Q & A with Mary Oehrlein

Q & A with Mary Oehrlein Historic Preservation Officer for the Architect of the Capitol By Beth Herman 

On February 28, Mary Oehrlein became the second historic preservation officer in history for the Architect of the Capitol. In her new capacity, she oversees 17 million s.f. of existing buildings within the Capitol jurisdiction in what she calls “a constant state of upgrade,” including the Capitol, Supreme Court, Botanical Gardens and all House and Senate office buildings. Oehrlein joins a legion of 2,600, including skilled tradespeople and artisans, who comprise the behemoth staff. As founder and president of Mary Oehrlein & Associates in 1984, a D.C.-based firm specializing in historic preservation, Oehrlein executed the restoration of many dozens of Washington and regional landmarks including St. Matthews Cathedral and Peterson House (where Lincoln died). The firm oversaw the exterior restoration of the damaged wing of the Pentagon, the stone conservation of the Washington Monument, and preservation of the historic buildings at Jefferson/Clara Barton residences, Terrell Place Offices and Residences, Lansburgh’s, Gallery Row and National Institutes of Sciences. It also renovated the General Post Office - the first post office of the United States - in its transition to the Hotel Monaco. DCMud checked in with Oehrlein about her new role. 

DCMud: The position of historic preservation officer for the AOC wasn’t created until 2006. What precipitated it?

Oehrlein: One of the goals of the AOC is preservation. It’s always been an underlying thought, but until 2006, no one had expressly written about preserving these buildings, along with their landscapes and art, monuments and memorials, paintings, murals and decorative painting, beautiful bronze railings and monumental bronze doors. There’s a great wealth of material, and it wasn’t a stated policy that among the AOC’s missions was to preserve all of this. 

DCMud: Mary Oehrlein & Associates is among D.C.’s preeminent historic preservation architecture firms and has been in existence since 1984. What led to your decision to close up shop and accept the position of historic preservation officer for the Architect of the Capitol? 

Oehrlein: I haven’t entirely closed my firm, but it all happened very fast. I’d been thinking for some time that I’d like to do something different and not continue to run my own office forever. I’d joked with the person who was in this office previously, Bill Allen (long time architectural historian who’d held the newly-mandated position since 2006). I said, “Bill, I really want your job. I can’t think of anything that would be more fun.” He always told me to wait until he retired. DCMud: And when did that occur? 

Oehrlein: He retired last year, and the job was posted. I wasn’t really looking at that point, but submitted my qualifications by December and it all fell into place. I had to decide what to do with my firm. I love what I do, but some days the management aspects were a lot to handle. It’s time consuming to deal with contracts and proposals and personnel issues and office leases – everything that goes along with running an office. I was ready for a change. 

DCMud: How has that change manifested for you? 

Oehrlein: This is just ideal. I am working in the best building in the country, doing pretty much what I love to do, which is preservation. My job is to review projects that are happening here and set policy for preservation of the buildings. I identify what’s significant and what needs to be retained and preserved: It’s everything from policy, management and implementation to specific project review and writing specifications for preservations and maintenance. 

DCMud: Can you provide some specifics about the day-to-day and long range aspects of your job.

Oehrlein: There’s always a lot going on with these buildings – a lot of projects underway. These include a range of tasks from replacing light fixtures to major mechanical overhauls. Replacing all the plumbing piping in the Capitol is a project that’s in the planning stages now. 

DCMud: What are some of the inherent challenges?

Oehrlein: Well, how do we do things without impacting the really decorative finishes, artwork and decorative arts in the building, or the ornamental plaster or marble floors. How are these projects accomplished in the best way possible with a minimal amount of intervention and impact? Those are the big projects, but sometimes it comes down to something as simple as the masonry shop wants to point a building, and they ask about materials and procedures. Issues range from technical to planning. 

DCMud: In your few short months in the position, is there anything you’ve observed that you’d like done differently? Oehrlein: I would like there to be more ongoing maintenance. I’ve always been a proponent of maintaining buildings rather than allowing them to deteriorate, and then having to spend a lot of money to repair and restore them. One of my goals is to increase the focus on basic, good quality cyclical maintenance of all the materials we deal with: historic windows; exterior stone; all the beautiful bronze that’s here; artwork; decorative arts. 

