This two-story rowhouse within the Mount Pleasant Historic District was designed by prolific DC architect Waddy B. Wood (Wood, Donn & Deming) and constructed by John H. Nolan for self-described “architectural sculptor” John Joseph Earley (1881-1945) and his family. John J. Earley lived here for over 30-years, from 1911 to 1942. During this time, he led a successful career working on numerous projects around DC and the nation. He is best known for his work with architectural mosaic concrete – specifically, the “Earley Process” for formulating colorful aggregate-based concrete.
The Earley Family was known for its artistic work in 19th century England and Ireland. John J. Earley’s grandfather, John Farrington Earley, and great uncle, Thomas Earley, were artisans in Birmingham, England. Both John and Thomas later relocated to Dublin, where the firm of Earley & Powells produced decorative arts (mainly for churches), from altars and pulpits to stained glass windows and tombstones. John Farrington Earley’s son, James Farrington Earley, distinguished himself as a sculptor at an early age. In 1880, James and his wife Mary emigrated to the United States and the following year John J. Earley was born in New York City. Within a decade, James and his family moved to DC where he established his firm focused on stone carving.
John J. Earley soon apprenticed under his father James. In the 1890s and 1900s, James contributed to work at the Franciscan Monastery, Saint Patrick’s Church, and the new Willard Hotel, as well as the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. In 1906, James, at only 49 years old, tragically died of typhoid fever and bequeathed the firm to John.
The following year, John J. Earley designed a new headquarters for the firm (see John J. Earley Office and Studio). From 1907 to 1936, the firm was headquartered at this studio in Foggy Bottom. Through the National Bureau of Standards, John worked on experiments with concrete-coated metallic lath. Working in plaster and stucco, John was hired to clad different features in stucco at the new Meridian Hill Park. Initially, his work did not meet the expectations of the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA). In turn, he developed his famous process that met CFA’s standards in 1915. This two-stage process included the removal of concrete to reveal the larger aggregate’s color, and the addition of a smaller aggregate as infill.
In addition to his work at Meridian Hill Park, John J. Earley and his studio worked on many high-profile projects while he was living on Lamont Street. This included work at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, the Franciscan Monastery, Mullen Library at The Catholic University, the U.S. Department of Justice Building, the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple, the Parthenon in Nashville, and the Baháʼí House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois. John moved out of the rowhouse in Mount Pleasant in 1942 and died in 1945.
The John J. Earley House was built as infill, as it was constructed slightly later than the rest of the block. This is visible from Lamont Street, as the house has a different architectural style than the adjacent houses. Designed by Waddy B. Wood in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, the primary façade (north elevation) of the custom-designed house is clad in brick masonry laid in an English cross bond pattern. The rowhouse is three-bays wide.
A center walkway reaches from the sidewalk to the house’s entry porch. The concrete entry porch has a lower landing, short flight of stairs, and an upper landing at the front entrance, which is on the east side of the façade. The first floor features three round arches, with the entrance in the east arch, and windows in the center and west arches. These three arched openings all include fanlights and French windows. The center and west arches have concrete balustrades. The second-floor’s three windows are rectangular and have iron balcony railings.
A terra cotta tile roof overhangs the front façade. The cornice is composed of diamond-shaped concrete and is supported by concrete brackets. Below the cornice is a shelf with a braided concrete rim, round brick arches, and concrete brackets. Within the arches are shells that are both decorative and practical, as they once provided ventilation to the house’s attic. Below the shells and between the brackets are diamond-shaped terra cotta tiles.
Most of the first floor interior – the entrance hall, front parlor, center hall, central atrium, and rear dining room – is included in this designation. The interior’s most prominent space is the two-story atrium, which has a floor composed of bricks and walls of concrete blocks. Originally open-air, it was enclosed in 1915. John J. Earley’s work is most visible in the concrete-walled atrium, and the parlor and dining room's concrete fireplaces.
DC Inventory: February 27, 2025
National Register: May 8, 2025
]]>As more people moved to DC in the early 20th century, newly-established neighborhoods, like Chevy Chase, drew local businesses, including banks to deposit and withdraw money, to support the neighborhoods’ local residents. Many banks were located downtown, but as more people moved to suburban areas of the District, neighborhood savings banks became more convenient for those living farther away from the city center. The Chevy Chase Savings Bank was one such neighborhood bank, meant to provide services for families and the local businesses.
