The upper half of Bancroft Place ( SK58, SK59) has a commanding presence due to the reciprocity between both sides of the street, where exceptionally wide, three- and four-story town houses face one another across a fairly narrow street, an atypical urban experience in Washington. The majority are substantially Beaux-Arts in style but have overtones of Georgian influence in their use of bricks as a primary building material and extensive use of decorative elements common to the Georgian vocabulary. Contrary to the Georgian tradition, however, doors set into rusticated ground stories of smooth, buff limestone are subdued rather than celebrated.
These three large Beaux-Arts houses were designed for developer Harry Wardman, yet each facade, as in his 1908 row on the opposite side of the street (see SK54), was organized as an individual unit meant to harmonize with, but not copy, its neighbors.