Building History

This building was one of six fireproof telephone buildings the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company (C&P) built around 1906 to handle a sharp increase in telephone customers. Between 1898 and 1902, the number of telephone “subscribers” in D.C. had quadrupled from 2,000 to 8,000 and the company needed more space for the women who connected callers to each other by moving plugs on a switchboard. The new building at 629 B Street, which later was renamed Constitution Avenue, was to be a manual switching center, also known as a “central office.”

The building was designed by the New York firm of Edlitz and McKensey, which had become famous two years earlier for designing One Times Square and went on to design many buildings for AT&T and its telephone company subsidiaries. The builder was John McGregor, who erected numerous embassies around D.C., as well as several other high-profile projects.

In 1949, C&P’s last manual exchange office at 629 Constitution was cut out of service, and the 66 operators still patching calls were assigned to new duties. The task of connecting calls was transferred to a new automated central office at 114 7th Street NE, just around the corner.

Though 629 Constitution ceased to operate as an exchange facility, C&P continued to use the building for storage and other purposes. C&P sold the building in August 1979. In 1983, the architects Zinser & Dunn Associates began adapting the building as a condominium of 18 residential units. A Declaration of Condominium was recorded December 17, 1985, establishing “The Telephone Company, A Condominium.”

Further information on the building’s history is sketchy, particularly for the period after the introduction of automated switching. If you know anyone who worked in this building or if you know more about its history, please let us know.

If you’re a fan of historic buildings, check out HistoryQuest DC, an interactive map stuffed with information on some 127,000 buildings in the District, from the White House and the Capitol on down to the funkiest little alley rowhouse. You can zoom in to get a house-by-house accounting of when each building went up, plus the builders, architects, and original owners.

Here, for example, is how our building shows up: