Library Record
Images
Metadata
Object ID |
2008.70.03.02 |
Title |
Best Addresses: A Century of Washington's Distinguished Apartment Houses |
Object Name |
Book |
Author |
Goode, James M. |
Publisher |
Smithsonian Institution Press |
Published Date |
1988 |
Published Place |
Washington, D.C. |
Description |
Best Addresses - A Century of Washington's Distinguished Apartment Houses by James M. Goode Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC, London 1988 Photographs by James Stafford Phillips and James F. Tetro p. 258-259 "THE WARREN BROTHERS The firm of Monroe and R. B. Warren, Inc., which developed Tilden Gardens, was founded by the elder of the two brothers, Monroe Warren, Sr., quite by accident. Following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, young Monroe Warren (1895-1983), of Clayton, Alabama, planned to enter the medical profession when he enrolled in the University of Virginia shortly before World War I. His future career, however, was dramatically changed through a part-time job. During the summer vacation of 1916, he worked in Washington as timekeeper for his uncle^, Bates Warren, an established local builder who was then constructing one of the city's finest apartment houses, 2029 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. To his surprise, the young college student found the construction industry fascinating and as a result abandoned plans for a career as a physician. After serving in World War I as a first lieutenant, he permanently settled in Washington in 1919. In that year, another uncle, John Warren, also a builder, lent him the funds to start his own company, Monroe and R. B. Warren, Inc., in partnership with his younger brother, R. Bates Warren. At the beginning of the boom period of the 1920's, the younger Warrens were quite successful in building dozens of houses. They are best remembered, however, for pioneering the construction of six Washington co-op apartment houses during the second half of the decade - 1705 Lanier Place, N.W.; Cleveland Park (3018-3028 Porter Street, N. W.); the Army and Navy (2540 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.); 3001 Porter Street, N.W.; 1661 Crescent Place, N.W.; and Tilden Gardens. Later, after R. Bates Warren left the firm, Monroe Warren and Edgar Kennedy became the builders and brief owners of the beautiful but ill-fated Kennedy-Warren in 1931. Monroe Warren, Sr., remained a major figure in Washington real estate from 1919 until his retirement in 1966, despite the serious financial loss he suffered when the Kennedy-Warren went into bankruptcy in the early years of the Depression. He was responsible for organizing the Home Builders Association in Washington in 1926 and was active in promoting co-op apartments, both locally and nationally, during the 1920s. During the 1930s he became one of the most active builders of low-cost housing on a grand scale in the Washington area. His second firm, known as Meadowbrook, Inc., was based in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and existed from 1932 to 1966. This firm built more than five hundred low-cost houses in Landover Hills, Maryland, in 1936. Other projects in the Maryland suburbs included houses in Rock-ville (Rockcrest) as well as Woodley Gardens, Hamlet Place, the Chevy Chase Lake Apartments, and many others in Chevy Chase. Within Northwest Washington he built Woodley Hills and Ordway Gardens, the latter as wartime housing for civilian defense workers in 1942. The Federal Housing Administration called his 750 "track houses" built in Arlington Forest, Virginia, in 1939, the best buildings for their price in the United States. It was the first detached housing development financed by the FHA, and buyers of the $6,000 houses had to deposit only $600 with a mortgage for 25 years. During the 1920s R. Bates Warren, the younger brother in the original partnership, was equally influential in the co-op apartment house movement. He was instrumental in founding the Cooperative Apartment House Burrau of the National Real Estate Board, headquartered in Chicago, in 1925. Because of their significant success in constructing and marketing five co-op apartment houses between 1924 ind 1926, the Warrens embarked on their largest and most expensive co-op undertaking, Tilden Gardens, in 1927. Built at a cost of $3 million, Tilden Gardens linked—along with Cathedral Mansions (1922-23), the Broadmoor(1928), the Westchester (1930), and the Kennedy-Warren (1931)—among the city's five largest and most luxurious apartment houses (with at least two hundred units) until the 1950s, when prosperity brought even larger apartment houses. " |