Apartment 406 at Alban Towers is a renter's dream. A rich renter's dream, that is.
French doors open onto an arched balcony that outlines a view of the National Cathedral. The modern, open-plan kitchen comes with maple cabinets and a ceramic tile floor. The living room has a gas fireplace.
The boarded-up Alban Towers apartment building, before its renovation.
(James M. Thresher - The Washington Post)
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Tenants can lie in bed in the master bedroom and still get an eye-popping view. If they want to sleep in, they can close the double-paned windows, which block out much of the noise from the corner of Massachusetts and Wisconsin avenues NW.
They've got history all around them, and luxury, too.
Alban Towers, one of the best examples of Gothic Revival architecture in the District, is back from ruin after more than a year of restoration by owners Charles E. Smith Residential Realty Inc. of Arlington.
All this historical luxury doesn't come cheap. Apartment 406, a 1,454-square-foot two-bedroom, rents for $4,155 a month. There's parking with it, but it costs extra: $165 a month for a single space in the underground garage or $225 a month for a tandem space for two cars.
The company is confident that even at those prices, it will have no problem renting the apartments.
"There's a very, very strong demand for premier apartments in the city," said Matt McCormick, executive vice president for residential services at Smith. "There are not many buildings that offer the same amenities and finish levels that Alban Towers does. Some of the most expensive and larger units have been the quickest to rent."
In comparison, a 1,402-square-foot two-bedroom at the Regent, at 16th and R streets NW, is available for $7,000 a month. But while the Regent is new construction, Alban Towers is a restoration of a historic building.
And it's a good restoration at that.
"It is the most outstanding renovation job I have ever seen," said Sally Berk, a preservation activist and the former president of the D.C. Preservation League. "It sets a standard that I hope other developers will try to meet."
Alban Towers, built in 1929-30, was for decades one of the District's most prestigious apartment addresses. For a while, it also included a few up-market hotel suites. Some apartments were lavish, but many were small one-bedrooms.
During John F. Kennedy's presidential inauguration in 1961, a number of prominent entertainers stayed there, including Frank Sinatra and Bette Davis, the owners said. During the same period, Alban Towers was also home to a number of foreign diplomats.
"This is a truly special building," said architect Gary Martinez of Georgetown architects Martinez & Johnson, who worked with Smith to restore the ornately decorated building to its original grandeur. "When it was built, it represented a new kind of in-town living, a lavish lifestyle with live-in maids and all kinds of amenities."
After its heyday, however, the public areas of the building started to decline during the late 1960s. In 1973, it was bought by Georgetown University for use as student housing.
Alban Towers was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 and it was vacated the year after for redevelopment. That development plan, and others after it, were abandoned, and the property fell into disrepair after it was left vacant for several years.
Smith bought the building at the height of the District's real estate market in 1999 and began renovations last winter. Now, after an investment of $63 million, the building is again ready to become one of the best apartment addresses in the District.
Alban Towers' newly done 229 units, with 70 different floor plans, range from studios to three-bedroom apartments. The smallest unit, a 537-square-foot studio, starts at $1,515 a month. The largest, a 1,456-square-foot three-bedroom unit, rents from $4,120 a month.
Leasing manager Cindy Traister said 34 units have been leased since late April. The first tenants are to move in early in June.
Besides the gutted and redone apartments, the building includes a fitness center with an indoor lap pool, a business center, a 24-hour front desk and a large private room (once a restaurant) off the lobby with a big-screen television set that can be used by tenants for parties.
A butterfly garden, which will also be open to residents of the neighborhood, is being developed on the premises. The garden, designed with help from the Washington Area Butterfly Club, will house about 50 plants that attract butterflies.
"We wanted to do something extraordinary with that space," project manager Jim Kane said.
Kane, who worked for the D.C. Historic Preservation Board for eight years before Smith recruited him to manage the Alban Towers project, said the building is one of only 11 in the District to have both the exterior and interior public areas on the historic register. The lobby has a muted terra-cotta mosaic floor; gargoyles adorn the exterior and the corridors.
Kane said it was likely that the stone carvers and artisans who worked on the National Cathedral came across the street to work on Alban Towers.
"The quality of work matches that of the cathedral," Kane said. "The gargoyles have that same whimsical quality. It makes sense that it was the same craftsmen at both places."
Smith worked with the Historic Preservation Board and the National Park Service -- as the company was required to do -- to keep the building's features intact.
The company also hired a full-time intern to do photo research so that the building could be reproduced exactly as it was, Kane said. In the antiques-filled lobby, wall lights that look like the original lights were made and the beehive fireplace was restored. The fireplace and the lights were shown in photos dating as far back as the 1940s, Kane said.
The bathrooms, although new, come with black and white tile that mimics the original tile, he said. Spires that had broken off from the outside were left rather than remade. The original 11-foot ceiling heights were also kept.
"We wanted the building to look like it had aged over time," Kane said. "We didn't want that fake historical look you often get when you re-do an old building."
At the same time, though, the company installed 1,700 new windows and window surrounds and had to match some areas of brick on the outside, a match that blends well with the old.
"Too often, apartment buildings have all their windows replaced with an inappropriate design which completely destroys the original intent of the architect," said Berk, who wrote the building's nomination to the historic register. "Replacement windows are a constant issue in historic districts. These windows are fabulous."
Martinez said the biggest challenge in the project was its size, about 350,000 square feet. "We had a team of five people surveying just the corridors for three months," he said. "There are literally miles of corridors in this building. And they're all protected."
He said the contractors used a gentle washing technique with light chemicals and soft-bristled brushes to clean the outside of the building, and conducted dozens of tests to determine water pressure that wouldn't be too harsh on the old facade.
"That patina of age, those wrinkles, we didn't want any of those to be washed away," he said.
