Cairo Apartment Building

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Cairo Apartment Building
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Location:	Washington, D. C.
Built/Founded:	1894
Architect:	Thomas Franklin Schneider[1]
Architectural style(s):	Moorish and Romanesque Revival
Added to NRHP:	September 9, 1994
NRHP Reference#:	94001033[1]

The Cairo apartments, at 1615 Q St. NW in Washington, D.C. is a landmark in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. This brick building was designed by architect Thomas Franklin Schneider and constructed as the city's first "residential skyscraper". It stands 164 feet tall, and remains the tallest residential (non-monument, non-government) building in the District. Adorned with gargoyles and stone carvings, it received a mixed response from locals in 1894 when it was completed. Today, The Cairo is a condo building, hosting diverse tenants, both renters and owners.

The architecture of the building presents some surprises. The Egyptian theme of the building is stamped across its Moorish and Romanesque Revival features. Gargoyles perch high above the visitor who looks up from the front entrance. Some of these gargoyles are winged griffons staring down from cornices, but some are much more light-hearted and unique. Along the first floor are elephant heads, which look left and right from the stone window sills of the front windows and interlock trunks at the corners of the entrance arch. Three floors above on the fourth floor are both dragon and dwarf crosses. The stone facade is also carved with an inlaid design that strongly hints at more exotic middle-eastern origins. The overall effect is imposing and whimsical at once.

Contents 1 History 2 Present 3 Recent News and Events 4 External links 5 References

[edit] History

At a height of 12 floors, it towers above every other building nearby. At its opening in 1894, the height of The Cairo caused a tremendous uproar among local residents. Residents nicknamed it "Schneider's Folly", and lobbied Congress, who passed the "Heights of Buildings Act" in 1899. This act limited the height of all residential buildings in the District of Columbia to prevent more "skyscrapers" from being built. The result is that the skyline of Washington, DC is unique for its low level, following the roll of the hills but never rising to the pinnacles familiar in almost every other American city. The Cairo apartment building was the root cause for this unique result.

Built in 1894, it became the Cairo Hotel around the year 1900, and went through a glamorous period where it was the center of DC social culture. The ballroom was frequently the center of social gatherings and political meetings of the political and societal power-players of the period. On March 15, 1897, the deposed queen of Hawaii, "Queen Liliuokalani", spent some time in The Cairo ^[2] while she lobbied President Cleveland for compensation for the US invasion and takeover of Hawaii in January 1893. The Cairo saw a colorful range of extravagant tenants, many of whom lived permanently at the Cairo. In the Sunday December 2, 1923 Washington Post, an advertisement for the Cairo Hotel reads: "The CAIRO HOTEL. Absolutely Fireproof. A hotel which has demonstrated its value in years of service to a discriminating clientele. Retains with bath, per day Rooms with detached bath, per day Two-room suites, per day Three-room suites, per day & parties visiting the National Capitol and families desiring to make Washington their temporary or permanent home, the Cairo Hotel offers exceptional advantages of location and environment, construction and arrangement, equipment and management. - James T. Howard, Manager" ^[3] In June of 1940, one newspaper headline reported "Two Bandits Rob Cairo Hotel, Escape in Chase", ^[4] attesting to the importance of the Cairo Hotel to DC residents, both nefarious and illustrious.

Over the years, the Cairo Hotel was home for many grand figures including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Edison. The high society of Washington would often hold meetings at the Cairo Hotel, like the Woman's National Democratic League in 1913 ^[5] with a Congressman from New Mexico. One notable event on the night of November 30, 1940 featured five hundred canaries singing beneath the chandeliers in the grand ballroom ^[6]. The building also featured a bowling alley and a coffee shop.

In 1954, the Cairo Hotel hosted Sunday mambo dance parties, played by Buddy Rowell and promoted by Maurice Gervitsch, known as "Groggy". ^[7] These mambo dance parties featured a 12-piece band and had mostly white and Jewish attendance, being the segregated American 1950's. These glamorous and sensational days lasted into the late 1950s.

