National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 10244018
(846)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
CLEVELAND PARK HISTORIC DISTRICT
WASHINGTON D.C.
Section number 7 Page _Z__
After the departure of the Shermans in 1910, other developers moved in
and filled in the gaps in Cleveland Park and then spread to the south and west
into Cleveland Heights and Oak View (west of 33rd Place on Maotomb, Lowell and
Woodley to Wisconsin Ave.) These two subdivisions were largely completed by
1922. W.C. & A.N. Miller were very active in this area designing substantial
brick and frame homes in a variety of the revival styles, alternating between
classical and medieval in inspiration, popular in house design during the
second and third decades of this century. They built a variety of Colonial
Revival style houses, Tudor Revival houses as well as two romantic English
cottages with roofs made to simulate thatch. Charles Taylor was the other
developer who was most active at this time. His houses are usually variations
on the Foursquare house with diverse front porches, gables and dormers, and
they are generally less original and distinctive in appearance than the Miller
houses.
In 1919 H.A. Kite undertook the most massive development Cleveland Park
had yet witnessed when he took out building permits for 14 houses from 3101 to
3223 Macomb on the north side of the street between Ross Place and 33rd Place.
He essentially repeated three designs (2 variations of Developer's Georgian
and a Foursquare with Mission revival details).
In the teens and twenties development was also taking place on Porter,
Ordway, Quebec and Rodman Streets. In this area more brick houses were being
built and some semidetached and small apartment houses were constructed in the
1920's including the first garden apartments built in Washington D.C. The
predominant styles in this area are Colonial Revival, Tudor Revival and a
variety of Bungalows. The last area of development was Ordway Street between
30th and 34th Streets. These houses were built in the 1930', 40's and even
1950's.
In attempting to comply with the request of the D.C. landmark application
form for a "description of the style or styles of architecture representative
of the district" it became quickly apparent how difficult it is to fit the
exuberant and varied architecture of Cleveland Park into "stylistic boxes."
Richard Longstreth has dealt with this problem so directly in his recent
article: "Stylistic concepts were not devised to address the then-prevalent
(19th- and early 20th-centuries) practice of eclecticism which, in its use of
references to numerous historicg.1 precedents and its pursuit of varied
expressive modes, was quite unlike the perceived qualities of earlier
periods." *(Richard Longstreth, "The Problem with * Style 1 ," "The Forum": the
Bulletin of the Committee on Preservation of the Society of Architectural
Historians, December, 1985, Vol VI, Nos. 1-2) Longstreth goes on to point out
the ludicrous attempt to create more and more labels so that all buildings can
have their own "Style" label. In Cleveland Park there are many architect-
designed, one-of-a-kind houses which represent the creative abilities of the
designer and do not necessarily fall into a stylistic category. This is
especially true of the recent houses by I.M. Pei and Waldron Faulkner.
Cleveland Park has been called a visual textbook of the changing taste in
domestic architectural styles between the years 1890 and 1940. Bearing in
mind the inadequacy of stylistic labels, examples of the following styles can