The Italian Renaissance Revival style building designed by Arthur B. Heaton is the only surviving bank of two that he designed in this particular style (the other, now demolished, was the Washington Loan & Trust Company’s West End Branch at 17th and G streets NW). The Chevy Chase neighborhood — which is located along the state line and encompasses residential blocks in both the District of Columbia and Montgomery County, Maryland — dates back to the 1880s and its establishment as a streetcar suburb. Because of limitations on commercial use, the commercial strip along Connecticut Avenue NW evolved in a unique way. Due to different ownership along Connecticut Avenue’s west side — the east side being owned by the Chevy Chase Land Company, which was bound by these limitations — a commercial strip was able to develop along the corridor’s west side blocks, within Connecticut Avenue Terrace. The east side of Connecticut Avenue, on the other hand, would not gain its commercial character until the early 1950s. Unfortunately, banks, like other businesses at the time, practiced and promoted discriminatory policies and tactics. These practices also extended to racially restrictive covenants in housing, which were found throughout the city’s neighborhoods, including in Chevy Chase.
The Chevy Chase Savings Bank opened in 1921 in an office located at the southwest corner of McKinley Street and Connecticut Avenue. However, only one year later, the bank purchased the property (one block south at Morrison Street) that the current bank building stands on, expanding their offices as the neighborhood grew. Its new, larger location, which was built in 1926, worked well for private clients and small businesses, rooting itself as a trusted institution in the neighborhood and city. The new bank building, with its sandstone and granite exterior, featured medallions of Pierre L’Enfant, George Washington, and the 1920s Peace Dollar (both the obverse and reverse), hinting at a wave of nostalgia for American history during the time of construction.
The building was constructed one year after the completion of the adjacent Chevy Chase Arcade, further establishing the Chevy Chase commercial strip. These and other businesses along the Connecticut Avenue corridor, such as the Chevy Chase Theater (Avalon Theater), built in 1922, supported the surrounding residential neighborhoods, which were quickly developing. However, in 1933, as the Great Depression continued to intensify, a national bank “holiday” was declared and banks were closed throughout the country. The bank soon reopened as a branch of Riggs National Bank. The consolidation helped stabilize the bank, and allowed its customers to return without fear of losing their money.
The continued trust in the bank led to an expansion of the building in 1958. This expansion added three additional bays to the western portion of the bank building, forming an arcade of six arched windows along Morrison Street. The architectural firm, Mills, Petticord, and Mills matched the exterior of the addition to the original designed by Heaton, but records indicate that the interior of the bank was extensively renovated. Christian Wohlgemuth, Jr., constructed both the original building and the addition.
It continued as a Riggs Bank branch until 2005, when Riggs was sold to PNC Bank, a Pittsburgh-based company. It continues to operate under PNC.
DC Inventory: January 26, 2023
National Register: April 27, 2023
]]>Completed in 1890, the George S. Fraser House was designed by Hornblower and Marshall, a prominent Washington architecture firm. The Fraser home is architecturally indicative of the firm’s stylistic originality in the 1880s and 1890s. Defined as an architecturally transitional building, the large structure combines elements of the Richardsonian Romanesque, Italian Renaissance, and English-American Colonial styles. Distinctive elements include the use of pink granite, a tiled and hipped roof, Palladian windows, and a pillared portico.
The home was originally built for George S. Fraser, a New York merchant who arrived in the District in 1888. His widow sold the home in 1901 to Miriam Douglas Thropp, daughter of Abraham Lincoln’s Assistant Secretary of War and president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Thomas Alexander Scott. After Miriam’s death in 1930, the home was sold and subsequently opened to the public as the Parrot Tea Room (with a boarding house upstairs) in 1932.
In 1950, the space was leased to John Goldstein who altered the space for restaurant service, operating The Golden Parrot Restaurant Inc. until 1974. It then housed the Sagittarius Nightclub.
Today, the former home, that went through a series of uses, is the National Affairs Office of the Church of Scientology.
DC Inventory: June 27, 1974
National Register: August 19, 1975
]]>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 Fulford was constructed in 1911 and named upon its completion. Its architect was Carroll Beale (1882-1942), a self-employed civil engineer, residential builder and innovator in concrete construction. The four-story brick building has an Italian Renaissance façade, a popular revival style for such buildings during that period, but likely here adopted in emulation of the first mansions and embassies erected in Meridian Hill during the previous three years. It is located next to the Glenn Arms Apartments, and both buildings have been referred to as the Glenn Arms, due to their common ownership.
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 Fulford 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
]]>Named in honor of Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841-1848), the first African American to serve a full term as an elected U.S. senator, the Renaissance Revival-style Bruce School served generations of African American elementary students during the era of segregated schools. Bruce also served as a neighborhood cultural and community center from its opening in 1898.
The Bruce School is an Italian Renaissance Revival style building of red brick with stone and pressed metal trim, designed by architect William M. Poindexter and constructed in 1898. The eight-room school was designed with a conventional floor plan with four rooms on each floor arranged around a central hallway. In 1927, the overcrowded conditions of the school were relieved by the construction of an eight-room extensible annex to the west, designed in the Colonial Revival style by municipal architect Albert L. Harris.
