Capitol Hill Office Building Eyed for Nine-Unit Residential Conversion

• October 27th

by UrbanTurf Staff

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DC’s office-to-residential conversions tend to come in one size: big. This one is not.

Plans have been filed with DC's Historic Preservation Office to convert a two-story office building on Capitol Hill into a nine-unit residential project. Most of the city’s conversion proposals involve hundreds of units, like the 400-unit project pitched for 2100 M Street NW and the 500-plus-unit conversion of the Universal Buildings on Connecticut Avenue. By comparison, this is a pocket-sized development.

Built in 1908, the offices at 916 Pennsylvania Avenue SE looks like a pair of rowhouses from the street, though the back has been heavily altered over the years. To make room for the new units, the plans call for a carriage house-style addition at the rear and an extra floor on top of the existing building. Architect Archi-Textual says neither will be visible from Pennsylvania Avenue. The units would be spread across the cellar, first and second floors, with a few in the rear addition. The ninth is a two-level home on the new top floor with a private roof deck.

While rare, small conversions like this have popped up around the city, including on the Hill. Monarch Urban restored a pair of late-1800s rowhouses near the Capitol, which had been turned into offices for a nonprofit in the 1980s, as nine condos. In Georgetown, the former Legal Services Corporation headquarters at 3333 K Street NW is being turned into a 30-unit development. 

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/capitol_hill_office_building_eyed_for_nine-unit_residential_conversion/25136.