Harry Wardman was a real estate developer in Washington, D.C. during the early 20th century whose developments included landmark hotels, luxury apartment buildings, and many rowhouses. When he died in 1938, one-tenth of the residents of Washington were said to live in a Wardman-built home.
Personal life
Born in Bradford, England in 1872, Wardman was the son of English textile workers. In 1889, at age 17, he arrived in New York City, where he 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. They had one daughter, Alice. In 1898, he apprenticed himself to a local carpenter to learn construction. By 1900, Wardman was widowed. In 1902, Wardman moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked as a carpenter, learned to build staircases, and soon got into building homes and apartments. In 1908, he married Lillian Glascox. Harry and Lillian had one daughter, Helen.
Building career
Rowhouses
The first independent project Wardman embarked upon was a six-house ensemble in Sixteenth Street Heights, on Longfellow Street, in 1898; while the term did not exist yet, these were what would later be termed "rowhouses". The success of the Longfellow Street project 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. 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 rows of townhouses in the District.
Apartments
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, and located along 16th Street, NW, Connecticut Avenue, Columbia Heights, and elsewhere. They include:
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. The main building was demolished in 1977 and replaced with a modern hotel, the Sheraton Washington Hotel. The Wardman Tower was saved and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The 1977 Sheraton Washington Hotel has since been renamed the Marriott Wardman Park, in honor of Wardman's original building. In 1926 he built The Carlton Hotel, designed by Armenian-American architect Mihran Mesrobian and today known as The St. Regis Washington, D.C.. 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 efforts made him wealthy, and for a time he lived extravagantly in Washington and abroad. But most of his $30 million fortune vanished in the 1929 stock market crash. He continued to build middle-class homes. Wardman died in 1938 from cancer and is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery.
