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Washington, D.C. » 16th Street and Meridian Hill » Apartment Building

Apartment Building

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1925, Joseph Younger. 1661 Crescent Pl. NW

Younger's elegant irregular E-shaped apartment building was built as a cooperative, with the cost of its fifty apartments ranging from $6,000 to $29,000. Unusually large and gracious apartments were planned to have three exposures as they span the width and depth of each of the three wings that face Crescent Place. Younger designed in an elegant but restrained version of the Neo-Renaissance style. The lower two of the six stories are faced with limestone in which the thickness of a masonry wall is alluded to in a remarkably shallow layering of rustication, smooth double-story blind arches, and pilasters carrying short segments of entablature. In reality the structure behind the limestone (and brick above) is a steel frame; Younger's careful and ironic imitation of solid masonry construction functions as a mere historical reference. In contrast to the thinness of these limestone walls, the central arch of each three-bay wing is framed by freestanding Roman Doric columns topped by fully developed entablatures and even finials. Beautifully proportioned Doric screens span the two landscaped courtyards.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Pamela Scott and Antoinette J. Lee
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Data

What's Nearby

Meridian House International
Meridian House International
Embassy of Ghana
Meridian Hill Park
Inter-American Defense Board

Citation

Pamela Scott and Antoinette J. Lee, "Apartment Building", [Washington, District of Columbia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/DC-01-MH19.

Print Source

Buildings of the District of Columbia, Pamela Scott and Antoinette J. Lee. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, 310-310.

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