Harry Wardman (April 11, 1872 – March 18, 1938) was a real estate developer in Washington, DC whose developments included landmark hotels, luxury apartment buildings, and many, many rowhomes. When he died in 1938, one-tenth of the residents of Washington were said to live in a Wardman-built home.
A Wardman or not a Wardman? That is the Question.
Born in Bradford, England in 1872, Wardman was the son of English textile workers born in Bradford England in 1869. In 1889, at the age of 19, he arrived in New York City and worked in a department store. He later moved to Philadelphia, where he worked at the Wanamaker’s department store and met his wife Mary Hudson, but was widowed in 1902.
In 1898, he apprenticed himself to a local carpenter to learn construction and moved to moved to Washington DC in 1902, where he worked as a carpenter, and soon got into building homes and apartments. In 1908, he married Lillian Glascox.
The first independent project Wardman embarked upon was a six-house ensemble of rowhouses in Sixteenth Street Heights, on Longfellow Street. The porject’s success pushed Wardman to scale this model up in Columbia Heights, in 1907, wherein he built blocks of rowhouses branching east and west off of Fourteenth Street, between Monroe Street and Spring Street. These 750 rowhouses included new design elements, most notably the front porch. Wardman built many of the city’s rowhouses, especially in the neighborhoods of Columbia Heights, Bloomingdale, Eckington and Fort Stevens Ridge, and his design ideas were copied by others which spread throughout the City.
To this day, his homes are renowned for their high-quality construction and materials. Some of his design ideas were copied by the dozens of other developers — Lewis Brueninger, Harry Kite, Francis Blundon, David Dunigan, and others — who built massive numbers of rowhomes throughout the District.
Wardman’s success at rowhouses allowed him to move up to building luxury apartment buildings, mostly designed by architect Albert H. Beers and Frank Russell White. They include:
Northbrook Court – 3420/3426 16th Street, NW
The Chastleton – 1701 16th Street, NW
Somerset House – 1801 16th Street, NW
The Wardman – 1916 17th Street, NW
The Melwood – 1803 Biltmore Street, NW
The Brittany – 2001 16th Street, NW
The Dresden – 2126 Connecticut Avenue, NW
The Maxwell – 1419 Clifton Street, NW
Chatham Courts – 1707 Columbia Road, NW
Northumberland Apartments – 2039 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
Rutland Court – 1725 17th Street, NW
South Cathedral Mansions – 2900 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Wardman Court (formerly, Clifton Terrace) – 1312 Clifton Street, NW
Wardman Row – 1416-1440 R Street, NW
Copley Plaza – 1514 17th Street, NW
Cavanaugh Court – 1526 17th Street, NW
Apartment Building at 2225 N Street
Wardman then expanded to constructing hotels. In 1918, he opened the 1,200-room Wardman Park Hotel along Connecticut Avenue in Woodley Park. The hotel was successful, meeting the strong demand of an influx of government workers after World War I. It was expanded in 1928 with the Wardman Tower, an adjoining apartment building. The hotel was sold to Sheraton Hotels in 1953, becoming the Sheraton-Park Hotel.
In 1926 he built The Carlton Hotel, designed by Armenian-American architect Mihran Mesrobian and today known as The St. Regis. In 1928, Wardman built the Hay-Adams Hotel, also designed by Mesrobian and located across from Lafayette Park. Other landmarks built by Wardman include the British Embassy.
Wardman’s pioneering efforts made him wealthy, but most of his fortune was lost in the 1929 stock market crash. He passed away from cancer in 1938 and is buried at Rock Creek Cemetery.