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Smart Design
Smart Design

is Elementary
is Elementary

A New Building Skillfully Knits Together

a DC Public School

by Ronald O’Rourke

At Hyde-Addison Elementary School, located in learning and support spaces were needed to create
Georgetown a block west of Wisconsin Avenue, a well-equipped 21st-century school with a desired
between O and P streets, NW, Shinberg.Levinas capacity for 400 pre-K through 5th grade students.
Architects has designed a new building that skillfully The new building adds 30,000 square feet of space,
integrates the school’s awkwardly separated pair of providing room for a gymnasium with a basketball
historic buildings into a modern, three-structure campus. court, a music room, a health suite, a library, a cafeteria,
The project is a case study in site analysis, building offices, and four additional classrooms. But the new
placement and massing, and the thoughtful use of structure doesn’t look as large as that description
materials to control sightlines and interior light levels. suggests, because Shinberg.Levinas put the building’s
The school’s two existing buildings, with a gymnasium, with its high ceiling, below grade. As a
combined total of 70,000 square feet of space, are result, the new building visually is large enough to
among the oldest in the DC Public Schools (DCPS) hold its own in relation to the two older buildings, but
system—the Addison building, located on the site’s not so large as to overwhelm them.
north end, fronting P Street, was built in 1885, while The idea, said firm principal Salo Levinas, “was
the Hyde building, situated to the south and east on the not to compete. The solution was to have a third box
L-shaped site, was built in 1907. The two buildings had [so as] to have a dialogue with the other two without
undergone renovations in earlier years, but additional overpowering their proportions.”

30 SMART DESIGN IS ELEMENTARY