DCMud: Is there a particular project on which you are currently working that might raise some eyebrows?

Oehrlein: I’m working on a major project currently in the predesign phase: a total rehabilitation of the Cannon House Office Building. The last major intervention was in 1966, and it involves all new mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems. Forty-five years is a long time for systems to continue to operate, and work is slated to begin in another five years in 2016. 

DCMud: For your first job working for a construction company that was doing restoration work, before preservation architecture was even practiced, you once said you spent months in the stacks at the Library of Congress researching historic preservation materials and procedures. Those were the days that the public had largely unlimited access to the stacks, which it no longer has. As historic preservation officer, presumably you will once again have access. Had you thought about that? 

Oehrlein: (Laughing) I have to say that’s one of the things I thought about when I accepted this position, that wow, I’ll have access to the stacks again. 

DCMud: And what about your own firm? 

Oehrlein: It’s still functioning and probably will be through the end of the year. I’m at the AOC during the day and working nights and weekends to keep up with things privately. We are also clearing out 30 years’ worth of project files, books, records, drawings and photographs from the firm that need to be disposed of, moved, packed and/or stored. Some of the work is going to the D.C. library, and the Washington Historical Society is taking some of the photographs as we always took them before we started our work. 

DCMud: Is there anything we haven’t asked about which readers may be curious? 

Oehrlein: Everybody is asking me if they can have a tour of my new offices. I tell them they can, just as soon as I can find my own way around these buildings without getting lost. I also tell former clients they can continue to call me. The advice line is still open!

Washington DC commercial design news

Architect as Archaeologist

On July 3, 1863, as General Robert E. Lee intensified his attack on the Union center at Gettysburg's Cemetery Ridge, Daniel Klingel's farm house looked out on the Civil War's darkest hour.

Nearly 150 years later, preservation architects Oehrlein & Associates Architects would be charged by the National Park Service with restoring the residence's exterior to that very day in 1863, the log structure built originally in 1812 and over time sheltering many families since the Klingels from the more typical battles of everyday life.

"We have spent the past 18 months doing research on the house," Principal Mary Oehrlein said, explaining that painstaking historical research and documentation of any project involves all manner of archival, photographic and records research: census records; newspapers; trade directories; property transfers; deeds; wills that may describe a property; estate sale records; inventories (especially important where the person conducting the study may have walked from room to room) and even paint analysis. The Klingel house, sited in the middle of the battlefield, is exposed to tours that go by and will be used by the NPS for its own purposes.

Rules of Engagement

According to Oehrlein, historical architects play by an entirely different set of rules than mainstream practitioners because “…you’re not starting with a blank piece of paper or an empty site where you can put anything you want on it. You have to work within the confines of an existing building,” she says, noting that even where alterations are mandated, there’s a limit to what can be done. “You have to be more creative about how you accommodate a new mechanical system, or get an elevator in, or make a building more accessible without destroying something that somebody said needs to stay.”

It was these kinds of parameters that presented a variety of challenges for the firm when it created the Hotel Monaco a decade ago. Conceived as a post office with a series of wing additions from 1836-67, the property later served as an office building replete with acoustic tile ceilings, carpeting, Formica counters, partitions, fluorescent lighting, mechanical and electrical systems and “phone wires draped all over the place,” all of which were taken out in order to see and measure what had been there, according to Oehrlein. Vacant for 15 years at the inception of the hotel process, the structure, at 700 F Street NW, was both a restoration and rehabilitation project, the former denoting the retention of materials from a significant time while permitting the removal of other materials, and the latter focusing on retention and repair of materials but with allowances for replacement in light of a property’s deterioration (per the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for The Treatment of Historic Properties). Oehrlein, who said the Standards are clearly guidelines for historical architects, added that during a rehabilitation, the specific needs of the new user must be accommodated, in this case a 21st century hotel.

In the Hotel Monaco interior, while certain spaces and finishes were carefully preserved and restored, naturally each guestroom required a bathroom, and two new elevators were installed at the north side of the building where the structure could be modified without major interventions.

“There had been an alteration to one of the really beautiful circular stairs,” Oehrlein says, “where the government had put an elevator in the middle of it.” The elevator was removed and the stairwell restored, along with an accruing skylight.

