It’s been almost a hundred years since Washington, D.C.’s alleyways were thriving residential areas, but an overhaul of zoning regulations in 2016 has led to a revitalization of these predominantly brick buildings once used as worker housing, stables, and garages. Their use as dwellings grew considerably after the Civil War, most of them occupied by unskilled African Americans. Isolated from the main thoroughfares, these intimate, brick-paved alleys developed into close-knit communities. The residents functioned as extended family, relying on each other for help. While many ramshackle alley buildings were torn down during the FDR administration, a few alleyways remain as designated historic districts, many of them on Capitol Hill.
It wasn’t far from there, in Northwest D.C.’s redeveloping Shaw neighborhood, that architect Janet Bloomberg’s clients found their home. A young married couple, they had begun looking for alley housing before the zoning changes, and supply was tight. What’s more, purchase of the one-story garage dragged on for more than a year until legal issues over the property line were resolved. But this was only the first of many challenges. Built in the 1800s, it occupies 100 percent of the lot—a condition complicated by the fact that the owners are car hobbyists and wanted a garage.
It was clear that they would need to add a second story, although a 12-foot front setback was required. And with a garage on the alley, how would they get light into the first-floor living area behind it?
“The historic preservation review board wanted the design to understand old and new and preserve the view of a one-story building,” says Janet, AIA, principal of KUBE Architecture. “I personally think the setback looks like a missing piece; the façade would have looked so much better coming all the way to the front.”
Making the most of the restrictions, the new house has two façades, though diagrammatically there are three. The garage façade sits at the alley edge and contains both a frosted glass overhead door for the cars and a front door where people enter. Both doors open to the same space, though. This allows visitors to view the cars on display as they pass through the garage to the house, whose fire-rated glass storefront façade and bright red vestibule look into the garage.
Egress requirements prohibited bedrooms on the first floor, and the clients’ first thought was to put the entire house on the second floor. However, “as we looked at it, they got excited about this idea of bringing the house and garage together and making the garage a showroom by putting glass between them,” Janet says. “With every client, we find that thing they’re passionate about, and for this couple it’s cars. We kept this mundane or accessory thing you usually hide and made it a showpiece.” When the garage doors are open, the couple can see all the way to the alley.
Inside the house, a glass and steel staircase leads to a sky-lit loft containing a master suite, second bedroom and bath, office, laundry room, and open-to-below library. The second floor’s front façade is clad in Corten steel, while at the back, a folding curtain wall opens to a sunny patio.
Garage Bandwidth
While both clients love cars, the husband spends much of his free time working on them, and there were more hurdles to clear to bring the old garage up to modern standards. The new incarnation, which can fit up to four cars, is closer to a work studio outfitted with a radiant-heated concrete floor, computer station, and, in addition to a basement stair, a good-sized hatch with a ladder and pulley for hauling car parts between the basement and garage.
Indeed, like many urban homeowners these days who burrow down to find more space, a major construction component was excavating for a basement about 15 feet wide and deep and 60 feet long. “We came in about 6 feet on each side so we didn’t have to do any underpinning or sheeting and shoring of neighboring buildings, but it was a pretty big hole to create inside a space that had three walls and a roof,” says Mark Smith, project manager at the construction company ThinkMakeBuild. Digging out was only the half of it. “It was a challenge to get all that dirt out of there, one truckload at a time,” he says. “To respect the neighbors, we’d have dump trucks waiting around the corner to load up. This went on for well over a week.”
Construction sequencing went something like this: The garage roof was left on while the basement was dug. Concrete was poured for the basement slab and walls, structural steel was set for the first-floor metal pan deck, and then concrete was poured for the garage and living area.
“When pouring the concrete, it was the same as for the excavation,” Mark says. “We’d have one truck as a pump truck around the corner so as not to block the alley; other trucks would back up to it and then pour that load.” Once the concrete flooring was set, the roof was peeled off, leaving the existing steel I-beams intact, and the framing columns were joined to them. (The steel roof beams were installed in 1919 when it became a commercial car garage.)
Raw and Refined
From these hard-core conditions emerged an interior that is architecturally innovative and funnels sunlight straight down into the center of the building. Given its provenance, it might have seemed natural to reach for a machine-like aesthetic in the living spaces. However, the clients were somewhat weary of industrial fittings and preferred something sleeker. Together, Janet and the couple came up with what she calls “tamed industrial.” For example, while the building’s steel structure is exposed top to bottom, walls in the open kitchen, living, and dining area are drywall and painted brick. The switchback staircase, made of perforated metal, almost disappears when you get close to it, Janet says. The railing is glass and solid steel, which was blackened to make it look cleaner.
In the kitchen, high-end appliances and cobalt blue Italian laminate cabinetry counterpoint the raw, poured-in-place concrete island and countertops. A full-height, flush door in the cabinetry opens unexpectedly to a walk-in pantry, and on either side of the kitchen, pocket doors hide a mechanical room and a powder room. Exposed and enclosed elements also meet on the ceiling, which conceals tubes for a high-velocity forced-air cooling system, thus eliminating the need for ducts and bulkheads.
