The Fourth Story Man

By Beth Herman

Back in the ‘70s, comedian Steve Allen, already somewhat enshrined for his deft hosting of “The Tonight Show,” won an Emmy, a Peabody, an Encyclopedia Britannica Award and a few others for his cutting edge “Meeting of Minds,” what critics called “the ultimate talk show.” The format for PBS’ “Meeting of Minds,” which Allen created, produced and hosted, was both ingenious and simple: Take a group of history’s seminal characters from different time periods, and with significantly different values and perspectives (Cleopatra, George Patton, Socrates, Machiavelli and Thomas Jefferson, to name a few), put them in a room together to solve a particular problem, and let ‘em rip. Anachronism would never be the same.

On N Street in Georgetown, a three-story row house built in 1960 sits, perhaps anachronistically, among its more genteel and embellished 19^th century brethren. Without vocal chords, and though the interior emulates its more historical neighbors with flourishes such as a curved stair, niches and heavy molding, the home’s real voice is manifested in a closer relationship to its mid-20^th century roots: in other words, somewhat undistinguished.

I Can Dream, Can’t I?

For Douglas Rixey of Rixey-Rixey Architects, a progressive young homeowner and his fiancee’s desire to renovate the interior and also add a floor, thereby breaking through the proverbial Georgetown (glass) ceiling which mandates structures like this generally cannot build up, became a task of monumental proportion mired in research, hearings, personalities, reviews, variances and still more variances, not to mention adroitness with a magic wand and maybe some advanced spell-casting. In addition to navigating a sea of the usual bureaucratic boards and suspects, building up, where the property was concerned, would require feats of Georgetown geometry and construction contortion: The house is ringed by neighbors and their gardens, with no access to a backyard or public alley for scaffolding.

“The client had purchased the home from his parents a couple of years ago and was living there as a bachelor,” Rixey said. “He became engaged, married this month, and they are going to want to start a family and expand the house.” In short, the couple wanted to include a master bedroom suite as a top floor, or fourth story, to the house.

At a total of 4,500 s.f., 1,500 s.f. per floor, and at 58.7 percent lot coverage, the building was already very close to its allowable lot coverage, Rixey explained. In Georgetown, in the client’s zone, acceptable lot coverage is only 60 percent, so to try and build out with a master suite – with only 1.3 percent lot coverage remaining – would mean only a 44 s.f. addition, not exactly the type of master suite experience his client had in mind.

According to Rixey, who, along with wife and partner Victoria, has been plying his craft in Georgetown for 25 years, and rules and review boards withstanding, it’s extremely rare in the area to have a house in the first place that is able to receive another floor. “Most of the historic houses will have a fairly decorative top floor, maybe with turrets, decorative cornice or some sort of architectural embellishment that basically makes it so you can’t add on to the top without severely affecting the character,” he explained. The home in question was somewhat nondescript, “…sort of Colonial Revival,” Rixey said, “but with a very plain top and nothing extraordinary about the house.”

Mr. Rixey Goes to Georgetown

Still, the process to acquire permission to build up was daunting. In most of Georgetown, a three-story or 40-foot limit defines residential architecture. Because the house on N Street was mid-20^th century, however, and though it had three floors, the floor-to-ceiling height on each floor was at 8 and 9 feet, typical of more modern-day construction, Rixey said, where its towering Victorian neighbors’ homes clocked in at 10, 11 and 12 feet per story. In this respect, the house fell far below the mandated 40-foot limit. “We could add an extra floor and still be within Georgetown’s height limit,” Rixey said, noting they still needed a variance for zoning purposes.

Submitting first to the Old Georgetown Board (OGB) as the building is visible from a public space, the action required a simultaneous submission to the Advisory Neighborhood Committee (ANC), which reviews proposals with an eye toward community impact regarding open space, neighbor relations and the like, replete with letters of support from the neighbors. Filing for historic review – another step – was done “in concept,” because the architect wasn’t certain it would really be approved and was attempting to gauge reaction. When the Historic Preservation Review Board (HPRB) did approve the concept, another application to ANC had to be made, this time for the variance.

