation.
DC Inventory: February 1, 2018
National Register: June 6, 2019
]]>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
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