A house that makes a point
New Urban News Article with images and sidebar, 1/1/2009
In the nation’s capital, Jeff Speck’s new home reconciles Modern architecture and L’Enfant’s street pattern.
The most urbanistically interesting new house in Washington, DC, belongs to Jeff Speck, design director of the National Endowment for the Arts from 2003 to 2007 and, before that, director of town planning at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.
Four and a half years ago, Speck decided to find and purchase one of the many lots in the District that, because of their odd shapes, had remained undeveloped throughout two centuries of Washington development.
Pierre Charles L’Enfant, in laying out the capital in 1791, gave the city a network of broad avenues and narrower side streets, punctuated by grand intersections. Because L’Enfant ran diagonal avenues across a rectangular street grid, the cityscape ended up with many small, angular plots of land at those junctures — plots that have been difficult to put to productive use.
