CHLOETHIEL WOODARD SMITH, FAIA (1910-1992)
Smith earned an undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Oregon in 1932 and a masters in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis in 1933. Early in her career, Smith worked for the Federal Housing Authority and in the 1940s for Berla & Abel. She was a professor of architecture at the University de San Andres in La Paz, Bolivia, from 1942 to 1944. She formed Keyes, Smith & Satterlee in 1950, and from 1963 to 1983 she practiced in her own firm, Chloethiel Woodard Smith & Associates.
In 1952, with Louis Justement, she developed plans for the redevelopment of Washington's Southwest quadrant. She also designed the National Airport Metro station. At a key intersection in downtown Washington—the corner of Connecticut Avenue and L Street, N.W.—Smith designed three of the four office buildings; architects and critics have referred to the intersection as "Chloethiel's Corner."
Overseas, she designed the US Embassy in Paraguay and developed a master plan for Quito, Ecuador. Smith was influential in the renovation of the Pension Building to serve as home to the National Building Museum. She was a member of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1967 to 1976. At the end of her career in the late 1980s, nearly 30% of architects working in Washington, D.C. had come through her office. Hugh Newell Jacobsen worked for her. Smith was the sixth woman inaugurated into the AIA College of Fellows and at the peak of her practice led the country's largest woman-owned architecture firm. Bio adapted from Wikipedia.
“Architects are the set designers in people’s lives, and until the lights go on and the play begins, we are the only people who have seen the whole and put the elements together. Seeing the buildings that shape people’s lives before they are there and seeing them well in my mind’s eye—that is the source of my work.” - Smith
1947 - The David Rioch House, 4607 Dorset Avenue, Chevy Chase MD. Was 207. Builder G. Morris Steinbraker Smith won the Washington Board of Trade Architects Award. Sold to Timothy Alexander. Sold in 2008 to Leonard Reed and Joyce Lasky. Sold in 2013 to Adam Shub.
1948 - The Henry A. and R. C. Miller House, 135 South Van Buren, Rockville MD. Commissioned 1947. Sold for the first time in 1996 to James M. Pickel.
1949 - The Hobart and Alice Rowen House, aka Upside Down House, 5701 Warwick Place, Chevy Chase MD. Deeded in 2005 to Daniel Rowen. Sold in 2009 to David Stratford Kass. Sold in 2021 to Joseph and Paige Wender.
1951 - The Howard B. Myers House, aka Climate Control Project, 2940 Chain Bridge Road, NW, Washington DC. Changes made by subsequent owners including merging three bedrooms into one and the 4th owners added a second story and a pool. Secons photo by Ezra Stoller. Sold in 2001 to Stephen Goldstein. Deeded in 2017 to Stephen Goldstein and Antonietta Corvasce.
1952 - Tract homes in Forestvale, Silver Spring and High Point, Bethesda MD.
1952 - The Julius Wadsworth Weekend House, Fairfax VA. 1382sf. Featured in Home and Garden Magazine August 1952. Status unknown.
1953 - The Bullard House, Annapolis MD.
1955 - The Lewis House, Potomac MD.
1958 - The Frank and Evalyn Washburn House, 7238 Drum Point Road, St. Michaels MD. Transferred to their daughter. Sold in 2007 to William and Nancy Burton. Sold in 2021 to unknown buyer.
Around 1961 - Row Houses, 3rd Street and G Avenue SW, Washington DC. Part of the Capitol Park project with landscape architect Dan Kiley. Example: 713 3rd Street SW, #607. Sold in 2015 to Matthew Deal and Elizabeth McCabe.
1962 - The Brook House Apartments, aka Brook House Condominiums, 99 Pond Avenue, Brookline MA. Completed 1970 with landscape architect Dan Kiley. Four buildings, 763 units.
1965 - The Waterview Townhouses, Orchard Lane and Waterview Cluster, Reston VA. Hard to say how many were built, these two streets may or may not have been all of the homes. Example: 11428 Orchard Lane. Sold in 2023 to Rebecca Semmes and Nadir Syed Mustafa Hasnain.
1959 - The American Embassy Chancery and Residence, 776 Avenida Mariscal Lopez, Asuncion, Parguay. In her design Smith took care to employ local materials and lessons. A new embassy was completed in 2021 on the grounds of her original building.
1968 - The Capitol Park Apartments and Townhouses, bounded by Southwest Expressway, 4th Street and I, and Delaware Avenue SW, Washington DC. Commissioned 1958. Landscape architect Dan Kiley. Capitol Park was the first residential urban renewal project sponsored by the Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA), formed to redevelop a blighted 522-acre area in southwest Washington DC. Changes in ownership occurred over the years, and in the mid-2000s the pavilion and pool were destroyed. Listed on the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites.
1966 - The Harbour Square Apartments aka Harbour Square Owners, 500 N Street SW, Washington DC. Landscape architect, Dan Kiley. Became condos. The complex consists of three high-rise apartment buildings and sixteen rowhouses arranged in a series of quadrangles. The rowhouses were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and Harbour Square was added in 2018. Sample unit: 520 N Street, #S319.
1966 - The Spa Creek Townhouses, 910 Primrose Road, Annapolis MD. 3 stories, 293 units.
1966 - The Coleson Cluster Townhouses, Wainwright Drive, Reston VA. Example: 1648 Wainwright.
1966 - Wheat Row Townhouses Renovation, 1315, 1317, 1319, and 1321 4th Street SW, Washington DC. During the construction of the Harbour Square Apartments (see previous email), she renovated the Wheat Row Townhouses, built in the late 1790's by architect William Lovering, and incorporated them into the new development. Attachment 1, Wheat Row on the right (East), Harbour Square on left (West).
1969 - The Wilde Lake Highrise, Columbia MD. In the early 1960s, developer James W. Rouse decided to develop a new model city. Rouse's ideas about what a new model city should be like were informed by a number of factors, including his personal Christian faith as well as the goal for his company to earn a profit, influences that he did not consider to be incompatible with one another. After exploring possible new city locations near Atlanta Georgia, and Raleigh-Durham North Carolina, Rouse focused his attention between Baltimore and Washington D.C. in Howard County, Maryland. Several villages, including Wilde Lake, were developed. Still researching which building or buildings were Smith's.
1970 - The CW Smith House Addition and Renovation, Chevy Chase MD.
964 - LaClede Town, St. Louis MO. Mixed-income, federally funded housing project located near St. Louis University incorporating various housing types and had spaces dedicated to social interaction and artists. It was an intentionally diverse community with respect to residents' income and race/ethnicity. This experimental urban development was "cool, hip, cheap and populated by people committed to making integration work." It became an incubator for new music, dance, poetry and other arts, especially jazz. Loyal former residents began organizing reunions in 1997. Eventually, LaClede Town became run down, and the complex was destroyed in the late 1980s. Some of the Grand Forest Apartments, a part of LaClede, remain as student housing for St. Louis University.
1965 - The Lake Anne Cluster, aka Waterview Townhouses sent earlier. Not sure if I included the drawing. This was also part of a planned community or new town, developed by Robert E, Simon.