Image by Jake Blumgart used with permission.

A stretch of V Street NW, just north of the U Street Corridor, has a handful of two and three-story rowhouses all lined up along the north side of the block. And in the middle, jutting up more than twice their height, is 1013 V Street NW.

The three-unit condo building’s official name is The Ava. But for years, online commenters have called it the “Middle Finger.”

The building, whose “pop-up” addition became infamous after it was built in 2013, got some 2021 attention when a tweet from journalist Jake Blumgart went viral.

The tweet renewed a debate we see over and over again in DC’s housing and development space. Many argue the region needs to do whatever it takes to add desperately needed housing units to curb an affordability crisis fueled by unmet demand. But some projects are met with a simple, yet powerful complaint: they’re just plain ugly.

A sore thumb

According to a 2013 report from WTOP, The Ava’s developer installed a steel frame on a 100-year-old rowhouse to build it up to five-story, 60-foot heights, bringing the total housing units in the building to three.

Contrary to Blumgart’s Twitter musing that the “zoning hearing for this one must have been epic,” the house was actually built by-right — in other words, no zoning hearing required because the plans complied with the area’s zoning guidelines. The block, just a five-minute walk from the U Street Metro station, is in an arts overlay district zoned for higher density development.

While the building may tower over its immediate neighbors, just a few houses down is a six-story condo building built the same year that is comparable in height. And a block away is bustling U Street, where officials are making moves to boost density and allow more housing.

The Ava wasn’t alone — nor was it alone in its notoriety. “Pop-ups,” vertical additions to rowhouses that often create condo units, have been around for more than a decade. The Post reported in 2014 that pop-up construction was “spreading across the city,” though it’s not clear what that meant in raw numbers.

With the spotlight, of course, comes the critics. Among the terms used to describe pop-ups, as reported by the Post: Monsters. Gaudy. Oddballs.

Of course, aesthetic concerns about new construction are nothing new. From historic districts to design review to “neighborhood character,” aesthetics are often a major part of the opposition to new development.

For a recent local example of this dynamic, look to Petula Dvorak’s column in the Post about the seemingly endless battle in Takoma Park to block the development of a parking lot adjacent to the neighborhood co-op. In the column, Dvorak writes:

“These are the kind of urban, insta-community developments that have been popping up all over D.C. and the nation. The compressed grocery, the underground parking, condos, an eyeglass place, (another) bank and some version of the of-the-moment fitness craze. Yuck.

It’s the kind of urban development I cheered at first but have come to resent. They’re all over D.C., they all look alike, and in each of them, residents had little say. Who has time to fight them all?”

Many people who lean urbanist dismiss aesthetic concerns like these. Our region is facing a dire housing shortage, and producing housing — particularly affordable housing, but other kinds too — is a major priority for the District. Even when new housing is expensive, as the condos created by pop-ups can be, research indicates just building any housing at all can ease pressure on the housing market (though of course, in light of DC’s history of displacement, that idea itself can be controversial).

The stakes for the aesthetics-versus-housing debate are high — but in the case of pop-ups in particular, not so much. This kind of piecemeal density does add to DC’s housing stock, but not nearly as much as multifamily housing construction.

Data from the Census Bureau’s Building Permits Survey Image by the author.

Between 2016 and 2020, Census building permit data shows that permits for new construction of five or more units vastly outnumbered all one to four-unit applications combined (of which pop-ups are only a fraction). Those smaller projects only made up 5% of all new construction permits in the last five years.

Numbers aside, the aesthetics of any given building are in the eye of the beholder. And if you’re a beholder with an eye for the Middle Finger, you’re in luck: one of the units is on the market.

Want to share your thoughts? We welcome Emails to the Editor in response to news/analysis, opinion, and policy pieces. Learn more.

Continue the conversation about urbanism in the Washington region and support GGWash’s news and advocacy when you join the GGWash Neighborhood!

Tagged: architecture, density, historic districts, housing, pop ups, rowhouses, zoning

Libby Solomon was a writer/editor and Managing Editor for GGWash from 2020 to 2022. She was previously a reporter for the Baltimore Sun covering the Baltimore suburbs and a writer for Johns Hopkins University’s Centers for Civic Impact.