Pershing Park, which sits in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue NW between 14th and 15th streets, is a Modernist park plaza designed by landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg and constructed in 1980 to 1981. The construction of the plaza in the early 1980s grew out of efforts to beautify Pennsylvania Avenue in the 1960s and 1970s. This beautification and redevelopment was carried out by the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC), which operated from 1972 to 1996. Simultaneously, Congress authorized construction of a General John J. Pershing Memorial in 1956 and 1966.
In 1974, the PADC’s redevelopment plan was released and within in it proposed six new plazas and parks fronting Pennsylvania Avenue. In addition to Pershing Park was Freedom (Western) Plaza – directly to the east of Pershing Park – John Marshall Park, Meade Plaza, Market Square, and Indiana Plaza. All six of the new public spaces were designed by prominent architects and landscape architects of the Modern and Postmodern variety.
At the east end of Pershing Park is the General John J. Pershing Memorial, which was designed by architect Wallace K. Harrison, and memorializes General John J. Pershing and the American Expeditionary Forces of World War I. The memorial features a bronze statue sculpted by Robert White and installed in 1983.
Initially successful, Pershing Park became neglected over the years. At the same time, Congress authorized construction of the World War I Memorial in 2014. The park was eventually slated for redevelopment and, in 2021, the park reopened following a rehabilitation. Despite some alterations to the plaza, Friedberg’s original design is largely intact.
Pershing Park now includes a new World War I Memorial on the west end of the public space, across the plaza from the original Pershing Memorial. The most prominent element of the new memorial, designed by architect Joe Weishaar, is A Soldier’s Journey, a sculpture by Sabin Howard, and the Peace Fountain. This bronze sculpture, at 58-feet long, features 38 human figures, including “The Everyman” soldier. The soldier moves through five “vignettes” of World War I: Departure, Initiation, Ordeal, Aftermath, and Return. With the installation of the sculpture in 2024, the national World War I Memorial was officially completed nearly 100 years after the DC World War Memorial (1931) on the National Mall.
National Register: August 6, 2025
]]>Originally designed by Charles Bulfinch, who succeeded Benjamin Henry Latrobe as the Architect of the Capitol, as part of the grounds for the restored Capitol, these gateposts and gatehouses have since been moved from their original locations. Until 1874, they stood on the west Capitol grounds.
The design of the sandstone gateposts is classical. Horizontal bands, around the top of the pillars, are carved out of the posts and they are topped with a frieze relief matching the one atop the gatehouses. The design atop the posts is again a classical motif, volutes using the stylized acanthus leaf form.
The two gatehouses differ in that the columns surrounding the doorway of the structure at 15th Street and Constitution Avenue rise directly out of the pavement whereas the columns on the other structure are set on cement block supports.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: November 30, 1973 (additional documentation on December 13, 2021)
Within Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site and Washington Monument and Grounds Historic District
]]>When the Atlantic Building was completed in 1888, it was the largest commercial structure in the city and one of the first with a passenger elevator. Located on F Street in the heart of downtown, the speculative office building was designed in a Romanesque Revival style by James G. Hill, who had served as Supervising Architect of the U.S. Treasury and was also the designer of numerous fine private buildings in Washington. The eight-story building featured two large assembly rooms, the location of numerous important public meetings, including one at which the National Zoo was founded. In 1889, the top floor office space served as the home of President Benjamin Harrison's inaugural committee, while the US Forest Service was headquartered here from 1905 to 1940.
Towards the end of the 20th century, the DC Preservation League's offices were located within the Atlantic Building, and, in 1980, the 9:30 Club began on the first floor of the original building, taking its name from the 930 F Street address. Many Washingtonians have fond memories of attending concerts here in the 1980s and 1990s.
Unfortunately, redevelopment brought about the demolition of all but the detailed red brick masonry and terra cotta facade. The current Atlantic Building is a 10-story office complex completed in 2006. It includes the facades of several historic buildings, including the original Atlantic Building.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
Omitted on July 24, 1968; redesignated on August 28, 1973
Within Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site and Downtown Historic District
]]>The District of Columbia Court of Appeals (now United States Court of Military Appeals) is an example of Greek Revival architecture, designed by Elliott Woods, Architect of the Capitol from 1902 to 1923. He designed the Court of Appeals with great sensitivity to respect the adjacent former Washington City Hall of 1820, which now serves as the District of Columbia Courthouse.
The Court of Appeals building is exceptionally well executed. The materials are fine without being lavish, and the refined restraint displayed throughout the structure exemplifies the best architectural thought of the conservative school during the first decade of this century.
DC Inventory: March 3, 1979
National Register: January 21, 1974
]]>The District of Columbia Recorder of Deeds Building expresses the interplay between political aspirations, social struggle, the search for civic identity, and even the influence of global war on the District of Columbia.
