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Close-up of the rooftop function space, with sliding doors open to the terrace.

incomes below the poverty line (more than a 600% increase), The building was constructed as apartments in 1910,
plus an impressive collegiate building boom. when the neighborhoods west of the White House were almost
Most of that building boom is in the Phoenix area, but one exclusively residential; it was converted to office use in 1960,
far-flung outpost is the 32,000-square-foot Ambassador Barbara when substantial tracts of rowhouses and apartment buildings
Barrett and Justice Sandra O’Connor Washington Center in in the area were being demolished for new office blocks. The
downtown DC, just a few blocks from the White House. The mid-century expansion of DC’s office core north and west of the
center’s name honors the former diplomat and the former White House predates the city’s historic preservation statute
Supreme Court justice, respectively, both of whom stood out (passed in 1972), and the results of the boom left remarkably few
from the Washington federal crowd in part because they never pre-war buildings in the area now called the “Golden Triangle.”
let their identities as Arizonans fade. The center houses a half- One survivor, however, was the apartment building at the
dozen programs that were already in DC but in scattered, leased southwest corner of 18th & I streets, NW, which had no parking
spaces, none of which had exterior signage bigger than a plaque. and whose floor plates were too small for most market-rate
The center unifies and magnifies ASU’s Washington presence, tenants, but a location only five minutes’ walk from the White
with the entire building serving as a sign that the university is a House. According to the Arizona media source AZCentral.com,
force here in the capital. when planning for the Washington Center was under way,
44 AZ IN DC