Nate Gallant: One of the first things I noticed when I moved to DC was the architecture.Â
There are the junkspace glass monstrosities that dominate the downtown neighborhoods, filling the city with first-floor restaurants or bars that, without fail, instantly scream "medium-nice hotel lobby" no matter the decor. There are characterless slabs of heavy white granite that weigh down the edges of the National Mall. Having no personal business in government, these buildings present nothing in the way of interiority or depth — no vaulted secrecy, no historically dusty, wood-lined offices. Merely flat, neoclassical enormity, reaching for timelessness in the blandest manner possible, they scream pure synecdoche, devoid of any markers of their history. Were they built yesterday? Or ten million years ago by aliens? Who could tell?Â
And then there are the turrets, jutting out in tall, brick semi-circles from DC's relatively short rows of townhouses, or holding court at the corner of intersections where city thoroughfares sneak into disparate patches of cozy sidestreets. Domestic architecture in DC consists of scattered pockets of row-houses and townhouses, like many cities on or around the East Coast. In Boston, you can find likely the closest facsimiles of their various English architectural antecedents. In New York, a more Italianate version dots much of the city, though there are plenty of the French variety, particularly amongst the mansions of Park Slope. The DC turret is a bizarrely medieval detail for a city where, outside of Georgetown, the layers of architectural history feel very hard to spot, and reach back to a relatively shallow depth. However, the more I traversed the city, the more I began to see them as a defining feature and the visual anchor of many otherwise disorganized blocks.
The turret offers a vocabulary of vertical texture in place of orioles or bay windows, a defined but relatively bulbous form of fluting. There are squared, hexagonal and octagonal, and various dimensions of rounded turrets. There are no turrets on new housing developments, however, which are almost exclusively hulking, empty, awkwardly square gentrification cubes. The turret is a clear visual theme that binds what is otherwise a chaotic array of DC residential architecture, which ranges from cosmopolitan to chaotic to empty or bleak — broken up in a non-sequitur fashion that reflects the brutal dynamics of gentrification and red-lining.
The turret could also be seen as a symbol of the securitized city — DC has 44 police agencies and counting. Some appear a few design notes away from having arrow slits. Others, especially in Georgetown or Dupont, project themselves outward as titillating extensions of private galleries. They often reveal not just one but many gallery walls of what seems from afar to be museum-level art collections, not to mention the giant white busts on a window sill of the turret, a seemingly uniquely DC trope. Are people signaling political allegiance? Classical art chops?Â
From the inside, however, they present a weird miracle, defying the enshittification of subdivided urban domestic housing. While the outside can seem ill-fitting, the outcropping effect of the turret means more than 180 degrees of light exposure to at least a small part of your house, much more than any other shaped window. A set of translucent curtains means that your tiny combination living room, dining room, and kitchen can be entirely naturally lit for much of the day. It means a tiny little space for a dining table, and doubles as an ideal home office, with clean but flowing separation from an otherwise completely open living room or kitchen. It means being able to have something of a view, without feeling completely exposed — a rarity in city life. While they add some premium to an apartment, their economy of space means a much lower price tag than an equivalent set of views in a penthouse, much less buying an actual standalone home in DC.Â
Turrets are a minor rebellion from the cruel and angular efficiency of hyper-commodified junkspace that has invaded DC neighborhoods like the Wharf, U Street and Mount Vernon Triangle. Where the glass curtain-wall only exposes, the turret stands firm at an intentional medium between opacity and transparency. The turret's bulbous exterior can be ungainly, but the sense of interiority they afford can offer an unexpected domesticity in an otherwise alienating landscape of unaffordable housing.