Tenants at Fabled Kennedy-Warren Stage a Rent Strike

The Old Lady of the Avenue has a bad case of heartburn.

A group of tenants at the Old Lady, a nickname for the venerable Kennedy-Warren apartment building in Northwest Washington, has gone on strike, refusing to pay a $233 monthly renovation surcharge that went into effect at the first of the year. It is the first large-scale rent strike of its kind in the city, officials said.

The tenants at the art deco building, next to the National Zoo on Connecticut Avenue, contend that its owner, Bethesda-based B.F. Saul Co., is gutting the building's character, gouging tenants for renovation costs and violating rent control laws.

"They've made it clear that the people who live here now are not welcome," said Peter Schwartz, vice president of the Kennedy-Warren Residents' Association.

Representatives of the company did not return calls seeking comment.

The dispute involves the future of one of Washington's most famous addresses, a building once home to Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, before they moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The property, named for original owners Edgar S. Kennedy and Monroe Warren Sr., opened in 1931 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The building has a historic wing and a tower that opened in 2004. The tenant association is fighting to keep some units in the old wing moderately priced; the tower is not subject to rent control, and rents there range from $2,500 to more than $8,000. Many of those units are rented as corporate apartments, tenants said.

"There's often a perception that Connecticut Avenue people have oodles of money," said Schwartz, 29, who works for the Federal Railroad Administration and lives in the historic wing. "But a lot of people who live here are mid-level workers or people on fixed incomes. Historically, the rents have been pretty moderate."

Only 105 of the original 372 units in the historic wing are occupied. Many residents accepted incentive deals from the landlord to move out before the renovations, and vacated apartments were not leased again.

Schwartz said that the building will still look Art Deco on the outside but that the apartments will lose features of their original character, including custom door knockers, forced-air vents over the doorways and milk shafts attached to kitchens where milkmen used to leave dairy products from the hallway.

"If you were in New York and you had an untouched prewar building, it would be a gold mine," he said, tapping a wall in the apartment of Zina Greene, president of the tenant association. "This is not drywall over metal studs. This is masonry, handcrafted plaster. You can't build this again."

B.F. Saul does not have to keep reconfigured vacant units under rent control.