Best Way to Live and Learn: Buy the Pierce School Lofts

• December 17th 2013

by UrbanTurf Staff

UrbanTurf usually stays away from publishing rankings or lists…except at the end of the year when we look back at the best that DC’s real estate scene had to offer during the previous 12 months. So, this whole week, we will be looking at not only the best, but the most intriguing and peculiar things that came across our radar over the course of 2013.

It may well be the most intriguing residential property in Washington, DC: a 9,500 square-foot loft on top of seven loft rentals, all inside a former schoolhouse.

When UrbanTurf wrote about the converted Pierce School at 14th Street and Maryland Avenue NE (map) being put on the market, it was hard to keep track of all the features.

A number of enormous former classrooms now serve as living areas, bedrooms, a restaurant-sized kitchen and an office. There is a 14-person movie theater in which the seats came from the first class section of an old airplane. There is a living room where the ceilings reach 18 feet in some places and 32 feet in others.

Aspects of the school’s former life remain. The chalkboards have been kept and restored, not just in the owner’s loft, but in every rental unit. There are also the old lockers in the main loft, which is also filled with the school’s 8.5-foot windows.

The property has yet to find a buyer willing to pay $7.25 million, but that hasn’t prevented owners Jeff Printz and Chris Swanson from moving on to their next Capitol Hill conversion project.

Earlier this year, the couple purchased the former New Union Garage at 643-645 Maryland Avenue NE (map), one of the first garages to open in the city. Just as they did with the Pierce School, they plan to transform an old Capitol Hill institution into their new home, renovating the 4,000 square-foot garage and building two more stories on top of the existing property.

Photos courtesy of Home Visit.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/best_way_to_live_and_learn_buy_the_pierce_school_lofts/7939.