Southwest waterfront’s River Park community turns 50

He took her to River Park and showed her the barrel roofs. She laughed. She said: “They look like the tops of bologna containers.”

He said: “I’m going to buy one.”

She said: “Oh, no.”

She said: “It would be different if we were newlyweds, Francis. But we have all of our furniture already.” Their furniture, in a bologna-container house? It just wouldn’t fit. Oh, no.

She compromised: “Give me two weeks to adjust,” she requested, which is all she’d asked for any of the places they’d lived.

He compromised: They didn’t buy a barrel roof. They bought a flat-top instead, still with the aluminum roof, still with the big windows.

The thing about River Park is that all of the people who live here or ever lived here made a considered decision to live here. You have to want it. Living in River Park is thumbing your nose at much of the rest of Washington, at least architecturally, and at preconceived notions of beauty. River Park is not the type of place one ends up by accident.

“It was diverse economically, diverse age-wise, diverse racially — there was this extraordinary mix of diversity that city planners only dream of,” says Fredrica Kramer, a River Park resident of 30 years who has a background in city planning and teaches university courses on urban policy. It was integrated from the very beginning. It was a cooperative, not a condo — one of the first in the area — so residents would have investment in their community. “And all of that was plunked on top of this world-class mid­century architecture. Now the challenge is how to maintain all of that without ossifying.”

The mass development that was supposed to save Southwest in the 1950s and 1960s never quite worked; what had originally been perceived as a grand revitalization eventually came to be seen as a lesson in insensitive planning. The neighborhood became a paradox. There were walking paths but nowhere to walk, shop, eat. There was modern architecture that started to look old.

Fifty years passed for Dottie Cason in the enclave of River Park. The community went from young singles and couples to young families, to back again, and then back again. Francis died in 2002.

Her living room hasn’t changed in decades: a sleek blond coffee table with tapered legs, a conglomeration of low-backed chairs, waiting for Don and Megan Draper to sink into them after hosting a party.

Without her having to touch anything, it’s become cool again — the living room, the neighborhood, the whole aesthetic.

On a recent weekday evening, the Georgetown location of the high-end furniture store Design Within Reach overflows with Charles Goodman acolytes who have come to listen to a panel discuss the philosophy of the architect. It’s hosted by Michael Shapiro, a local real estate agent who specializes in mid-century modern houses. Some of the attendees are long-term residents of Hollin Hills or another of Eastman’s constructions. Some of them are young couples trying to go back in time.

Not for everyone

It’s a sunny afternoon, a Saturday.

The Starbucks corner of the renovated Safeway is crowded, and the rest of the store is empty. The Z Burger across from the Waterfront Metro opened a few months ago, finally, with 70 different kinds of milkshakes and tables outside with red umbrellas. Down the street, right on the water, a mammoth project called the Wharf is afoot. It’s supposed to include walkable piers, cafes, a hotel, mixed-use development, a cozy artisanal feel in the middle of the city.

A few blocks away, under a barrel roof, Mike Wolf watches a hockey game on television while his wife, Sarah, plays with their dog and they explain how they came to live in this house.

They’d been interested in this neighborhood for awhile, wanting to live near the water, knowing the prices were good.

“We waited,” Sarah says. “Waited and waited. We had our heart set on the barrel.”

This is the present of the barrel roofs: Mike and Sarah Wolf — he, 30, a government wonk; she, 29, an interior designer. Their barrel-roof house has dark wood floors and fluffy white carpets, glass tabletops and strategic furniture layouts that make the space seem larger than it is. On the lowest level, there’s a guest suite with crisp linens; upstairs there’s the master bedroom and bright, airy barrel-roof ceiling.

They love it. They know it’s not for everyone.

“We did meet that one guy —” Sarah starts.

“He went crazy for it.”

“Well. He was German.”

The Wolfs are one of several young couples who live here now, who moved in with visions of an American dream that didn’t include picket fences but clean lines and old modern.

To live under a barrel roof in Southwest is to live in a building of some historical import. Some, not a lot — not compared with the White House or the other residences one could inhabit in Washington.

It is also to live in a time between times, bridging now and then. To sleep under an extraterrestrial cylinder of aluminum, waiting for what comes next, wondering if it’s already happened.