Glade Apartments
Influenced by transportation improvements, a new zoning ordinance, and Depression-era population growth, The Glade Apartments embody the physical and social developments of the Brightwood neighborhood during the interwar period.
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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
