Hampshire Gardens
Hampshire Gardens stands as one of the first completed garden-style apartment buildings in the city.
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Completed in 1929, this garden-style apartment building was meant to have a distinctly British aesthetic with its Tudor Revival style construction. Hampshire Gardens, in addition to its attention to the natural landscape, was also a cooperatively-owned apartment building. Designed by James E. Cooper and George T. Santmyers, the building shaped new zoning laws created within D.C. that required open spaces in residential areas.
Hampshire Gardens was meant to attract middle-class residents who had moved to the city in the interwar period between World War I and II, while also having aesthetically-pleasing features. The building was meant to be expanded upon, but the approach of the Second World War halted any further construction, and was never completed. As more people moved into the city for work and needed economic housing, Hampshire Gardens blended elements of both manmade and natural features in D.C. that appealed to many, and helped more residents accept aparment-style living as a viable and respectable means of housing.
DC Inventory: January 27, 1993
National Register: September 9, 1994
This site is a stop on the D.C. Apartment Buildings tour as an example of a Garden apartment building.
