Skip to main content

WATCH: Plans for Fannie Mae site come to life in architect’s video

Related News

WASHINGTON — Developers Roadside Development and North America Sekisui House LLC held a ceremonial groundbreaking this week for their $640 million mixed-use redevelopment of Fannie Mae’s former Wisconsin Avenue headquarters, to be called City Ridge, and architect Shalom Baranes brought a virtual tour to the party.

The two-minute video opens with an animation showing a complex structural-engineering feat for Roadside, which will preserve the 60-year-old main headquarters building but incorporate grocer Wegmans into the structure by sliding it underneath.

“What we’re actually doing will be holding up the building with a steel structure and we’re going to cut underneath the building and slide Wegmans into the basement of this existing building, and then create a whole new street and retail presence in the back,” Roadside’s Richard Lake told WTOP.

The virtual tour adds the apartment and office structures that will surround the existing historic building, all of which will be incorporated into the back side of the 10-acre property, preserving the expansive park in front.

When complete, the development will include 687 residential units and 100,000 square feet of office space.

It is expected to be completed sometime in 2022.

America 250: How people ordered their ready-to-assemble homes from a catalog

For decades, Americans could browse a catalog, choose a home and order it by mail. Sears, Roebuck and Company was a prominent manufacturer of mail-order homes. The company sold about 70,000 to 75,000 homes from 1908 to 1940, according to the Sears Archives. Its catalogs offered more than 400 different house styles and the listed prices could range from around $200 to $6,000. Customers even had the option of designing their own home and submitting the blueprint to Sears.
Read Next Story