Material Rules

In a major restoration, rehabilitation and renovation of St. Matthew’s Cathedral, 1725 Rhode Island Avenue NW, over the course of three years Oehrlein & Associates Architects met multiple challenges in transforming the 1893 multi-use property (the church was initially established in another building in 1840 at 15th and H Streets). These included eradicating roof leaks and repairing plaster falling from the ceiling, reconfiguring office and living space, and considering a shoebox full of tiny glass tiles from a 35-foot tall mosaic.

“We started by making the envelope of the building water-tight,” Oehrlein says, replacing the copper-clad dome with a new dome fabricated to look exactly like the original. Slate was replaced or repaired, and brick and stone pointed to further weather-proof the structure. The mosaic was repaired by gluing pieces back on the wall by a process of injection, and the surface was restored, cleaned and regrouted where necessary, as was the cathedral’s marble in places. New carpeting and lighting were installed throughout the structure, with artwork designed and installed where old organ pipes had been. The basement, in a major renovation, included upgraded conference rooms in a new conference center and a redesigned dining room in the old rectory. The reconfiguration of two adjacent buildings provided parish offices and residential apartments for the priests who live there. “There was a lot going on,” Oehrlein quipped.


Perseverance Rules

Trained as a design architect, an entity she prefers not to hire “because they are not happy in this kind of work” (Oehrlein’s staff, for the most part, has advanced degrees in historic preservation), Oehrlein revealed that as a student she was admonished by professors for taking up space that male students should occupy. “They told me I was wasting their time,” she reflected, adding that when she guest lectures today and sees that 50 percent of the class is comprised of women, it’s a different world.

“Counter to those professors who told me I didn’t belong, I had architectural history professors who were supportive and encouraged me to pursue preservation,” she said, which was a brave new world at that time. Spending summers working for the Historic American Building Survey, where student architects go out and measure buildings throughout the country, Oehrlein came to embrace the fact that in choosing a different path she was never relegated to drafting rooms.

“My first job was with a construction company that was doing some preservation work,” she recalled, explaining they were restoring buildings because people had come to them about leaky roofs or masonry falling off walls. With virtually no preservation architects in existence at the time, Oehrlein blazed some trails by spending time at the Library of Congress researching, for example, which materials were used in 19th century masonry construction, what the mortar mixes were, how water was kept out of walls and what the caulking materials were. “Nobody can get into the stacks now,” she said, “but I had a stack pass and would spend days at a time there. I did research into the technical side of things because if you don’t understand what’s in the building, you can’t decide how to repair it.”


With completion of construction documents for a restoration/ conservation of the exterior stone of the U.S. Capitol on deck, a process that, due to various circumstances with the Architect of the Capitol, took nine years, Oehrlein calls it “a pretty wonderful opportunity” though Congress’ funding of the project is another matter. “We have projects that have gone on longer than that though,” she said. “There’s the stop and start: the review process; the approval process; then it stops because the economy is bad; then the economy gets better and starts up again but there’s a redesign. We’ve had projects that have been through two economic downturns before we finally got to construction,” she explained. With historical architecture, "that happens."

Adventures in Design and Viticulture: The Jefferson

Some might say his dual passions for wine and statesmanship fed one another, his lifelong thirst and quest for both taking him places most men of his time would never go. For founding father Thomas Jefferson, the pursuit of happiness was manifested both in extensive European fact-finding/grape growing missions, and in the sense of urgency with which he and his co-founding fathers laid the cornerstones of a brand new nation.

For the eponymous hotel at 16th and M Streets NW that takes its legacy from the third president of the United States, The Jefferson, though small by hotel standards, looms large in the elite world of luxury accommodations, and even larger in terms of the sparkling shadow it casts over a District where privilege and entitlement are pretty much found in the drinking water.

Undergoing a comprehensive 30-month renovation and restoration and reopening in August of 2009, The Jefferson, on its 86th birthday, emerged with an eye toward innovation and a sense of tribute firmly intact. Not only had the hotel succeeded in celebrating a visionary whose interests, in addition to wine and politics, ran the gamut from architecture to food and literature, but it had seamlessly integrated technology, history and design to create a 21st century environment of which Thomas Jefferson would surely approve. According to Managing Director Franck Arnold, that was precisely the goal.

