The National Savings and Trust Company is a historic bank building, known also as the National Safe Deposit Company and the National Safe Deposit Savings and Trust Company. The National Safe Deposit Company was chartered in 1867 through an act of Congress as one of the nation’s earliest safety deposit institutions, while the National Savings Bank was chartered in 1870. In 1891, the National Savings and Trust Company formed due to a merger of the National Safe Deposit Company and the National Savings Bank, and later renamed themselves in 1907. Situated in the financial sector of DC, the banking structure was designed by architect James H. Windrim (1840-1919) in the Queen Anne style in 1888. The building is composed of red brick with elaborately detailed copper and terracotta ornamentation. Throughout its history, multiple expansions and interior renovations have occurred to update the building. Eventually, SunTrust Banks took ownership of the building after it was acquired from Crestar Bank, which had previously bought the structure from the National Savings and Trust Company. It is now a Truist bank. DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)National Register: March 16, 1972Within Financial Historic District
]]>Designed by the architectural firm Carrère and Hastings, the ten-story, Beaux-Arts hotel is the only commercial building designed by the New York firm in Washington, DC. Completed in 1918, Hotel Washington’s facade features cream colored sgraffito decoration on a reddish-brown ground. The hotel can be seen in the films “Contact” and “The Firm,” and its roof terrace was also featured in “The Godfather: Part II” and “No Way Out.” Following an extensive renovation by Nakheel Properties, the owner of the building at the time, the 317-room hotel reopened in 2008 as a W Hotel, a Marriott brand. Following another renovation in the late-2010s, it is now called the Hotel Washington, once again. DC Inventory: August 28, 1973 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)National Register: March 30, 1995
]]>Established in 1889, the stock brokerage firm W. B. Hibbs & Co. was the only member of the New York Stock Exchange headquartered in DC at the time. By 1908, W. B. Hibbs & Co. moved into this new office space. Architects Jules Henri de Sibour (1872-1938) and Bruce Price (1845-1903) designed the building in the Beaux Arts style. The Beaux Arts style is closely tied to the era’s popular City Beautiful Movement, which promoted harmonious social order through urban beautification. Although the building has since undergone a series of modernizing renovations, the exterior facade and many interior features have been well preserved over the years. The organization continued to operate under the name W. B. Hibbs & Co. until 1953, when the firm merged with Folger, Nolan & Co. At the time of the merger, Folger, Nolan & Co. operated out of the American Security & Trust Building across the street. In 1989, the merged firms, now known as Folger Nolan Fleming Douglas Inc., celebrated their 100th anniversary. The firm still occupies the building to this day. DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)National Register: March 19, 1991
]]>The Financial Historic District is a linear district of monumental Beaux-Arts Classicist commercial buildings along Fifteenth Street NW, from Pennsylvania Avenue to K Street and McPherson Square. Located on an axis with the U.S. Treasury Building, the exceptional quality of the design of these buildings is inspired by that of the Treasury, as well as by the City Beautiful movement and urban planning implemented by the McMillan Commission. The commission influenced the design of the public areas of the city during the same period (1900-1930) in which most of the district's buildings were erected. A very high concentration of the leading financial institutions of the District of Columbia, as well as financially-related offices, are housed within the district.
The Beaux-Arts architecture so prevalent in this historic district represented the idealism and cosmopolitanism of the moneyed class. The careful composition of the structure and the use of Classical fragments were based on Classical inspiration that turn-of-the century Americans thought orderly, cultured, and scholarly. These qualities and the monumental scale, which tended to disregard humans in favor of larger vistas and effects, were embraced by men in power and in office for public architecture, for their own homes, and, in this case, for their private office buildings.
The Financial Historic District includes 20 contributing buildings, built between 1835 and 1940. Some of the contributing buildings include the National Savings and Trust Company, the Southern Building, the Wire Building, and the Woodward Office Building, among many others. Built to house many of the city’s prominent financial institutions and businesses, these structures all added to the economic growth of DC throughout the 19th and early 20th century.
DC Inventory (as Fifteenth Street Financial Historic District): July 31, 1981 (effective October 5, 1984); boundary increase and renamed Financial Historic District on July 28, 2016
National Register (as Fifteenth Street Financial Historic District): October 12, 2006; boundary increase and renamed Financial Historic District on January 12, 2017
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