With the variance process several months in duration and made up of components including public notification of intent by posting signs, photographing signs, notarizing an affidavit that signs were posted in a specific time frame and providing names and addresses of all neighbors within a 200-foot radius, a September hearing was scheduled. “The issue,” Rixey maintained, recalling that the 90-minute hearing was more like an inquisition as these things go, “was that they needed to be convinced we couldn’t glean extra living space by excavating below grade or doing an at-grade addition.” The dearth of remaining allowable lot coverage precluded an at-grade addition, and regarding a possible basement addition, the house had been built by excavating into a hillside, Rixey explained, basically already siting three sides of the first floor below grade, except for the façade. “In any other jurisdiction, the first floor of this house would have been considered a basement because of its lack of perimeter exposure and we wouldn’t have needed variance for what would only be a two-story house,” Rixey said. “D.C. is the only jurisdiction that measures the number of stories at the front of the building.”

Capitol Risk

Among more than a dozen fourth story design alternatives presented for review in the process was a loggia, or balcony, on the front facing N. Street, which also faced south, providing a view out on the city from an outside terrace. With rooftop decks or terraces controversial in Georgetown, and typically not approved, Rixey’s design was no exception. (According to Rixey, however, the front balcony was actually a response to design constraints – an attempt to make the mass of the building recede somewhat and make it a little more special than simply a front façade.) The client also wanted a lot more glass, and glazing is antithetical to historic work, Rixey said. Nevertheless a modern take on a mansard roof with a dormer, though not classically detailed, was approved.

With a final historic review step remaining in the approval process contingent on permit and construction drawings, actual construction remains another conundrum (here’s where the magic wand and advanced spell-casting may again be advantageous).

“Construction (expected to begin in the spring) will be tricky,” Rixey said. The building has some rear alley access but cannot be accessed from either side due to neighbors’ properties, which include a beautiful garden on one and a narrow, private walkway on the other. Building scaffolding and staging construction equipment conventionally is out of the question. To that end, the architect is contemplating such attack modes as prefabricating the brick worksite walls in sections, off-site, and having them delivered and installed by crane. According to Rixey, prefab walls are common in commercial work but not in residential. Another strategy is to suspend scaffolding from the building and not touch the ground – to hang it off the side of the building, cantilevered out over the neighbors’ property. “It’s iffy, to say the least,” he conceded, affirming that logistics are still very much in the investigation stage.

“Five years ago, the extra floor would never have been approved,” Rixey said. “The community would be up in arms about people doing additions and taking up open space. Now times have changed; people’s attitudes have changed. I kind of expected it, but it still amazes me that this additional floor was approved.”

Married to the Job, and Each Other

Answer: Margaritas and salt. Shoes and socks. Peanut butter and jelly. Question: Name things that go together unconditionally.

When DCMUD approached three area husband-and-wife architect teams about their formula for combining work and marriage, we wondered if for them, the concept was also unconditional.

Checks and Balances

For Jane Treacy and Phillip Eagleburger of Treacy & Eagleburger Architects PC, working together was a natural expression of their relationship, though marriage came four years after the professional partnership. Introduced to each other as fledgling architects by other married architects who all frequented DuPont Circle watering holes around 1985 (Treacy, who had worked in several East Coast cities, was working for Hord Coplan Macht in Baltimore and drove in for D.C.’s social life), the Eagleburger’s found that for them compatibility had many faces.
“I think it’s peculiar to the profession that architects kind of live with their work, more so than other professions,” said Eagleburger. “I think that’s why you get a lot of architects married to architects, because they understand what the situation is.”

Formed in 1989, Treacy & Eagleburger, with a staff of four, focuses primarily on regional residential projects, though their award-winning work extends to Massachusetts’ toney Cape and Islands as well. With Eagleburger preferring “edgier design,” explaining that their firm walks the line between traditional and contemporary, he is admittedly “more of a polemic,” something he attributes to his academic and jury experience. Eagleburger credits his wife’s more pragmatic style with reigning him in at all the right times, however.

Speaking to their modus operandi, Treacy explained that when a project comes in to the office, typically one principal and one staff member take it. “We do tag team things though,” she added. “We pretty much split the work: We’re both involved in the business end and in the architectural/design end, each acting as consultant” to the other principal. “We know all the time what’s going on with the other partner,” Treacy affirmed, though the client may not realize it.

