The builder behind the
porch-front row house.
For buyers looking at a porch-front row house in Petworth, Columbia Heights, Eckington or Bloomingdale, and for anyone who asked why my brokerage is called Wardman.
Who was Harry Wardman?
Harry Wardman built more row houses in Washington than anyone of his era. Born in England in 1872, he came to the United States as a young man, worked as a carpenter in Philadelphia, and moved to Washington in 1895. Between 1900 and 1910 he built 925 row houses, nearly three times the next-largest builder, Hoagland writes.
Why is Wardman Residential named after him?
Because of that scale. Wardman Residential, the Compass team I work with, takes its name from the developer whose houses still line whole blocks of Northwest and Northeast DC.
How many houses did he build?
Hoagland's count from building permits: 925 row houses from 1900 to 1910, and 665 in the decade after. In 1909 alone he built 254, when the next-largest builder in the city built 53. After the First World War he moved into other kinds of housing, including the hotel at Connecticut Avenue and Calvert Street that carried his name (1917).
What does a Wardman row house look like?
A two-story brick house with a full-width front porch on columns, a strip of tile or slate roof across the top, and four rooms on the main floor with no back wing: the plan historians call the quadrant plan. He first built it in Eckington in 1906, and builders across the city copied it. Ads at the time sold it as "colonial."
Where are Wardman's houses?
Across the city, with dense runs in Columbia Heights, Petworth, Eckington and Bloomingdale. Two documented examples: 1404 to 1422 Buchanan Street NW (1912), and the row at 14th and Newton Streets NW, advertised in 1908. Earlier, he built bay-front houses on Capitol Hill (1903) and in Shaw (1905). Later came English Village on Klingle Road NW (1922).
What should I check in a Wardman house?
The porch, the roof strip and the plan. Porches are a century old: look at the columns, the roof over them and where they meet the house. The tile or slate strip across the front often hides little or no usable space. And because the plan has no back wing, many have been extended at the rear: check that the addition was permitted.
Is a Wardman house worth more?
The name alone does not move the price. The comparable sales do: the same porch-front house on the same block is the comp, and condition separates them. That is why I start every price from the closed sales on your block, not from the builder's name.
One line of history
Some of Wardman's later developments, English Village among them, were sold with deed covenants that restricted who could buy; the Supreme Court made such covenants unenforceable in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948).
The terms on this page, from quadrant plan to rooflet, are in the row house dictionary.
Every closed sale on your block for 24 months, in two sections. No charge, no obligation.
Send me every sale on my blockSource. History and building counts: Alison K. Hoagland, The Row House in Washington, DC: A History (University of Virginia Press, 2023).