Bones

Built as an apartment building in 1922-23 at a reported cost of $450,000 by Paris-born Beaux-Arts style practitioner Jules Henri de Sibour, The Jefferson was thought to have been converted to a hotel in the late 1940s (no definitive records of the conversion date exist, but a 1948 city directory lists the property as the Jefferson Hotel). With a variety of owners from the 1950s-1980s (a 1953 Washington Post theatre critic called The Jefferson “dear to the show folk” because of its en suite kitchens–kitchens that had not been removed from its days as an apartment building–for après show snacks), the 99-room hotel endured the slings and arrows of well-intentioned incursions into its limestone façade and interior, but not always with the best results.

“All of the mechanical work was replaced for the current renovation,” Arnold said, explaining that in the gutting process, errant columns were discovered including a “rogue column” on the eighth floor that had to be taken out. He also revealed that all 99 bathroom ceilings had to be reinforced with steel beams because “through the years, they renovated without appreciating the structural aspects of the building.”

Architect Mary Oehrlein, whose firm, Oehrlein & Associates Architects, oversaw the restoration aspects of the eight-story project, said that in the hotel industry what the public sees is important, and design and construction dollars are largely focused on that image. To that end, in the current redesign the aforementioned kitchens were walled off, but if somebody wants to reconvert the hotel back to an apartment building in the future, the spaces are still there and usable. In some of the larger suites, Oehrlein added, former kitchen space was converted to a small exercise studio within the suite.

Face

In true glass slipper fashion, The Jefferson’s imposing porte cochere greets its guests with elegance and style, and the anticipation of what lies within. Designed by former Oehrlein & Associates Architects’ Pamela Blom and custom cast by Robinson Iron of Birmingham, Ala., the heated and cooled glass and iron cantilevered structure extends 20 feet from the building’s façade, with a barrel vaulted skylight, side extensions, track lighting and an enclosed vestibule. A sculpted bronze Thomas Jefferson in bas relief looks down on arriving guests, precluding any doubt that this is the place.

“When we closed the hotel for renovation in 2007,” Arnold said, “we had a limited Beaux-Arts inspired canopy that didn’t provide for any sense of arrival or departure. It didn’t say you had come to a luxury hotel.” Arnold explained that initially, the HPRB (Historic Preservation Review Board) jettisoned the concept of the porte cochere, claiming it had no historical basis. Immersing himself in research, Arnold ascertained that the genesis of the old canopy was questionable, with earliest photographs placing it smack in the middle of the 1970s and maybe the ‘80s. The HPRB relented and the porte cochere was born.

Palate

Once inside, a confluence of reverence and reverie punctuate a lobby that honors both Jefferson’s intellect and his aesthetic. Opposing busts of Adams and Jefferson - good friends, political enemies and then friends again before their deaths two hours apart on July 4, 1826 (the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence) - preside over Jefferson’s signed documents from the second and third Philadelphia Congresses of the United States. A stately glass and wrought iron gate, retained and redesigned from a prior renovation, leads to the hotel’s Plume restaurant, and The Greenhouse, also for dining, and when closed provides a sense of separation from lobby to sustenance. It might also be observed that the gate’s joyful, ornate gold fleur-de-lis might have been prescient: On January 10 The Jefferson was accepted into the luxury hotel industry’s prestigious Relais & Chateaux - the only Washington, D.C. hotel to receive the honor - whose emblem is the fleur-de-lis.

A vaulted ceiling, skylight and accruing lay light in the lobby and dining areas, constructed when The Jefferson was built in the 1920s but which had disappeared under layers of plaster in successive renovations, were rediscovered, and under the stewardship of ForrestPerkins, the architectural design firm that oversaw The Jefferson’s redesign, enhanced with LED lighting to gently manipulate the changing light of day.

In a leap toward melding history with technology, a bar and lounge off the lobby called Quill tips its proverbial hat to Jefferson, who is thought to have said he prefers the prospect of the future to the lessons of the past. With burnished oak paneling, parquet floors and a series of authentic maps on the walls that illuminate Jefferson’s wine expeditions through France, Holland, Italy and Germany, the maps were a gift from hotel guest Scott Ballin who first stayed at The Jefferson with his father in the 1960s. Most illuminating, however, is the actual bar itself, a behemoth of glass panels threaded with a “light tape” that might make the future-thinking president rethink the need for fire in fireside chats (wrong president, but right idea).

