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DC Classical: The Cairo

Documenting the beautiful classical architecture of DC.

The one that sparked the DC Height Limit. I love the sculptural details, like the gargoyles and intricate relief at the entrance. From Wikipedia:

The Cairo apartment building, located at 1615 Q Street NW in Washington, D.C., is a landmark in the Dupont Circle neighborhood and the District’s tallest residential building.

The 164-feet-tall brick building was designed by architect Thomas Franklin Schneider and completed in 1894 as the city’s first “residential skyscraper”. Today, the Cairo is a condominium building, home to renters and owners.

The Egyptian theme of the building is stamped across its Moorish and Romanesque Revival features. Gargoyles perch high above the front entrance; some are winged griffins staring down from cornices, and others are more lighthearted. 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. On the fourth floor are both dragon and dwarf crosses. The stone facade is carved with an inlaid design that hints at more exotic Middle Eastern origins. The opposing design elements produce a harmony described as follows in the AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C.: “for all its quirks, the awkward tower reigns as one of Washington’s guilty pleasures.”

At 12 floors, the Cairo towers above nearby buildings. At its opening in 1894, the building’s height caused a tremendous uproar among local residents, who dubbed it “Schneider’s Folly” and lobbied Congress to limit the height of residential buildings in the District of Columbia to prevent more “skyscrapers” from being built. The resulting 1899 Heights of Buildings Act has kept the city’s skyline unusually low for an American city.