Mount Vernon Square

Quick Answer

Mount Vernon Square sits around the Convention Center and the Carnegie Library, north of Chinatown. DC lists about 55 row houses here, nearly all east of 7th Street on 5th, 6th and M Streets. Apartment and condo buildings fill the blocks around them. The Mount Vernon Square Metro station at 7th and M Streets carries the Green and Yellow Lines.

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.

Mount Vernon Square has few row house sales: 6 in the last twelve months. The median of $927K rests on that small sample. Shaw, to the north, sells at $1.1M on a much deeper pool of sales.

New building here has been apartment and condo construction around the Convention Center. The row house blocks east of 7th Street are inside a historic district, where demolition goes through preservation review.

The row houses behind the Convention Center are big. Nearly half the single-family ones top 3,000 square feet.

DC lists about 55 row houses in Mount Vernon Square, nearly all on 5th, 6th and M Streets. About 37 are single-family houses, and the figures here are for them; the other 18 are recorded as converted to two units. About nine in ten are recorded as built in 1900 or earlier. The city enters 1900 when it does not have the true year, so many are older. The typical house has about 2,500 square feet in total on a lot of about 1,550. More than half rise three stories or more. Five in six have a basement. Seven in ten have four or more bedrooms.

Ten row houses sold here in the last two years, seven of them single-family. One finished lower level or one missing floor moves a sample that small more than the market does.

Here is what I do with that. I price a house here against Shaw sales that match it on floors, size and the lower level, then check the few local sales. I ask the seller in writing what is original, what was rebuilt and when, and whether the lower level is a separate unit.

Ten sales are a sample, not a price.

From the Record

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  The Carnegie Library was funded by Andrew Carnegie and dedicated on January 7, 1903. It was the first of four Carnegie libraries in DC.

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  It served as DC's central public library for almost 70 years, until the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library replaced it.

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  The Walter E. Washington Convention Center opened in 2003, north of the square.

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  Apple proposed restoring the Carnegie Library in 2016. Its store opened there on May 11, 2019. The DC History Center occupies the second floor.

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  The Mount Vernon Square Historic District covers twelve blocks east of 7th Street. Its 408 contributing buildings went up between 1845 and 1945. They include two-story flat-fronted row houses, three- and four-story bay-fronted row houses, small apartment buildings and corner stores.