DC Inventory: November 20, 2014
National Register: March 31, 2015
]]>Built between 1907 and 1909, the Joseph Beale House stands as an example of one of many buildings designed by local architect Glenn Brown. The house, an Italian Renaissance Revival style residence, was one of three designed by Brown along Massachusetts Avenue NW. Brown and his son Bedford worked together on a number of projects throughout the city, including buildings and structures. Brown and his son were also responsible for designing Dumbarton Bridge (also known as Buffalo Bridge after the large sculptures of buffalo on either side of the bridge), and the restoration of Gunston Hall in Virginia. The house was originally built as a private residence for Joseph Beale and his wife Margaret Beale. However, the house is now owned by the Egyptian government as the ambassador’s official residence. The building sits along the portion of Massachusetts Avenue known as Embassy Row.
DC Inventory: February 22, 1972 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: May 8, 1973
Within Massachusetts Avenue and Sheridan-Kalorama Historic Districts
]]>Engine Company No. 23 is a modest, two-story red brick firehouse in an Arts and Crafts interpretation of an Italian Renaissance Revival style. Designed by prominent architects Hornblower & Marshall and architect Snowden Ashford (1866-1927), the firehouse serves as a visible landmark of Foggy Bottom since its construction in 1910. This firehouse is the smallest of all DC's firehouses, measuring approximately thirty-five feet wide by ninety feet deep. It is also one of only two firehouses in the city intended to accommodate a single piece of apparatus.
The interior plan is unusual among other DC firehouses; rather than having side-by-side spaces inside the firehouse for fire engines, Engine Company No. 23 has two single "stacked" spaces (engine-behind-engine), accessible by single apparatus doors at both the front and rear of the building. This innovative arrangement is symptomatic of the developed Foggy Bottom neighborhood, requiring a firehouse with a narrow width due to limited residential space.
Identified for sale in 1940, the neighborhood protested to save the building for its original purpose. Engine Company No. 23 is still in operation today.
DC Inventory: June 23, 2005
National Register: June 6, 2007
Within George Washington University/Old West End Historic District
]]>Erected in 1911 by the Samuel J. Prescott Company to a design by prominent Washington architect Appleton P. Clark, Jr., the Civil Service Commission building exemplifies the early-20th century office buildings developed privately for long-term use by federal agencies. It is a rare survivor of this period of rapid government expansion.
The building exhibits elements of the Italian Renaissance Revival style applied to the basic commercial office building form of the early twentieth century. Due to its simple but high-quality building materials, including brick and limestone, the building remains in generally good condition with few alterations to its 1911 exterior appearance and configuration.
DC Inventory: June 30, 2011
National Register: September 18, 2013
]]>Built between 1882 and 1887, the Pension Building now houses the National Building Museum and is significant for both its architecture and place in the nation’s history.
The Pension Building was designed by Army Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs and built as a memorial for soldiers, sailors, and marines who fought in the Civil War. Their service is memorialized in the frieze that wraps around the entire building. The frieze depicts different aspects of the US military during the Civil War including images of infantrymen, calvary, the navy, and medical units. This is particularly significant because it serves as an important example of the Civil War generation creating their own memorials of the conflict.
The Pension Building was also designed with the intent to preserve historic documents. During its construction, multiple records were put in metal cases and encased in the building’s great columns. These documents included the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, typographic and battlefield maps, a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, and other War and State Department publications. These characteristics make the Pension Building more than a building, and elevates it as a structure devoted to the memorialization of the nation’s history.
This building was also built for and served the Pension Bureau. The Pension Bureau was the first federal agency to serve veterans nationwide. This agency operated in the Pension Building for forty years, from 1885 to 1926. Veterans who had fought in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican-American War, or the Civil War received funding from the Pension Bureau. During their time in at 401 F St NW, the agency provided around $8.3 billion to over 2 million veterans and their families.
In addition to its connection to the Pension Bureau, the Pension Building hosted multiple inaugural balls for US presidents, including Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Richard Nixon.
The Pension Building is architecturally significant as an early example of the Italian Renaissance Revival style in the United States. The building's architect, Montgomery C. Meigs, was heavily influenced by Renaissance buildings in Rome, Italy and modeled his designs on them. Its interior contains a huge, covered central atrium courtyard which rises to the top of the roof.
In 1900, the McMillan Commission noted the Pension Building's unique departure from the Greek Revival designs dominating other federal buildings in the capital. Its red brick and terra cotta facade sets the Pension Building apart from other federal buildings in the city. During the early years of its existence, the Pension Building's design was heavily criticized for this and, in 1935, a plan to remodel the building was introduced; however, the plan never took off.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: March 24, 1969
National Historic Landmark: February 4, 1985
Within Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site
This site is included in the Haunted History of DC Tour. Due to the long and varied history of this site, several ghost stories are connected to the National Building Museum (former Pension Building). At night, the painted marble of the columns appears to swirl into skulls and ghosts, frightening the security guards. There have also been sightings of a lady dressed in white strolling the grand hallways, which date to the 1880s.
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