New Jersey-based builder Somerset Development and DC-based non-profit affordable housing developer THCAH, through a unique collaboration among public, business, faith and nonprofit interests, will convert the ruined Fort View Apartments into affordable housing. The ground was broken for the renovation scheme on July 8, 2010.
The rehabilitated properties will provide a total of 114 new units of affordable rental housing, besides Webster Garden Apartments that had previously been renovated by THCAH and Somerset Development. Both these properties are placed on the National Register of Historic Places, with their historic character to be preserved as part of the substantial rehabilitation.
The project will incorporate community spaces and a computer lab to facilitate a program of supportive resident services. Project completion for both properties is expected in early 2011.
The Fort View residential complex was built in 1938-39 to the design of prolific Washington architect George Santmyers. Rising three stories above raised basements, each shallow E-shaped building is made of brick with three entrances featuring cast stone surrounds and canopies. It introduced a geometric approach to ornamenting a simple building following the Art Deco and Streamline Modern approaches becoming popular in the 1930s, rather than traditional Colonial Revival or neoclassical ornamentation of the previous decades.
