Community Building Blocks wisconsin avenue and warren street security and style came to tenleytown in 1900, when Engine House No. 20 opened here. No longer would fire fighters have to come all the way from Georgetown to extinguish blazes in Tenleytown’s wood-frame houses. Opened with horse-drawn equipment, Engine House 20 became the District’s second to motorize. The modern facility reassured builders and buyers that Tenleytown was a good investment. Recent improvements to the fire house harmonize with its original Italianate design by Leon Dessez. The Art Deco C&P Telephone Building next door was erected in 1907. Its architects, Eidlitz and McKenzie, are better known for No. 1 Times Square, where each December 31 a lighted crystal ball drops to mark the New Year. The first enterprise to occupy the block to the south was Raymond T. Johnson, Sr.’s Wisconsin Avenue Market. Shortly after he opened in 1932, Johnson agreed to sell a few of his neighbor’s geraniums. From these humble beginnings grew Johnson’s Flower Center. The Friendship Building, at 4321 Wisconsin Avenue, was Tenleytown’s first office building. Its second floor dance studio was the 1944 birthplace of Mary Day’s Washington School of Ballet. Nearby at 39th Street and Windom Place is “the Rest,” Tenleytown’s oldest surviving house, dating to the early 1800s. It is the centerpiece of Armesleigh Park, part of a post-World War I building boom. Step off the trail onto Armesleigh Park’s quiet blocks to see the variety of houses with rough stone chimneys and generous porches designed by prolific local architects George Santmyers or Alexander Sonnemann.
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