The building was sold in 1957 as a 267-room hotel, and the new owners announced plans on October 12, 1957 to spend $100,000 refurbishing the structure. ^[8] In 1958, a fire caused by an electrical short-circuit on the sixth floor led to $25,000 worth of damage, but no structural problems. ^[9]

The Cairo began to decline into a derelict period during the 1960s. It was inhabited by squatters, prostitutes, drug addicts, student protestors, criminals and even feral dogs. In June of 1964, the FBI tracked a 24 year old escaped convict to the Cairo Hotel, illustrating the degree of dereliction the building suffered. ^[10]

The Cairo fell into such disrepair that in 1966, the DC Dept of Health considered leasing the run-down building, for use as an alcoholics rehabilitation center. This plan did not move forward, however. ^[11] After a series of failed attempts at renovation, including a closure on August 7, 1972, the building was finally restored in 1974 under the leadership of Arthur Cotton Moore, a widely respected architect. It was converted into individual condominiums in 1979.

At the building's centennial celebration in October 1994, Ross Elementary school students sang Happy Birthday to the building, in thanks for a $1,000 donation made by the Cairo Condominium Unit Owners Association. Ward 2 Council member Jack Evans read a proclamation declaring it Cairo Day in DC. Of the building, he said, "It is a real monument in the area." ^[12]

[edit] Present

The building is mostly square, enclosing a Zen stone garden courtyard. The stone front steps lead up through a glass foyer into a marble-floored lobby with Egyptian styled columns and a comfortable lounge. Photographs of the original construction of the "Cairo Hotel" and other turn of the century photographs adorn the eastern wall next to an expansive mirror in the lobby. Two square columns of red-orange marble anchor the space in front of two elevators. These elevators serve the tenants of the 12 floors above. Between the elevators is a stairway that leads down through double glass doors into the central courtyard.

The corridors of The Cairo wrap around the interior of the building, following its basic shape. At the two interior southern corners are wide staircases of marble and wrought iron that span the height of the building. Some sections of hallways are marble-floored, and each apartment's outside door handle is a marble orb. Apartments have exposed red brick walls inside, and range in size from small studios to multi-level 2-3 bedroom units.

Today, The Cairo is in the center of the Dupont Circle neighborhood and its rooftop deck provides one of the most expansive views of the District's NW skyline with views of the Washington National Cathedral, Georgetown, the Washington Monument, the Capitol, The Catholic University of America and many other landmark sights.

Most residents of this neighborhood and building do not own cars, and instead walk or take public transit, like WMATA Metro subway or buses to work. In fact, the 2000 census indicated that 37% of DC households don't own a car ^[13]. Just two blocks west of The Cairo is the Dupont Circle metro station. The immediate vicinity of The Cairo includes the strip of restaurants, bars and shops along 17th St. In temperate weather, these restaurants (Trios, Foodbar, La Frontera Cantina, Fox & Hounds, Jack's, Floriana, Hank's Oyster Bar, Dupont Italian Kitchen, etc.) entirely fill their outdoor seating areas. This section is often referred to as "The Catwalk" or "The Runway" within the local gay community because many of the people who stroll up or down 17th Street are quite fashion conscious.

[edit] Recent News and Events

On September 2, 2007, the Board of Directors of the Cairo Condominium voted to approve a $2.1 million brick repointing project. Atlantic Company, a construction and restoration engineering firm will conduct this brick repair work from November 2007 through March/April 2009. Atlantic Company will replace deteriorated, defective and mismatched brick masonry, remove and repoint all mortar joints of all exterior walls, install control joints in certain locations to address wall expansion movement, patch and repair exterior stonework, etc. The owners of the individual Cairo condominiums were each assessed a special fee proportional to the size of their units, to pay for this construction. This fee ranged from $7,980 to over $25,000 per owner. It is not a public building, so the costs were entirely privately financed. Work began on the brick restoration and repair in January 2008 on the west side of the structure.

At approximately 11:15pm on Monday, May 29th, 2007, for the first time in recent memory, a fire emptied the Cairo's approximately 400 residents. At least nine emergency vehicles responded to the blaze. The cause of the fire originated in one of the central units of the 10th floor, and tenants smelled acrid smoke in the west stairwell. The unit was damaged heavily, and water damage, mostly minor, occurred in some adjacent units. Because each unit is isolated from the others with firewalls, the fire was entirely contained to a single unit.

[edit] External links

• Metro Weekly feature article, High Times: A Brief History of 17th Street's Tallest Resident
• Washington Post: D.C.'s Fear of Heights
• Cultural Tourism DC: facts about The Cairo
• Google Maps satellite view of The Cairo
• Thomas F. Schneider, architect of The Cairo, biographical notes
• The Cairo: Tower of Style and Elegance, Washington Post review, 1996
• Testing the Upper Limits of D.C. Building Height Act, Washington Post, an architect's view
• Turning Points: Moments in DC's History, Washingtonian Magazine, "No Tall Buildings" section

[edit] References