Whitelaw Hotel - View this location on map Apartment hotel which long served as a unique place of meeting and public accommodation for prominent African-American educators, entertainers, and other notable public figures during the era of segregation; early and exceptional minority real estate development effort, financed and built entirely by African-American entrepreneurs, investors, designers, and craftsmen; notable example of the attempt by civic leaders to counter the effects of racial discrimination and economic adversity in the early 20th century; associated with prominent businessman and civic leader John Whitelaw Lewis; notable work of Isaiah T. Hatton, locally trained as one of the nation's first African-American architects; representative example of a large apartment building in the Italian Renaissance Revival style; important in the expansion of apartment living to a broader middle class; 4 stories, U-shaped with facades of buff brick with limestone trim, classical details, stained glass skylight over dining room; built 1919; extensively restored 1991-2 1839 13th Street, NW, Washington , DC Historical

---