What was the Washington Building?

In the 1970s, I worked in the Washington Building at 15th and New York NW. Not until years later did I notice its frieze more carefully. It depicts various graphics that have me curious about the building’s original purpose and tenants. Was it ever a federal building or that of a national trade association? When recently in the area, I was surprised at how difficult it is to even find an open-to-the-public entrance.

There are many Washington buildings, but there is only one Washington Building. It opened in 1927 at a place its owners liked to call “The World Corner.” Fifteenth Street and New York Avenue NW, they claimed in a large display ad in The Washington Post, was an intersection of global importance.

“Indeed,” the ad trumpeted, “a great national weekly magazine states that more prominent people pass this corner than any other in the world. Its strategic location is as permanent as the Treasury, as vital as the White House.”

The building was designed by the Boston firm of Coolidge Shepley Bulfinch and Abbott. The design is “stylized Classical Revival,” with large, three-story arches and fluted piers. It is ringed by what Answer Man considers a rather subtle frieze, given the expanse of limestone it decorates.

The frieze is made up of a repeating series of individual circular bas-reliefs. Some are easily recognizable. There is a telephone, the kind with a separate mouthpiece (old-fashioned now but cutting-edge then). There is a sheaf of wheat. There is the head of a bull and a piece of lab equipment known as a retort. Other details include an hourglass, a lever, a torch atop an open book, and what appears to be an urn or possibly a pharmacist’s vessel.

Answer Man is pretty sure these had no connection to specific Washington Building tenants. Rather, they are generic industry/business/agriculture symbols representative of the sort of tenants that the building’s owners, Washington Central Trust, wanted to have.

Actual tenants included the Washington Stock Exchange and smaller brokerages (the building is in the city’s 15th Street Financial Historic District). Other tenants were Travelers Insurance, Gestetner Duplicator, Shell Eastern Petroleum Products and International Mercantile Marine, which sold steamship tickets from its frontage on G Street. The Studebaker Corp. had four rooms on the fourth floor, and the Chicago Daily News had offices on the fifth.

There was a Peoples Drug store, too, “so magnificently equipped that we take pardonable pride in announcing its opening,” the drug store noted in an ad.

On Dec. 31, 1927, the Restaurant Madrillon opened with four separate theme areas: the Spanish Village, the Mayan Room, the Moorish Room and the Caliph’s Room. The New Year’s Eve attractions included Johnny O’Donnell’s Madrillon Band, S tafford Pemberton’s dancers and master of ceremonies Orville Rennie. The Moorish Room boasted silk-draped bazaars and cross-legged rug sellers, not to mention veiled maidens in “softly flowing pantalooned transparencies.”

Sure beats a Potbelly Sandwich Shop.

According to The Post, the most “radical” office was that of the Postal Telegraph Cable. “In the place of the customary counter,” the paper noted, “there are beautifully designed desks at which customers can sit in large upholstered chairs while transacting business with the telegraph clerk.”

While most telegraph offices were crisscrossed with unsightly exposed pneumatic tubes, the tubes at the Washington Building were inlaid in the desk pedestals. The room was paneled in unstained white maple and birch, while the floor was made of rubber tile and marble inlaid with the large image of a gladiator holding a sword in one hand and the Postal Telegraph shield in the other.

Unfortunately, it was hard filling the 10-story building. The Post reported in December 1928 that many floors were still empty and unfinished. The owners were increasingly in debt, and the building was eventually put up for sale.

Currently, the lobby is under renovation and tenants enter from a door on 14th Street. Nearly the entire Washington Building is rented by Skadden, Arps, the ginormous law firm. Answer Man isn’t sure what design would best symbolize a lawyer.