At home, and even after a long day together at the office, Treacy, who often finishes her husband's sentences (the reverse is also true), said they spend a lot of their personal time together, dividing up activities, with dinner duty falling to her husband whom she concedes is “the better cook.”

“If Jane gets too involved in the kitchen, I kind of kick her out,” Eagleburger quipped, conceding that Treacy is better at cleaning.

Victoria is in the Details

Douglas and Victoria Rixey of Rixey-Rixey Architects met at University of Virginia School of Architecture just before Douglas graduated. Marrying soon after, each obtained a masters degree (Douglas from UVA and Victoria from Rice University) and worked separately for various firms such as Hartman-Cox and Bowie Gridley. Opening their own office in 1985, Douglas Rixey explained that because they’ve been working together so long, it’s no longer as hard as it may have been early on.

“At any firm, no matter how big the project, there’s really one person running that project,” he said, acknowledging that possession of one’s own project is key in their joint stewardship of the practice. That said, the opportunity for them to solicit the other’s input or critique is also invaluable.

The Rixey's, who specialize in high-end residential work and operate without a staff, pride themselves on the boutique aspect of their firm (nothing can be relegated to a junior associate, Douglas said). Both agreed Victoria is better at the details, and Douglas is more interested in the big picture.

Raised in a cutting edge Ohio home on a wooded bank designed and built by her industrial design engineer father (lots of cantilevers and soaring ceilings), Victoria said she and Douglas both love modern architecture but in their own practice in the region, gravitate toward more traditional or transitional work – and lots of it.

“Work used to be everything,” Douglas Rixey said. “And it’s just too much.’

With that in mind, the couple wraps up any discussion of the day on the trip home, talk of drawings, structure, fenestration and cost yielding perhaps to the evening’s menu and movie choices.

“That’s always been the easiest part of the relationship,” Victoria said. “There’s never been any friction related to housework, cooking, taking out the trash, laundry, any of that. It just kind of magically gets split up – I think very evenly,” she added. “We really enjoy being together all the time.”

Yours, Mine and Ours

For Elizabeth (Beth) Reader and Charles (Chuck) Swartz of Reader & Swartz Architects, PC in Winchester, Va., working together is not only a couples’ affair, but a family affair.

“Our kids (Ella, 13, and Jake, 10) get dropped off from the school bus into our office and do their homework,” Swartz said, recalling that from the earliest ages, they got their parents’ old models to glue and play with. “They go on site visits with us.”


Meeting at Virginia Tech School of Architecture and Design in 1986 and marrying the following year, Reader and Swartz returned to Winchester, the latter’s home town, briefly working in the same office together and opening their own firm, currently with a staff of five, in 1990. With a substantial number of cutting edge commercial and residential projects on their dance card, Reader and Swartz have observed a kind of manifest destiny of late in their client base: D.C. ex-patriots finding their way to areas such as Winchester, building weekend or retirement homes.

“We pretty much eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner and see each other all the time,” Swartz said of their relationship, qualifying their actions by adding that “because (they’ve) done it for so long, it doesn’t seem strange.”

According to Reader, who is credited with running more of the firm’s business side of things, she takes her work home all the time and hasn’t found a way to separate it. “Our kids even complain about it,” she admitted.

In support of his wife’s shop talk predilection, Swartz, who enjoys the casual moniker of “spiritual leader” (translation: he keeps everyone going), said he and his wife “love doing architecture and don’t know how to do anything else. We get a lot of positive stuff riding down the road,” he explained.

Close to Home

When queried about conflict, the couples wasted no time in bringing up renovations of their own homes and/or the building of their own vacation home.

“We joked that maybe we should have divided up the rooms,” Phil Eagleburger said, reflecting on a renovation of their Cleveland Park home five years ago.

“It took us nearly two years before we could even start construction,” said Douglas Rixey of the couple’s vacation home in the northern neck of Virginia, “And it wasn’t so much that we disagreed on solutions,” he added. “We just couldn’t decide.”

According to Chuck Swartz, the way he and his wife deal with disagreements is to trust and respect one another. “The bigger difficulty was when we did our own house – the client was us as married people. There were a lot of people in the room all at one time,” he said. But in the end, he realized that “together, we make a pretty good architect.”

Photography of Reader & Swartz home by Hoachlander Davis Photography, couple's portrait by Nathan Webb