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Project: Kalorama Residence Renovation,
Washington, DC
Architect: Christian Zapatka Architect
Landscape Architect: Page | Duke Landscape Architects
Structural Engineer: Keast & Hood Structural Engineers
Kitchen Designer: Emily Bourgeois
General Contractor: Goode Properties, Inc.

Let it
Let it

Glow
Glow

Renovation Highlights

Demure Stone House’s

Glamorous Alter Ego

by G. Martin Moeller, Jr., Assoc. AIA

In a neighborhood full of urbane, quietly grand mansions
typically clad in red brick or smooth stone, one Kalorama
house stands out for its relatively modest scale and its irregular
masonry façades, composed of blocks of rough stone in a variety
of sizes, shapes, and colors. Set back from the street farther
than most of its neighbors, it could be mistaken for an old
farmhouse that endured as surrounding land was subdivided
and developed. In fact, the house was built in the 1920s, around
the same time as many of those nearby. It was designed by local
architect J. Edgar Sohl for a client named Mary Lawrence and
subsequently was owned by a succession of prominent people
ranging from Mary Emlen Knight Davies, a Democratic political
activist whose ex-husband later married cereal heir Marjorie
Merriweather Post, to Max Weinberg, drummer for Bruce
Springsteen’s E Street Band, who rented it out without ever
living there.
At some point, a renovation transformed much of the
house’s interior. Most notably, the original main staircase, on
axis with the front door, was removed in favor of a semicircular
stair off to one side of the central hall, a shift that opened
Main hall, with the staircase now more visible and new doors to the rear yard.
50 LET IT GLOW