Construction
In 1929, Monroe Warren, Sr. approached Edgar S. Kennedy about the possibility of constructing a large apartment house on a tract that Kennedy owned on Connecticut Avenue. Kennedy was a partner with two brothers, William and Gordon, in Kennedy Brothers Company, a real estate development firm that had built a number of apartment houses in Washington,D.C., including 2400 16th Street, N.W., facing Meridian Hill Park. Warren owned a construction firm, Monroe and R. B. Warren, Inc., that built co-operative apartment houses, including Tilden Gardens.
Kennedy and Warren hired the architect Joseph Younger (1892–1932) to design the building. Younger was a native of Washington, D.C., and was graduated in 1912 from the architecture school at George Washington University. Kennedy and Warren obtained $1.75 million in financing from the B. F. Saul Company, American Security Bank, and the Union Trust Company. They started work on the central section and the northwest wing (both facing Connecticut Avenue) in October 1930, and the building opened in October of the following year. Kennedy and Warren had been promised a loan by the Integrity Trust Company in Philadelphia to build the northeast and south wings, but it fell through with the worsening economic depression. In 1932, they filed for bankruptcy. The B. F. Saul Company, as the principal creditor, obtained title to the building in 1935.
Read more about this topic: Kennedy-Warren Apartment Building
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—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)