The Glenn Arms

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The Glenn Arms apartment building 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