Vine

In The Jefferson’s “private cellar,” adjacent to Plume, private parties can dine in wine-friendly temperatures surrounded by 1200 of the hotel’s 6500-bottle wine collection – wines of which perpetual viticulturist (viticulture: the growing of grapes vs. viniculture: the making of wine) Thomas Jefferson would have approved, and some of which he’d even discovered during his years (1784-89) as minister to France and selected for his own cache. After that time, wherein he’d spent 3 ½ months traveling through Europe studying the art of winemaking, grape growing, harvesting, collecting, conserving and serving, according to Arnold, Jefferson returned to Monticello and invented the dumbwaiter to ferry his wines from cellar to what would, in contemporary parlance, be his daytime study. A replica of the Monticello dumbwaiter exists in the hotel’s private cellar, alongside a dining table for 16 (20 if necessary) made from repurposed parquet floors in a nod to sustainability. A 3 X 7-foot hand painted mural with pastoral scenes of Monticello depicts what the nation’s third president would have seen each day, as do various murals in Plume.

“Jefferson believed wine was integral in bringing civilization to a country that was very agrarian back then,” Arnold said, affirming that the cultivation of wine implied sophistication. In fact through the years he was credited with serving as wine advisor to Presidents Washington, Madison and Monroe. But despite Jefferson’s relentless efforts to educate himself in the ways of the vine, and his unofficial partnership with Italian physician, entrepreneur, politico and vintner Philip Mazzei, Jefferson was unsuccessful in decades-long trials to establish vineyards at Monticello. His failure had little to do with climate or soil, as some had speculated, and much to do with the existence of the as yet unidentified phylloxera louse, which attacked his crop at the root.

Repose

Trials withstanding, in spirit and sentiment The Jefferson reflects its namesake’s affinity for wine and his myriad other interests, not only in its public spaces, but also in its elegant and individual guestrooms. While rooms vary in décor, many include Crema Marfil stonework from Spain, in some the choice of toile echoes the textiles from his time abroad, and in others framed quotes provide insight into an intellectual, a visionary and occasionally a humorist. Chandeliers are everywhere and linens are 300-thread count from D. Porthault in Paris, custom linen makers to such dignitaries as the John F. Kennedy’s, Charles DeGaulle, Sir Winston Churchill, Grace Kelly and Coco Chanel (Mr. Jefferson would surely approve). Embracing Jefferson’s penchant for invention, rooms are equipped with Bose systems and iPods, as well as wi-fi and broadband. Bathrooms boast in-mirror TV’s and individually controlled recessed heat above the bathtub. In short, why would one ever leave?

Acquired in 2005 and owned by DC CAP Hotelier, LLC, a subsidiary of NY-based Ogden CAP Properties, LLC, Arnold revealed the owners are “very engaged in the well-being of this property.

“Somehow it is very fortunate,” he said, “because nowadays in the world of international corporations, you don’t get people who are so committed to making the right decision and the long term decision. A lot of choices could have been made much more rapidly and probably in a less expensive way than what was actually done,” he stated. “However as the owners like to put it, they did this for their grandchildren.”

Interior photographs by Stirling Elmendorf

Clara Barton Condos

Clara Barton Condomimiums
616 E St., NW, Washington DC
The Clara Barton in Penn Quarter was developed by JPI, taking the place of one of the last empty lots in downtown Washington DC. One of the larger condo projects in the city, the Clara Barton is a 273-unit condominium attached to the Lafayette Condos, which is the other half of the building (but a separate condo association). Originally designed as the Jefferson Apartments, plans changed before completion to take advantage of the condo boom. The condominium is therefore highly amenitized, with a workout room, business center, small theater, staffed front desk, and well-designed rooftop with pool. Between the two condominiums is a large interior courtyard, with many units having balconies facing into it. The condo was named after the founder of the American Red Cross, due to the then-recently rediscovered office that was found nearby. Designed by Esocoff & Associates and Oehrlein & Associates. Real estate sales began in August of 2004.

Post your comments about Clara Barton condos below: