90-Unit Condo Project At Historic 16th Street Mansion Looks To Move Forward

• March 24th

by UrbanTurf Staff

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A limestone mansion that once embodied Mary Foote Henderson's audacious early-20th century vision to line 16th Street NW with diplomatic palaces is getting a second act — this time as 90 residential condos.

Developer Dila Development, working with DC-based architecture firm 2Plys, has proposed a three-phase conversion of a property in Mount Pleasant, with the entire project targeted for completion by 2028. The plan would reshape a prominent corner at 16th and Park Road, transforming a collection of historic structures into one of the biggest condo developments pitched in DC in years.

Phase one focuses on the historic mansion at 3224 16th Street NW, which will become 21 condos. The second phase will address 3220 16th Street, with a five-level addition built above the existing two-story school building. In the third phase — running concurrently with the second — the adjacent townhouse at 1604 Park Road NW will receive a multi-story addition above and behind its rear wing. When complete, the project will yield 64 units in the mansion parcel and 23 more in the Park Road parcel.

The proposal went before DC's Historic Preservation Review Board in January, and the Historic Preservation Office returned with a set of pointed recommendations — all of which Dila has incorporated into the latest iteration of the design.

HPO's central concern had been that the massing of the new additions — roughly double the scale of each historic structure — risked swallowing the mansions entirely. The revised plans now treat the two historic buildings as visually separate, freestanding structures from the new construction — more like old houses with tall neighbors than landmarks entombed in an addition. For the Park Road townhouse, the proposed two-story side addition has been pulled back to preserve a projecting bay on the building's west elevation. For the mansion, 2Plys went further than the original recessed entryway concept, conducting a site investigation to assess how much of the original south elevation survives beneath the 1964 addition and introducing a clearer separation of masses — ensuring the historic building once again reads as a distinct structure rather than a base for the new construction rising behind it.

The proposal will go before the HPRB in April looking for final approval. 

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/90-unit_condo_project_at_historic_16th_street_mansion_looks_to_move_forward/24447.