The
Portner Flats apartment building once dominated the low rise residential
intersection of 15th and U Street, and when it was completed in
1902, it was crowned as Washington’s largest apartment building. Completed in three stages beginning in 1897,
it was located on the northeast corner, with a main façade extending 320 feet north
to V Street.
Built by millionaire brewer Robert Portner and
designed by architect Clement Didden, construction of the first of three phases
began in 1897 at the intersection of 15th and U Street.
Portner had purchased the land for $45,000, and had formed the Capitol
Construction Company to build it to avoid union disputes during the
project. Skeptics coined it “Portner’s
Folly” due to its location far from the urban center of town.
However,
the first section of luxury, three bedroom apartments rented quickly, and
Portner commenced building a northern wing at 15th and V Streets in
1899. Incredibly, with only one vacant
apartment remaining in the two sections, work began on the middle section in
1901. It was built one story taller than
the previous sections, and in a slightly more Romanesque style that was popular
at the time. It featured a large, two
story balcony in the central penthouse.
The
middle section was built atop a swimming pool and tennis court that was one of
the more unusual features for an apartment complex at the time. Unlike the
large apartments built earlier, the central section contained a series of
smaller efficiencies and one bedroom units.
To make up for the loss of the pool and courts, only a few years after
they were built, Portner included large ballrooms, a huge dining room and
private rooms that renters could reserve for parties. The entire complex cost
an estimated $350,000 and contained a total of 123 apartments with 515
individual rooms.
In addition to the Portner Flats, Clement August Didden
(1837-1923) was architect of a significant number of homes in the immediate
area, but curiously never received much national recognition. Born on May 13, 1837 in Brakel, Germany,
Didden left Germany
in 1862 for England
and the Cape of Good Hope to practice
architecture. He moved to New York City in 1866 to
work for Fernbach, Hunt, and Post, a firm with prominent architect Richard
Morris Hunt. After leaving New York in 1870 or
1871, Didden became affiliated with the influential Philadelphia firm of Fraser, Furness, and
Hewitt. He worked in Philadelphia until 1872 when he moved to Washington and
eventually established his own practice.
Didden is attributed with numerous residential designs
within the area, including 1207-1219
Q Street, 1609-1615 13th Street, 1329-1335 N
Street, 1223-1229 15th Street,
1520 to 1524 Kingman Place,
1604-1606 Vermont Avenue,
1224 13th Street,
and 1453-1455 Massachusetts
Avenue, N.W.
Didden's career as architect in Washington lasted for nearly 50 years. He lived most of his life at 710 13th Street, N.W. At the age of 86, in 1923, Didden died
leaving behind works in Washington,
Philadelphia, New York, South Africa,
England,
and Germany. His relative George Didden III is President
of the National Capitol Bank on Capitol Hill.
Owner Robert Portner
Robert Portner (1837-1909) had
arrived in the port
of New York in 1853 from Westphalia, Prussia,
where he had been born just sixteen years earlier. He became a citizen in 1859 and proudly voted
for Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
As a risk taker, Portner decided to
take his small savings and settle in Alexandria
in the late spring of 1861, where he opened a grocery store. Selling goods to commanders for the army
stationed throughout the area proved to be a huge success, and within a year,
Portner bought a small brewery, from which he then sold beer to the armed
forces.
Expanding the brewery naturally
followed, and soon he was renting a schooner to ship goods and beer down the Potomac to soldiers stationed in nearby Fredericksburg. With a staff of five, he quickly expanded to
produce 1,000 barrels of Tivoli
beer, making deliveries to local pubs in and around Alexandria.
Tivoli
is “I lov it” spelled backwards.
In the next ten years, Portner
continued to expand the brewery, built an ice plant, bought a shipyard, started
a construction company, and established a German-speaking bank while also
dabbling in real estate. In 1880,
Portner and Edward Eils invented a cooling device that used a steam-driven fan
to force air over refrigerated pipes that is recognized as one of the earliest
air conditioning inventions.
By 1895, the
brewery extended over four blocks on either side of Pendleton Street between North Street, Asaph
and North Washington Streets. Portner
and an investor formed the National Brewing Company at 13th and D
Streets, Kentucky
and South Carolina Avenues, NE. The Main
building was 135 feet tall, 94 feet wide and 137 feet deep with stables and a
huge icehouse, which produced 50 tons of ice per day. The brewery produced 100,000 barrels of beer
annually, or 24 million pints a year.
Portner
and his family lived at an estate in Manassas
coined ‘Annaburg.’ Its grounds included a dairy, deer park and a man-made lake, complete with
swans. When he died in 1906, Portner's
estate was worth $1.9 million.
Portner’s life and legacy is the
subject of a book titled The Shortest
Dynasty: 1837-1947 by Michael Gaines.
The author chronicles the fascinating events of the Portner family,
their trials and triumphs, and provides in-depth look into the brewery business
and the many innovations that Portner helped create. Portner’s Lager beer is today now made by the
Old Dominion Brewing Company.
Portner’s
son, Paul V. Portner, began a real estate company in 1910, and lived at the
Portner Apartment building for some time. He purchased and rented houses in the
area, including 1750 and 1752
Swann Street.
He died of complications from excessive drinking in 1919, at the age of
36. The Portner family sold the
apartments to investors in 1945.
It
reopened the Dunbar Hotel, after a massive, $800,000 reconfiguration of the 123
apartments into 485 hotel rooms. Incompetent
management led to a liquor license suspension in 1950, at a time when the hotel
was renting to prostitutes and vagrants.
In the years following, the building was transformed again, and became Washington’s leading
elite black hotel, welcoming entertainers playing on U Street.
Named after LeDroit park resident and literary figure Paul Lawrence
Dunbar, it remained a popular gathering place for debutante balls, weddings,
and musical performances.
The
Dunbar slowly declined after the city’s other
hotels were integrated, and partially closed its doors in 1964. It was sold to the city in 1970, and remained
vacant for four years, and despite the efforts of preservationists, it was
razed in 1974. In 1978, the
Campbell-Heights apartment complex was built on the site, with a seven story
high rise building and low rise garden apartments.
Copyright Paul K. Williams
