The Eighteen Hundred Block Park Road, NW is a collection of ten

suburban A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area. They are oftentimes where most of a metropolitan areas jobs are located with some being predominantly residential. They can either be denser or less densely populated ...

-style residences and five carriage houses in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

The houses form an

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains historic building, older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal p ...

and were listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1978.

History

Built around the turn of the 20th century, the houses occupy terraces above Park Road, which is a curving cross-town street. They are unique in that they are large, custom-designed house in an area of the city that is primarily made up of

row houses A terrace, terraced house ( UK), or townhouse ( US) is a type of medium-density housing which first started in 16th century Europe with a row of joined houses sharing side walls. In the United States and Canada these are sometimes known as row ...

. The people who built the houses were businessmen, bankers and other professionals. They employed several prominent local architects who designed the houses in a variety of styles, especially

Colonial Revival The Colonial Revival architectural style seeks to revive elements of American colonial architecture. The beginnings of the Colonial Revival style are often attributed to the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which reawakened Americans to the arch ...

. The architects include Frederick B. Pyle, Harding & Upman, Appleton P. Clark, Jr., and C.A. Didden & Son.

Architecture

Most of the houses are two stories and include both frame and brick structures, some of which are monumental in scale. The styles employed provided various textures and materials, including

clapboard Clapboard (), also called bevel siding, lap siding, and weatherboard, with regional variation in the definition of those terms, is wooden siding of a building in the form of horizontal boards, often overlapping. ''Clapboard'', in modern Am ...

shingles Shingles, also known as herpes zoster or zona, is a viral disease characterized by a painful skin rash with blisters in a localized area. Typically the rash occurs in a single, wide mark either on the left or right side of the body or face. T ...

and

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...

. They feature multiple roof forms, bays and

dormer A dormer is a roofed structure, often containing a window, that projects vertically beyond the plane of a Roof pitch, pitched roof. A dormer window (also called ''dormer'') is a form of roof window. Dormers are commonly used to increase the ...

s. The houses have large front

porch A porch (; , ) is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance to a building. A porch is placed in front of the façade of a building it commands, and forms a low front. Alternatively, it may be a vestibule (architecture), vestibule (a s ...

es and

porticoes A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cultu ...

that feature ample window openings,

column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member ...

s and

balustrades A baluster () is an upright support, often a vertical moulded shaft, square, or lathe-turned form found in stairways, parapets, and other architectural features. In furniture construction it is known as a spindle. Common materials used in its c ...

Fanlight A fanlight is a form of lunette window (transom window), often semicircular or semi-elliptical in shape, with glazing (window), glazing bars or tracery sets radiating out like an open Hand fan, fan. It is placed over another window or a doorway, ...

entrances are characteristic on the street.

References

{{Registered Historic Places Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington, D.C. Houses in Washington, D.C. Colonial Revival architecture in Washington, D.C. Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington, D.C. Mount Pleasant (Washington, D.C.)