In Naming Residences, Only the Hip Will Do

This being Washington, there are the salutes to officialdom, such as The Constitution on Constitution Avenue NE, and Senate Square, a development planned for H Street NE, just north of the Capitol. Other names were inspired by homegrown heroes: Langston Lofts, for poet Langston Hughes, and the Ellington on U Street, for the piano-playing Duke. And three buildings going up downtown pay homage to music -- The Rhapsody, The Sonata and Madrigal Lofts.

Even as they overhaul properties, developers sometimes keep old names. Across from Meridian Hill Park, residents recall the Fedora center, a home for troubled youngsters. In recent years, that building was razed, and crews are putting the finishing touches on a condominium complex there.

The name: The Fedora.

Allen Uzikee Nelson, 67, an artist who has lived on Belmont Street NW for 31 years, said he appreciates the transformation and can live with the name. He knows all about the impulse to christen, having tagged a rowhouse he owns up the street, Wanzer Place, for his great-great-grandfather, an escaped slave. "I wanted people to know who he was," he said.

On Park Road in Columbia Heights, near 11th Street, a developer has dubbed two long-vacant rowhouses he remodeled as "The Columbia Pristine" to celebrate the neighborhood's revitalization. But the name inspires arched eyebrows among longtime neighbors who are well aware of the area's crime-checkered past.

"It was a regular old house. It wasn't The Pristine, I'll tell you that," said Bryant Cruel, 33, chuckling behind the counter at Arthur's Grocery a block away, who grew up in the neighborhood. "It's funny to see how things change overnight."

Waxing utopic is typically the province of suburban developers, who have made it a practice to raze trees and pave over farmland to plant subdivisions with such names as Victory Lakes or Hopewell's Landing, Sleepy Hollow Estates or the Enclave at Arundel Preserve.

Generations ago, developers in the District were more apt to draw inspiration from afar, according to James M. Goode, author of "Best Addresses," a history of Washington's most architecturally important apartment buildings.

Portland Flats was the city's first apartment house, when it opened at Thomas Circle in 1880. The Dresden was built in 1910 on Connecticut Avenue, the same year that residents moved into The Northumberland on New Hampshire Avenue, named for a British county on the border of Scotland.

"The names were devised to denote status and dignity," Goode said and added that developers later looked closer to home for their muse. The Gwenwood, formerly on 19th Street NW, was named for its builder's wife, and The Marlyn, on Cathedral Avenue, was the fusing of a wife and daughter -- Marion and Carlyn.

The names that developers are divining these days are eye-catching, Goode acknowledged, but he wonders whether they "will be dated in 10 years. People will laugh. Classic means it stands the test of time."

In some cases, developers are seeking gravitas by tying buildings to their neighborhood's history. The DeSoto and The Hudson, new buildings on P Street, were named for classic cars to memorialize the auto repair shops that once lined the street. The Metro, a building a block over, was named for an old supermarket that was on the site.