This single family attached home on a modest property in one of Washington’s finest Historic Districts offered a unique and challenging opportunity for us, to leave the existing single car garage in place and add a new 2 car plus garage on a site with a small, elevated rear yard, historic stone retaining walls and a difficult access rear alley AND maintain some play space for the family dog and 2 small children.

As a testament to the adage, adversity spurs creativity the site and the client created an extraordinary opportunity for us to create a simple, unique and wholly “green” solution to this multi pronged challenge. We convinced the client, the neighbors and the Washington, D.C.’s Historic Preservation Office to allow us to create a simple garage door opening in the existing historic stone wall, leaving the footprint of the wall and it’s historic essence intact, so that we could create a 3 dimensional, truly green solution in this unique context. Because the house and yard sit nearly a full storey above the rear alley and had no square footage available for a garage from a Zoning standpoint, we proposed to put the garage wholly UNDER the existing rear yard at alley grade.

Photo Credit: Andy Ramirez

LOCATION

Washington, DC