Designed under the direction of Municipal Architect Nathan C. Wyeth, the building was constructed between 1940 and 1943. While Wyeth used the Modern/Stripped Classical style for some earlier designs, the Recorder of Deeds Building occupies a unique niche among his protean and distinguished body of work. It is an office building designed for a special function, as opposed to a general purpose governmental structure such as the DC Municipal Center, which is programmed to flow its patrons to varied functional areas.
The interior is paneled in medium brown walnut. Its most notable feature is its extensive art program, especially the seven murals commissioned by the Treasury Department Section of Fine Art in 1943. Other significant art works include the 1936 series of portraits of prior recorders, William Edouard Scott’s oil painting titled Groundbreaking (1944), and Selma Burke’s sculptural relief Four Freedoms (1945).
The building housed the Recorder of Deeds Office for more than 60 years. In 2005, its murals and rich history were acknowledged by a city historic marker. However, after the Recorder's Office moved in 2008, the building was used for storage and has faced deterioration.
DC Inventory: December 19, 2019
]]>The Daly Building was designed by DC Municipal Architect Nathan C. Wyeth and constructed with the aid of Public Works Administration funds between 1939 and 1941. This was the first building constructed according to plans developed during the 1920s for a Municipal Center between Judiciary Square and Pennsylvania Avenue.
Notable features include the cast aluminum revolving doors and abstracted classical columns, capitals, and moldings. In the interior courtyards are two enormous ceramic sculptural panels: Democracy in Action by Waylande Gregory and Health and Welfare by Hildreth Meiere. Flanking the plaza steps to the west of the building are two granite bas-relief sculptural panels: Urban Life by John Gregory, and Light, Water, and Thoroughfare by Lee Lawrie. In the south lobby floor is a terrazzo map of the District of Columbia, and near the north entrance is an octagonal fountain by the John J. Earley Studio (dedicated in 1980 as the Washington Area Law Enforcement Memorial).
DC Inventory: Feb 22, 2018
National Register: July 19, 2019
]]>The LeDroit Block was built after the completion of the large-scale municipal improvements undertaken by the Board of Public Works ibetween 1871 and 1874. It illustrates the renewed civic aspirations of the post-Civil War era with rich, animated facades that introduce a congenial human scale that enhances the monumentality of the L'Enfant Plan and the nearby General Post Office and Old Patent Office. The block includes one of the city's oldest office buildings and work by noted local architects; the buildings date from 1875 to 1892.
DC Inventory: August 28, 1973 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: April 2, 1974
Within Downtown Historic District and Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site
LeDroit Building (800-10 F Street)
This commercial office building was erected in 1875 by A.L. Barber & Co., builders of the suburban LeDroit Park. The building is a rare example of pre-elevator office building design and is a major work of noted local architect James McGill, who held an office in the building until 1882. Located on a corner site, the LeDroit Building features three stories with a raised basement of storefronts, as well as three main entrances. As a free Italianate adaptation of classical detail, the LeDroit Building has a bracketed cornice with alternating triangular and curved pediments, and applied lettering.
812 F Street
This is a commercial row building with the stories, a pressed brick facade, and a bracketed and pedimented cornice. The building was built 1875, probably by architect James McGill, and was occupied in 1877 by stationer J. Bradley Adams, a former tenant of the LeDroit Building.
Adams Building (814-16 F Street)
This is a commercial row building erected in 1878 by stationer J. Bradley Adams. It was used as store by Adams until 1888 and a residence until 1892. Like other buildings on the block, it was likely designed by James McGill.
818 F Street
Owner J. Bradley Adams erected this three-story commercial row building, possibly designed by James McGill, in 1881.
Warder Building (527 9th Street)
This early elevator building was erected in 1892 by B.H. Warder, a wealthy Ohio manufacturer of farm implements, who moved to Washington to invest in real estate. He intended to use the building as offices, apartments, and stores. The Warder Building was designed by architect Nicholas T. Haller and built in 1892. The building housed Haller's office in addition to those of several patent agents, labor unions, and the DC Communist Party during the 1940s.
]]>The Washington Loan and Trust Company Building is prominently situated across from the Old Patent Office. It was home to the city's first trust company, originally organized in 1889 by Brainerd H. Warner, and acquired by Riggs Bank in 1954. The building is one of the city's first skyscrapers, built prior to height limitations.
The building, designed by James G. Hill and completed in 1891, boasts a Romanesque Revival facade of rock-faced granite with arched windows, and a mixture of stone masonry bearing walls and cast-iron construction. The influence of H.H. Richardson can be seen in the building's rock-faced stone masonry and Romanesque features. Some original interior features remain, including ornamental cast-iron stairs. The main banking room was enlarged and remodeled in the Classical Revival style in 1911‑12. The Corinthian columns are still visible. An addition, designed by Arthur B. Heaton, was constructed in 1926‑27, which expanded the building's presence along F Street.
