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The Cairo

Architect
Thomas Franklin Schneider
Year
1894
Style
Moorish / Mudéjar
City
Washington, DC
The Cairo
Photo: AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0
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The Cairo, at 1615 Q Street NW in Dupont Circle, was designed by architect Thomas Franklin Schneider and completed in 1894 as Washington's first residential skyscraper — at 164 feet, it remains the city's tallest residential building. Its unprecedented height for a housing project helped spur the local and federal regulations limiting building height that continue to shape Washington's skyline. Once purely rental apartments, it has since converted to condominiums.

the building

Elephants and gargoyles. The brick facade is carved with an eclectic menagerie: elephant heads look out from the first-floor window sills and interlock trunks at the corners of the entrance arch, winged griffin gargoyles perch on the cornices above the entrance, and dragon and dwarf crosses appear on the fourth floor.

The building that changed the skyline. When the Cairo went up in 1894 at 164 feet, it towered over anything else built for housing in the city. The reaction reportedly helped drive DC's 1899 Height of Buildings Act, part of the local and federal legislation limiting building height that continues to shape Washington's skyline today.

the style

The Cairo's design combines Moorish Revival detailing with an overlaid Egyptian theme, seen in the elephant heads, griffin gargoyles, and dragon-and-dwarf crosses carved into its facade — exotic ornament for a building whose height, not its decoration, made the most lasting impact on the city.

More on Moorish / Mudéjar

significance

The Cairo is an individual DC Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It remains Washington's tallest residential building, and its outsized height is credited with prompting the height restrictions that still govern construction across the city.

nearby

All 315 buildings in Washington, DC