Kalorama Triangle

Quick Answer

Kalorama Triangle is the wedge of Northwest DC between Connecticut Avenue and Columbia Road, with Calvert Street at its north edge. DC lists about 175 row houses here, nearly all built between 1901 and 1939, on the interior streets behind large apartment buildings on the two avenues. The whole neighborhood has been a historic district since 1987, so exterior changes go through historic review.

How We Calculate $/sqft

$/sqft is calculated on above-grade finished square footage, the standard used by DC appraisers, MLS systems, and most market participants. Properties with finished below-grade space (English basements, rental units) carry that square footage as additive value, but appraisers typically apply a discount of 50 to 75 cents on the dollar relative to above-grade space. Blending the two into a single $/sqft figure would make a home with a finished basement look cheaper than it is and obscure the real comparison. When a property has significant finished below-grade square footage, both metrics are presented in context so you understand the full picture before the appraiser does.

Sales are few. The median sale is $1.6M on 7 sales in the last 12 months, and the median time on market is 69 days. On a sample this small, one sale moves either figure. The typical single-family row house here has about 3,400 square feet in total, and two in three have more than 3,000.

Kalorama Heights sits across Connecticut Avenue to the west, where the median sale is $2.6M.

Supply is small by structure. About 95 single-family row houses and about 80 converted ones make up the whole row house stock; the rest of the housing is apartments and co-ops. In the last two years about fifteen single-family row houses sold.

Kalorama Triangle row houses are big, and almost none of them come up for sale.

DC lists about 175 row houses in Kalorama Triangle. About 95 are single-family houses, and the figures here are for them; the other 80 are recorded as converted to two units. About one in eight carries a year built of 1900 or earlier, and more than half are recorded in the 1910s. The typical house has about 3,400 square feet in total, and two in three have more than 3,000. About four in five have a finished basement. About half rise three stories or more.

In the last two years, about fifteen single-family row houses sold here. A three-story house with a finished basement and a two-story house without one are different comps. A shelf that short may hold one of each.

Here is what I do with that. I start with the Kalorama Triangle sales that match on stories, the basement and the bedroom count. When there are too few, I widen to houses of the same size nearby. I show the seller each sale I used and why. I ask the seller in writing when the basement was finished and whether the house was ever used as two units.

When the record is thin, every comp has to earn its place.

From the Record

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  The Kalorama estate was sold and subdivided in the 1880s. Building picked up after 1898, helped by streetcar lines on Connecticut Avenue and Columbia Road, and more than 100 row houses went up between 1902 and 1905.

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  The late 19th-century houses lean Romanesque Revival; the early 20th-century row houses are mostly Georgian Revival, with some Craftsman. Twenty-five apartment buildings went up between 1901 and 1927, most on Connecticut Avenue and Columbia Road, where the streetcars ran.

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  The Calvert Street Bridge, renamed the Duke Ellington Bridge, replaced an older crossing in the 1930s. It carries Calvert Street over Rock Creek Park to Woodley Park.

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  Some row houses were torn down and replaced in the late 20th century. To stop further demolition, DC listed the whole neighborhood as the Kalorama Triangle Historic District in April 1987, and the National Register followed in May 1987.