In more recent years, the building has served as a hotel, first as a Courtyard Marriott and currently as the Riggs Washington DC (the name being a reference to its former use), which opened in 2020 following a major rehabilitation project led by the architecture firm of Perkins Eastman.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: May 6, 1971
Within Downtown Historic District and Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site
]]>Completed in 1952, the U.S. Courthouse for the District of Columbia was one of the last buildings constructed in the Judiciary Square and Municipal Center complex, which has been an important site for civic activity since the 1820s. Designed by nationally renowned architect Louis Justement, the courthouse is an almost entirely unaltered example of the early 1950s Stripped Classicism that was predominant in federal architecture after World War II. Responding to the emerging government style of stripping classicism, the building displays many tenets of European modernism combined with a more traditional, classical design vocabulary.
The U.S. Courthouse accommodates all the necessary court functions and activities within a single building for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The multi-function building is indicative of Justement's concepts of space planning that set a precedent for contemporary technology utilization in courthouse buildings. Serving as the setting for numerous important trials and hearings in the past, the U.S. Courthouse retains its vital role within the city.
DC Inventory: April 26, 2007
National Register: July 5, 2007
]]>Built between 1836 and 1869, the Treasury Department building is the work of five major American architects—Robert Mills, Thomas U. Walter, Ammi B. Young, Isaiah Rogers, and Alfred B. Mullett. Conceived and built in the Greek Revival style that captured the spirit of the young republic, this building and the Patent Office, undertaken at the same time, are the most outstanding examples of Greek Revival civil architecture in the country. Not only were they the largest non-military buildings undertaken by the federal government in their own time, but they also influenced countless examples of civil architecture across the nation.
From 1800, the Treasury Department was housed in the first of George Hadfield’s three brick Executive Offices, built between 1798 and 1799 on the site of the present north wing. The Treasury Office caught fire in 1801, 1814, and 1833, and it was not reconstructed after the third conflagration. Robert Mills, who had been in the capital since 1830, was asked to assess the fire, and by 1836, his plans for a new Treasury building were accepted by Andrew Jackson. Undoubtedly, a major reason for Mills’s selection was his interest in fireproof construction, demonstrated by his Fireproof Building (1822-27) in Charleston, South Carolina. Mills had also studied with both Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Latrobe.
Mills’s design for the Treasury called for an E-shaped building opening west toward the White House, with a long classical facade on 15th Street, but only the east front and center wing were built under his supervision, from 1836 to 1842. The unusual vaulted structural system of the building and its monumental scale aroused suspicion in Congress, as well as some sharp professional jealousies among rival architects. In 1838, a bill was introduced in Congress to authorize the demolition of the half-completed structure. The architect presenting the case for demolition was Thomas U. Walter, Philadelphia’s leading Greek Revival practitioner. Walter was appointed Architect of the Capitol in 1851, and he was authorized to prepare plans for extending the Treasury in 1855. His concept, which was carried through as others executed the work, established the ultimate rectangular layout, double courtyards, and portico facades.
The south wing was built from 1855 to 1861 under the supervision of Ammi B. Young, appointed Supervising Architect of the Treasury in 1852. While Mills had been forced to use Aquia Creek sandstone, the extension was carried out in granite. The columns were monoliths, whereas Mills’ had been built up in drums. Young was abruptly dismissed by Secretary Salmon P. Chase in 1862 and replaced by Isaiah Rogers, who remained in the job until 1865, supervising completion of the west wing (1855-64), addition of an attic floor on all the wings (1863-65), and preliminary planning for the north wing. Upon his resignation, Rogers was succeeded by his former subordinate Alfred B. Mullett, who completed the north wing between 1867 and 1869. This wing contains the elaborately decorated marble Banking Room, which was the setting for Ulysses Grant’s first inaugural ball in 1869.
The Mills interiors are minimally decorated, their architectural character resulting from the masonry barrel-vaulted corridors, flanked by groin-vaulted offices. The elegantly curved, cantilevered marble staircases are a signature of his work. In contrast, the interiors of the three later wings rely much more on interior decoration for their architectural character. Their structural system, influenced by the emergent cast iron technology, is one of shallow brick vaults supported on cast iron beams, producing rectilinear volumes and a much less sculptural appearance. In these wings, Young, Rogers, and Mullett made extensive and imaginative use cast iron of and cast plaster decoration, including cast iron pilasters and friezes in the main corridors. Mullett’s Cash Room is the most lavish space in the building, displaying seven varieties of marble in the paneled walls, and richly sculptural bronze railings for the balcony.
By the late 1890s, the need for additional office space led to the insertion of a large truss-roofed drafting room in the south courtyard, for use by the Supervising Architect of the Treasury. The poor quality of the building’s original Aquia Creek sandstone led to the rebuilding of Mills’ colonnade. Architects York and Sawyer added an attic story to the building between 1909 and 1910 and made other alterations through 1923. The north entrance statue of Alexander Hamilton, by James Earle Fraser on a base by Henry Bacon, was also installed in 1923.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: November 11, 1971
National Historic Landmark: November 11, 1971
Within Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site, Financial Historic District, and Lafayette Square Historic District
This site is included in the Women's Suffrage in Washington DC tour for its role as a staging area for allegorical performances at the end of the 1913 Women's Suffrage Parade.
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