by G. Martin Moeller, Jr. Assoc. AIA
Architecture DC Magazine (Summer 2016)

The history of the building that is now the House of Lebanon Senior Apartments, in DC’s Shaw neighborhood, reflects the booming development, subsequent decline, and recent resurgence of American cities over the past century of so. Completed in 1912, the earliest part of the building was originally the O Street Vocational School, established to provide “manual training for boys and domestic science and art for girls.” It was designed by Snowden Ashford, municipal architect for the District of Columbia, in a subdued but elegant scholastic style. Its red brick facades are punctuated by large windows with stone trim, and accented by a gently arched entry, diamond-shaped inlays just below the parapet, and simple horizontal bands that girdle the building, all in matching stone. It is exemplary of the fine civic architecture that Washington and other major cities built in the early 1900s.

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