National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

NPS Form 10-900-a 0MB Approval No. 10244018
(free)
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 8 Page 34
The more impressive large scale apartment buildings with extensive
landscaping were designed from 1927 onwards.
Tilden Gardens, designed by architects Parks and Baxter and Harry L.
Edwards for Monroe and R. Bates Warren between 1927 and 1930, introduced the
newly fashionable suburban apartment house to Cleveland Park. According to
historian James Goode, "Tilden Gardens, the most innovative apartment house
built in Washington during the 1920's, consists of 6 buildings located on a
five acre triangular block of upper Connecticut Avenue just north of Porter
Street. Not only was this complex of 200 units important for its unique
landscaping plan but also because it remained the city's largest luxury
apartment house built as a co-op until the Watergate was constructed in the
1960's." ''(Goode op. cit.) The Warren brothers had become interested in the
development of co-op apartments and had been successful in their previous
ventures such as the Cleveland Park. They embarked upon the much larger scale
Tilden Gardens in 1927.
Monroe Warren organized the Home Builders Association in Washington in
1926 and throughout the 1920's he promoted co-op apartments locally and
nationally. In the 1930*s he turned his attention to low cost housing and he
became one of Washington's most significant contributors in this area.
R. Bates Warren, his younger brother, was also active in the Co-op
movement in the 1920's. In 1925 he helped found the Cooperative Apartment
House Division of the National Real Estate Board whose headquarters were in
Chicago. He became chairman of this new group and organized tours to visit
the most distinguished new co-op apartment houses throughout the country.
These visits enabled builders of co-ops to share information and work out
solutions to common problems which they had encountered.
The tour of co-op apartment houses held in December of 1925 was most
influential in affecting the ultimate design of Tilden Gardens. The
apartments visited were of "the newly fashionable suburban style, including
extensive landscaping, basement garages and other innovative
features."*(Goode, op. cit.) The next year the Warrens took their architects
Parks and Baxter with them to Philadelphia and Westchester County, New York to
study floor and site plans. The Alden Park in Philadelphia designed by Edwin
Rorke in 1920 was the source for the cross-shaped plan, and much of the facade
treatment was derived from the Blind Brook Lodge Apartment House in Rye,and
the Fleetwood Country Club Apartment House in Fleetwood, N.Y. "When completed
in 1930, the design of Tilden Gardens actually surpassed its three prototyes
in architectural excellence since Tilden Gardens' buildings were lower in
scale, its basement garages more cleverly concealed, and its landscaping more
elaborate. The steeply sloping site of Tilden Gardens was also a great
benefit in providing greater privacy, seclusion, and better vistas for the
various buildings." *(Goode, op. cit.)
As James Goode has said, "After fifty five years of
growth and proper care, its grounds have become the
most spectacular of any apartment house in the city."
*(Goode, op. cit.)