The developer was searching for a name for the new downtown condo building, something swank and high-tech to rope the young and thick-walleted set.
A plain address -- 1320 13th Street -- just would not do. Not enough futuristic, I'm-too-hip-to-help-myself buzz.
Then the name came like a caffeinated epiphany: The Icon.
"We wanted to be techie and modern. We wanted to attract a certain upscale profile," Pamela Bundy said. "When I heard 'The Icon,' that was it."
Ever since they first put hammer to nail, developers have tapped geography and even their own names to brand their buildings, whether it was The Cairo on Q Street or Trump Tower on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue.
‘Fresh feel’
But as ever-so-contemporary condominium buildings rise all over the District, a names race has broken out, as developers invoke the modern, the urban and the other-worldly to lure buyers. A few blocks from The Icon, construction has begun on The Matrix, meant to inspire reminders not of the sci-fi movie but "a forward feeling -- a fresh feel," said real estate marketer Ross McWilliams.
Then there's VISIO, on 10th Street NW. The developer had planned to name it The Bailey, for Pearl Bailey, once a regular performer on nearby U Street. But the retro touch was dropped when the building was designed with floor-to-ceiling windows and a sleek look. "It did not fit 'The Bailey,' " said Paul Robertson, the developer. "VISIO is crisp and very cool and very contemporary."
Eric Colbert, an architect whose projects include The Matrix, said the branding often is less about design than marketing. "It's about a lifestyle -- young, hip and urban," he said, the types who aren't "doing a lot of cooking at home. They're busy and traveling and going to South Beach on the weekends."
And it can work.
Radius, the name of a condominium building on 13th Street NW, helped hook Duane McKnight, 48, a general partner at an investment firm, when he shopped for a one-bedroom unit. "It's pretty cool," he said, walking outside one night last week, the building's name looming in blue-lit metal over the entrance. He was looking for a place that was "current, upscale contemporary, all the latest."
Not all convinced
Not everyone is seduced. Ken Eggerl, 38, an events producer, doesn't like to tell people he lives at The Icon, if only so his friends won't tease him as "Fancy Pants."
"I thought the name was a little obnoxious, like you live in a building and you're above it all," he said.
This being Washington, there are the salutes to officialdom, such as The Constitution, a newly built condominium building on Constitution Avenue NE, and Senate Square, a development planned for H Street NE, just north of the Capitol. Other names were inspired by homegrown heroes: Langston Lofts, for poet Langston Hughes, and the Ellington on U Street, for the piano-playing Duke. And three buildings going up downtown pay homage to music -- The Rhapsody, The Sonata and Madrigal Lofts.
Even as they overhaul properties, developers sometimes keep old names. Across from Meridian Hill Park, residents recall the Fedora center, a home for troubled youngsters. In recent years, that building was razed, and crews are putting the finishing touches on a condominium complex there.
The name: The Fedora.
Allen Uzikee Nelson, 67, an artist who has lived on Belmont Street NW for 31 years, said he appreciates the transformation and can live with the name. He knows all about the impulse to christen, having tagged a rowhouse he owns up the street, Wanzer Place, for his great-great grandfather, an escaped slave. "I wanted people to know who he was," he said.
On Park Road in Columbia Heights, near 11th Street, a developer has dubbed two long-vacant rowhouses he remodeled as "The Columbia Pristine" to celebrate the neighborhood's revitalization. But the name inspires arched eyebrows among longtime neighbors who are well aware of the area's crime-checkered past.
"It was a regular old house. It wasn't The Pristine, I'll tell you that," said Bryant Cruel, 33, chuckling behind the counter at Arthur's Grocery a block away, who grew up in the neighborhood. "It's funny to see how things change overnight."
Waxing utopic is typically the province of suburban developers, who have made it a practice to raze trees and pave over farmland to plant subdivisions with such names as Victory Lakes or Hopewell's Landing, Sleepy Hollow Estates or the Enclave at Arundel Preserve.
Generations ago, developers in the District were more apt to draw inspiration from afar, according to James M. Goode, author of "Best Addresses," a history of Washington's most architecturally important apartment buildings.
Portland Flats was the city's first apartment house, when it opened at Thomas Circle in 1880. The Dresden was built in 1910 on Connecticut Avenue, the same year that residents moved into The Northumberland on New Hampshire Avenue, named for a British county on the border of Scotland.
"The names were devised to denote status and dignity," Goode said and added that developers later looked closer to home for their muse. The Gwenwood, formerly on 19th Street NW, was named for its builder's wife, and The Marlyn, on Cathedral Avenue, was the fusing of a wife and daughter -- Marion and Carlyn.
Test of time?
The names that developers are divining these days are eye-catching, Goode acknowledged, but he wonders whether they "will be dated in 10 years. People will laugh. Classic means it stands the test of time."
In some cases, developers are seeking gravitas by tying buildings to their neighborhood's history. The DeSoto and The Hudson, new buildings on P Street, were named for classic cars to memorialize the auto repair shops that once lined the street. The Metro, a building a block over, was named for an old supermarket that was on the site.
Topher Cushman, who refers to himself as "the name guy" at Macy Development, said he read up on U Street's past before coming up with The Matinee, as the Sixth Street NW building is called, to honor its proximity to the long-shuttered Howard and Dunbar theaters.
"You need a name," he said. "It gives the building an identity. . . . People can talk about it, and not as 'That condo.' "
In other cases, developers are trying to evoke The Big City, as in The Cosmopolitan on Sixth Street, or The New Yorker, which is to replace the dreary low-rise warehouse at 300 L Street NE.
Back to drawing board
A development team putting up an apartment building at 15th and P streets discarded nine names, including Cornerstone, Bluestone, Oppidan and Obsidian before choosing Metropole because it was "chic and New Yorkey," said Carol Felix, a designer on the project.
Then there are developers who await inspiration that never arrives.
Georgio Furioso has struggled for the past couple of years to find a name for the modern apartment building he's planning on 14th Street, next to The Matrix.
At one point, Furioso said, he came up with The Cubist and The Razor Edge, both of which were scrapped. At another, he thought of Stage Right, in honor of the Studio Theatre up the street. But only one person endorsed that idea.
"My girlfriend," Furioso said.
He has since returned to the drawing board.