Dupont Circle Building
- Architect
- Mihran Mesrobian
- Year
- 1931
- Style
- Art Deco
- City
- Washington, DC
- Collection
- d.c. deco
Completed in 1931 as an apartment building at the south end of Dupont Circle, the Dupont Circle Building was designed by Mihran Mesrobian, a noted Art Deco architect in Washington. The AIA's own guide to the city's architecture has called its bas-relief ornament "genius," judging that its interplay of ornament and geometry "outdoes New York's famous Flatiron Building."
the building
Bas-relief ornament. The building's carved bas-relief, wrapped around its geometric massing at the point of Dupont Circle, drew praise from the AIA guide to Washington architecture as comparable to — and even superior to — the ornament of New York's Flatiron Building.
From apartments to UN offices. Converted from apartments to offices in 1942, the building became the head office of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration by October 1944, remaining so until the agency wound down in the late 1940s.
the style
Mesrobian's Art Deco design leans on sharp geometric massing paired with dense bas-relief ornament, a combination sharp enough that architectural critics have ranked it against New York's best-known Deco landmarks.
More on Art Decothe architect
Mihran Mesrobian was a noted Art Deco architect working in Washington, and the Dupont Circle Building stands as one of his best-regarded designs.
nearby
- Wadsworth, Herbert House (Sulgrave Club)
- Andrew Mellon Building
- Patterson House (Washington Club)
- Moore, Clarence, House (Old Canadian Embassy)
- Blaine, James G., House
- General Federation of Women's Clubs Headquarters