Vic Socotra

30 March 2009

Ballston Station

(Rendering of The Madison at Ballston Station)

The phone on the wall of the glass air-lock was one of those mystery devices with a scrolling menu intended to allow you to call the boxes inside only it you already know something about the people you want to contact inside.

Back at Big Pink, it is no problem. Someone is at the desk in the lobby, 24-7, just like they are at the famous Shoreham Hotel on Rock Creek Park in the District. The hotel was the model for our building when Frances Freed first conceived of the high-rise years and years ago.

It was only natural that the amenities were of the finest, since the modest garden apartment empire she inherited from her husband and drove to completion were not really her style.

At the peak, there were nearly 1800 units in dozens of buildings on the hundred acres that she owned. They were vaguely colonial, and truly brick, constructed in assembly-line fashion like the taxicabs that her husband built for the New York City trade.

You can see that clearly, since one of the older buildings has been truncated at the edge of The Madison property line. The place appears to have been cut with a cheese-slicer. The slate roof ends neatly at the triangular roof trussed and the attic behind it is open, leading to the portion of the building that is still occupied. The back of some closets are hanging in air, and the jagged ends of the brick courses, backed up by old-style thin fire-proof cinder blocks shows the work of the masons who mortared the courses.

The Visiting Dog sniffed all around the exposed steel beam that underpins the first floor, since there were ancient smells there, lingering hot oil and spicy refrito smells over an older layer of nuoc mam fish sauce and maybe the faint older of boiled cabbage and sauerkraut to match the strata of the residents.

Which of course is why we buzzed the rental office. It was not exactly a covert collection mission. I just wanted to know who was going to move into the building next door, and maybe do a little comparison with Big Pink.

Frances Freed had been true to the vision of affordable genteel housing for the ballooning bureaucracy of Washington. Density was low. The two-story brick apartment buildings were scattered on only about 20% of the available land. Motor traffic was minimized. A strip mall was provided within walking distance, and the trolley along Washington Boulevard to Washington was not far away.

Still, Frances lived at the Shoreham Hotel for almost forty years, and that clearly was a way of living with which she was more comfortable.

She had Mickey, her stocky pony-playing driver, roll the big black limo from the District to the headquarters of the Paragon Development Company on the second floor of the Tudor half-timbered office at Glebe and Henderson Road.

The office belongs to an immigration attorney now, and though you can see the overseer’s cottage just up Glebe, there is little sense of what this development was like as an integrated whole.

Frances conceived Big Pink as being part of the metamorphosis of Arlington from a bucolic bedroom community into something more vertical and high-density, with an international style. She was the first to violate the integrity of her own dominion, so you cannot blame the people who came later who chafed at the notion that the architecture had to be compatible with old Buckingham.

You can view The Madison that way. As part of the deal to erect the massive building out to the lot lines, the Paradigm company had to agree to a vaguely colonial style in red brick, with some of the architectural touches of the much smaller old colonials- the distinctive white accent stripe, for one, and the black non-functioning shutters, and the faintly absurd cupolas and weather vanes on the soaring roof line.

Kate greeted me at the door, and introduced herself with an outstretched hand. She was an attractive young professional, slacks and sweater, still working on her patter. I think the Dog startled her, since he is a single minded fellow, and briefly threw her off-message.

“Is this a pet-friendly building?” I asked, thinking I might be asked to park the dog outside at the curb.

“Absolutely,” she said brightly, “Cats and dogs. Up to eighty pounds,” gesturing us toward the working office to the right of the lobby. I tried to imagine cats at 80 pounds, and stopped at pumas. I suppose it is really intended to cut back on the population of fighting dogs.

The Dog was nearly overwhelmed by the new-house odor. Kate is one of three young women who have established the Paradigm Management Corporation’s beachhead in the rental office.

I was handed a rental application and began to try to fill it out as the Visiting Dog ventured into the back office to conduct his own investigation.

The application- I was happy to fill one out ostensibly on behalf of a relative who was on hard times- had four categories of income. I think they are >$36,00, >$46,000, >$56,000 and <$76,000.

The latter category represents the median income for the County, which is not the same as the average income, which is around $101K, thus placing me well within the statistical norm and quite a bit under a couple composed of GS-14s.

Nearly a third of all residents of the County are employed by the Federal Government, after all, and that is not an unreasonable amount grade for the common folks here.

That is the target zone for the “rich” who are going to step up and pay for everything, according to our government officials, though why they would want to do that to themselves is quite beyond me.

Kate the Rental Agent was quite professional, showing me the model apartments. I inquired about the light, since the building is skewed to the dawn and dusk by the strictures of the lot. The older smaller buildings on the property were angled on the site plan to accommodate the movement of the sun.

Big PInk, for example, placed the large pool complex on the west end of the building to catch the sun from just before lunch to right until dark, and it is a happy and welcoming place.

There is a pool at the Madison, Kate told me. I had seen it walking up. The Dog scowled, since it was a grim little enclosure nestled in the bosom of two of the wings, deep in the shadows most of the day.

I asked about subsidized rates, since Kate and inked in the rents for me. They appear to be on a sliding scale and were rather breathtaking- starting at $1700 a month for the one bedroom and rising to $3,000 for the three bedroom models.

“That doesn’t include the utilities, of course. Cable television is extra, like the high-speed internet. You can opt for Verizon FiOS, too,” she said, “They have hundreds of high definition channels. Utilities are extra, by the way.”

I was envious about that. Apparently technology just doesn’t bring fiber-optic communications, but also the to meter out the energy and water consumption of each unit.

That is not the case at Big Pink, so we are truly egalitarian. The total heat and water and electric bill is lumped together and divided equally among us.

I asked how many subsidized units there were in the building, and Kate was evasive and chose not to disclose it. I assume she provided me the "market rate."

“Would you like to see the Dumbarton and the Alexandria models?” asked Kate.

The Visiting Dog looked interested, and almost wrapped his leash around Kate as we walked down the hall.

Tomorrow: The Dumbarton and Alexandria at The Madison

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