Omni Shoreham Hotel

The Omni Shoreham Hotel is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Joseph Henry Abel, and built between 1929 and 1930 in Washington DC, DC.

Omni Shoreham Hotel is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

• Shoreham Hotel between 1930 and 1973.
• Shoreham Americana Hotel between 1973 and 1980.
• Dunfey Hotel between 1980 and 1985.
• Omni Shoreham Hotel from 1985 until this day.

Its precise street address is 2500 Calvert Street NW, Washington Dc, DC. You can also find it on the map here.

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 2000 and 2019.

Joseph Henry Abel was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the Omni Shoreham Hotel a reality:

• Westbrook as the company in charge of the elevators system
• Harry M. Bralove as the Main Developer
• C.V. Harlan as the collaborating Artist

The Omni Shoreham Hotel can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Omni Shoreham Hotel was completed in 1930, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features mostly orange bricks, with a few dark-brown bricks sprinkled through the pattern, adding some rhythm to the otherwise continuous facade. The facade has little to no ornamentation, other than some minimal setback patterns executed with the same bricks at the top of the building and a handful of limestone spandrels decorating only some fo the last floor's windows..