Capitol Park was the first and largest residential complex in the Southwest area, fashioned as a model planning project whose innovative combination of high-rise and low-rise buildings, arranged around a network of landscaped courts and walkways, represented a new prototype for residential Washington. Architect Chloethiel Woodard Smith, then a founding partner with Nicholas Satterlee in the architectural firm Satterlee and Smith Architects, helped plan Capitol Park as a community with a variety of housing types, consisting of 1339 rental units contained in five nine-story apartment buildings and 399 townhouses. Although built in stages, the complex was designed as a unified whole and is best known for its park-like atmosphere.
With landscape design by Dan Kiley, mosaics by Leo Lionni, and sculptures by Costantino Nivoli, Capitol Park exemplifies the integration of modern architecture, artwork, and landscape in a city with few notable examples of the style. In 1973, Capitol Park was subdivided into five separate developments, and Capitol Park Apartments (now known as Potomac Place) became the first high-rise building to be completed.
DC Inventory: July 10, 2014
]]>The buildings stand tallest at the west end, where the complex opens in a U shape to maximize views of the river, and they drop to three stories near 4th Street where they embrace and incorporate three historic landmarks: Wheat Row (1793), the Duncanson-Cranch House (1794), and the Edward Simon Lewis House (1817).
Harbour Square’s principal designer was Chloethiel Woodard Smith, perhaps Washington’s most prominent female architect, with the collaboration of Louis Justement on the Southwest urban renewal area plan. Harbour Square is distinctive for its site plantings and hardscape, the finest among the Southwest housing complexes and designed by the acclaimed landscape architect Dan Kiley. The buildings divide the landscape into themed areas—an aquatic garden, tree court, and Japanese garden—and the glassy ground floors promote views from and through the buildings.
DC Inventory: February 28, 2013
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