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Photo, Print, Drawing 1611 Twenty-first Street, Northwest (House), 1611 Twenty-first Street, Northwest, Washington, District of Columbia, DC

[ Data Pages from Survey HABS DC-865  ]

More Resources

[ Photo Captions from Survey HABS DC-865  ]

About this Item

Title

  • 1611 Twenty-first Street, Northwest (House), 1611 Twenty-first Street, Northwest, Washington, District of Columbia, DC

Names

  • Historic American Buildings Survey, creator
  • Gray & Page
  • Gray, W. Bruce
  • Page, Harvey L.
  • Porter, John Addison
  • Porter, Amy Ellen
  • Langley & Gettinger
  • Frazer, Elizabeth Van Rensselaer
  • Poynton, Arthur M.
  • Jacobs, James A., historian
  • Jacobs, James A., transmitter
  • Rosenthal, James W., photographer

Created / Published

  • Documentation compiled after 1933

Headings

  • -  Victorian architectural elements
  • -  cross gables
  • -  Colonial Revival architectural elements
  • -  brick
  • -  stucco
  • -  roofing slate
  • -  row houses
  • -  urban growth
  • -  residential streets
  • -  bay windows
  • -  casement windows
  • -  double-hung windows
  • -  bull's eye windows
  • -  terraces
  • -  upper class
  • -  middle class
  • -  domestic life
  • -  District Of Columbia--District Of Columbia--Washington

Latitude / Longitude

  • 38.911794,-77.046512

Notes

  • -  Significance: The semi-detached townhouse at 1611 Twenty-first Street, Northwest holds significance as a touchstone to two sequential phases of elite residential development in Washington, D.C.’s affluent Dupont Circle neighborhood. The end-unit row house at the corner of Twenty-first Street and Hillyer Place was constructed in 1884 along with an adjacent, conventional row house fronting on Hillyer. The houses were designed by Gray & Page, one of the more prolific firms operating in the Dupont Circle neighborhood during its rapid initial development during the final decades of the nineteenth century. Gray & Page made good use of the corner lot, raising No. 1611 up on a high basement and creating visual interest along the roofline with three shaped gables. The brick house was embellished with an assortment of bays, porches, windows—projections encouraged by changes to the local zoning laws in the 1870s—resulting in an eclectic design that fully met Victorian notions of picturesque aesthetics. No. 1611 was dramatically reworked between 1925 and 1927, reflecting the changes that had occurred in residential design during the opening decades of the twentieth century. Beaux-Arts design principles and a growing interest in the Colonial Revival shifted the preferred stylistic modes among the well-to-do and the picturesque domestic architecture popular a half-century earlier quickly seemed old-fashioned and undeniably out of fashion. Entirely new Beaux-Arts and Colonial Revival houses were scattered throughout the Dupont Circle area and, because the neighborhood was already densely developed, many owners of existing houses made the decision to renovate as was the case with No. 1611. In just two years, the house was significantly enlarged with additions to the north and south and aesthetically simplified in large part due to the application of a uniform stucco to the exterior of the house. The resulting design—incorporating both old and new elements and features—defies simple stylistic categorization, although the splendid new interior semi-elliptical stair was decidedly Colonial Revival and the shaped gables and stucco exterior vaguely suggest the Spanish Colonial Revival mode very much in vogue during the period.
  • -  Survey number: HABS DC-865
  • -  Building/structure dates: 1884 Initial Construction
  • -  Building/structure dates: 1925-1927 Subsequent Work

Medium

  • Photo(s): 3
  • Data Page(s): 23
  • Photo Caption Page(s): 1

Call Number/Physical Location

  • HABS DC-865

Source Collection

  • Historic American Buildings Survey (Library of Congress)

Repository

Control Number

  • dc1204

Rights Advisory

Online Format

  • image
  • pdf

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  • Call Number: HABS DC-865
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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator, Gray & Page, W. Bruce Gray, Harvey L Page, John Addison Porter, Amy Ellen Porter, Langley & Gettinger, Elizabeth Van Rensselaer Frazer, Arthur M Poynton, and James A Jacobs, Rosenthal, James W, photographer. Twenty-first Street, Northwest House,Twenty-first Street, Northwest, Washington, District of Columbia, DC. Washington D.C. Washington, 1933. translateds by Jacobs, James A.Mitter Documentation Compiled After. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/dc1204/.

APA citation style:

Historic American Buildings Survey, C., Gray & Page, Gray, W. B., Page, H. L., Porter, J. A., Porter, A. E. [...] Jacobs, J. A., Rosenthal, J. W., photographer. (1933) Twenty-first Street, Northwest House,Twenty-first Street, Northwest, Washington, District of Columbia, DC. Washington D.C. Washington, 1933. Jacobs, J. A. M., trans Documentation Compiled After. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/dc1204/.

MLA citation style:

Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator, et al., photographer by Rosenthal, James W. Twenty-first Street, Northwest House,Twenty-first Street, Northwest, Washington, District of Columbia, DC. trans by Jacobs, James A.Mitter Documentation Compiled After. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/dc1204/>.