Upstairs, the flooring is wood, “where you sleep and where you want that warmer feeling on your feet,” Janet says. “The master suite at the front of the second floor feels like a nice, standard bedroom. In every space, we played with that opposition.”
The design team lavished the second-floor façade with full-height windows that look out across the alley. Furniture and fittings are refined: body sprays in the sky-lit bath, a Porcelanosa wood laminate vanity, and a Ligne Roset Lumeo wardrobe in the bedroom.
D.C.’s notoriously high housing prices reflect the tight housing market and the collective wealth of its residents. The median home price is slightly higher than in New York City, and real estate values appreciated more than 200 percent between 2000 and 2018. That reality tempted the owners to leverage their investment by wedging in a third bedroom upstairs.
“They evaluated the idea of closing the loft and making a bedroom suite on the opposite end from the master,” Janet says. “I understood real-estate-wise why they wanted to do it. But architecturally it didn’t make sense. I showed them how it would look, and they realized it wasn’t working.” However, wiring was run to make it buildout ready.
The couple’s German shepherd, Mika, seems especially pleased with that decision. A folding door system leads out to the rear patio where he likes to hang out. The loft also offers the sense of prospect and refuge that both humans and canines find satisfying. Thanks to the interior’s overlapping sectional relationships, from his perch Mika can keep watch over the entire house.
Light, space, and views combine to make the small loft feel bigger than it is. The rear patio’s ceramic tile flooring and exposed brick walls read as an extension of the house. And the glass wall and large skylight sweep light into the library, with its pop of red Montel Aetnastak cantilevered bookshelves that the owners brought from their previous house.
Structural Gymnastics
Polished yet pragmatic, the garage transformation was a powerful effort that manages to look effortless. One party wall had footings strong enough to support a second story, but the other wall did not. On the weaker side, new steel columns run from roof to basement and were threaded into the old roof beams.
Complicating construction, those one-story beams had been stepped down to accommodate the original roof, which sloped slightly toward the alley. To level the second floor, the architects inserted a system of wood and steel plates in varying heights. New columns atop the beams meet the roof span, which slopes in the opposite direction. “It was like surgery,” Janet says. “Normally we would have ripped out the roof beams, but we felt they were important to keep for the history of the building. They kept everything straight and would have been tricky to pull out.”
Stormwater management was another dragon to slay on this landlocked site. The new roof slopes to the back, where an oversized gutter on the patio funnels water into 6-inch pipes on each side of the building. From there, the water is gravity-fed to a single stack that goes through the basement and out into the alley’s existing stormwater drain. “By code, we could have gotten away with a 4-inch pipe, but we wanted to guarantee that the system could absorb all the rain from a hundred-year flood, which happens more often these days,” Mark says.
AutoHaus’ success was a lesson in patience and perseverance, something urban architects know all too well. Three years passed between the start of design and its completion, and the approvals process took a full year. But even with the second-floor setback concession, the house conveys a strong street presence. “The windows are much larger than the windows in other buildings, but they’re in scale with our building,” Janet says. “The review board allowed us to do that as a new piece.” The need to patch the brick alley façade led to the decision to paint it dark gray, punctuated by the red entry door.
The design is a case study in how to gently densify a city that is hurting for housing. Not only does it cleverly preserve the original use of the building as a garage, it updates a streetscape once used primarily for parking and trash trucks. Perhaps projects like this will also help bring urban living full circle by once again fostering vibrant, pedestrian-friendly communities close to where people work.
Plans and Drawings
Project Credits
AutoHaus
Washington, D.C.
Architect: Janet Bloomberg, AIA, principal and lead designer, KUBE Architecture; Matt Dougherty, architectural designer
Builder: Darren Kornas, founder; Mark Smith, project manager, ThinkMakeBuild, Washington, D.C.
Project size: 2,500 square feet
Site size: 0.041 acres (1,800 square feet)
Construction cost: Withheld
Photography: Anice Hoachlander
Key Products
Cooktop: BlueStar
Decking: Porcelanosa
Dishwasher: Miele
Door hardware: Omnia, Doug Mockett & Company, Sugatsune
Entry door: Loewen
Exterior cladding: HardiePanel
Faucets: Hansgrohe, VOLA, JACLO
Lighting: Koncept Gravy, Tech SoCo, George Kovacs, Eurofase
Master bath vanity: Porcelanosa
Ovens: Gaggenau
Paints: Benjamin Moore
Refrigerator: Sub-Zero
Skylights: VELUX
Sinks: Ruvati
Toilets: TOTO
Tubs: Duravit Starck
Ventilation, bathroom: Aero Pure
Windows: Windsor Windows & Doors
Window wall system: NanaWall