Demolition and Preservation at Former Chinese Embassy

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Drive by the former embassy of the People’s Republic ofChina on Connecticut Avenue and you’ll see an interesting sight: a building façade propped up by an elaborate set of braces, next to another building undergoing wholesale demolition. Much demolition has alreadyoccurred. But the facade is being preserved as part of the Sheridan-Kalorama Historic District, and will be incorporated into a new building on the site that’s beendesigned by Esocoff and Associates.
While the embassy proper decamped for Van Ness Street in2009, the new Connecticut Avenue building will serve as the embassy’s residentialand consular building, containing 136 mostly two-bedroom apartments fordiplomatic staff, and some office space.
The original embassy was actually composed of two distinctbut connected buildings. The more historic structure at 2310 Connecticut Avenuewas built in the 1920s, and its façade is the one that’s being salvaged. Theother structure, at 2300 Connecticut, was the hulking, largely unadornedbuilding that most observers remember as the Chinese Embassy. It started out inthe late 1940's as a hotel, but was turned into an embassy after Nixon’s visitto China in 1972.
Now, most of the latter building is being reduced to rubble.“I think one of the reasons we had unanimous community support was thatremoving a building that unappealing was a mitzvah—a good deed,” explained PhilipEsocoff, adding that demolition of the newer building should be complete by theend of 2012.
But the older building has a different, more delicate story.  Braces have been utilized to preserve the two outside walls andstrengthen them against wind while the building’s interior is removed. “Wewill cut away at the wall behind it, but we’ll have to do it carefully, by hand,”said Esocoff. “That’s a particular kind of process, saving a front wall: youdon’t want to rip the building down inside because it might pull somethingoff.”

Esocoff rendering of the new building's facade

Esocoff said the workers—part of Clark Construction team, unlike the previous Chinese construction crew in Cleveland Park —aresalvaging some of the old bricks and ornamental metal balcony railings, whichwill be incorporated into the new structure. Though it will include an interior courtyard, the new building will fill in some of the empty space that lay above the old edifice's lobby and will therefore be largely thesame size as the original set of buildings.
“I think it’ll be a very well-constructed building, a littlehigher quality than we might do on a standard apartment house because they planon being there forever. It’ll be institutional grade,” said Escoff. “And thiswill really improve the vista as you come down from the bridge.”
Groundbreaking will occur after the first of the year, withthe first step being an excavation of the property’s lower levels to include aparking garage.

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