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Out of Many, One
Out of Many, One

655 New York Integrates 19 Historic

Buildings into a Block-Spanning Project

by Ronald O’Rourke

From the northeast corner of Washington’s Mount Vernon Square,
the view diagonally across the intersection—toward the block
bounded by New York Avenue and 6th, 7th, and L streets, NW—
appears to show a collection of individual historic commercial
buildings with a new office tower rising separately behind them.
But that impression is only half right, because the office tower
and most of the historic commercial buildings are actually parts
of a single integrated property called 655 New York Avenue.
Designed by Shalom Baranes Associates (SBA), the LEED Gold-
certified mixed-use project, with 678,000 square feet of office
space, 79,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space, and a
250,000-square-foot below-grade parking facility, occupies almost
the entire block—all but a small parcel at the corner of New York
and 7th. Designing and building such a large, complex project,
which sits across 7th Street from the front hall of the Washington
Convention Center, was a challenging undertaking.