Altamont Co-op at Kalorama

Completely renovated Building - 1901 Wyoming Avenue - The Altamont

The Altamont was developed as a rental building in 1915 – 1916, and in its original configuration had three apartments on each floor: On the east and west there were two grand, 12-room apartments with servants’ quarters and in the center, one smaller bachelor’s apartment. Most of the original apartments had at least one wood-burning fireplace, and those fireplaces are still maintained in good working order today.

The seventh floor featured a restaurant, with dumb-waiters servicing the apartments, in addition to trunk rooms for each apartment. The basement, too, served the residents, with a billiard room, barber shop, beauty parlor, servants’ dining room and a laundry. The laundry room still has the massive original gas clothes dryer, now disconnected but used as a convenient drying rack.

The developer, Colonel George Truesdell, razed his large three-story frame Victorian to clear the land for his new venture, which also became his new residence. He constructed the Italian Renaissance, luxury building with rusticated limestone and tan brick facade, marble entrance porch, seventh floor loggia as part of the restaurant, and pavilions on the roof. All sides were finished, since the irregularly-shaped lot dictated that they all be visible.

The lobby and reception room have a number of impressive architectural details. The reception room ceiling is especially interesting, a colorful Edwardian interpretation of an Italian Renaissance soffitto. The room focuses on a massive fireplace with a tapered hood topped by a gilt cartouche. Interestingly enough, the furniture is the original, from 1916. The reception room hosts a variety of special events, from anniversary dinners to weddings.

In 1926 a new owner subdivided the larger apartments into one and two-bedroom units, a total of fifty-eight. In 1949 the Altamont became a cooperative and more apartments were added: The seventh floor became five apartments, but the trunk rooms were maintained as storage rooms for the members, and the billiard room in the basement was turned into a two-bedroom unit with an outside entrance. The rose garden in the rear became a parking lot for twenty-six cars.

In the years since its establishment as a cooperative, there has been a fair amount of space revision. Most notably, small apartments have been combined, and a few years ago several apartments on the west side of the sixth floor were re-joined to recreate an original 12-room space, complete with the round reception hall and views of the city in all four directions. The building at last count had 50 apartments of widely varying sizes. Dynamic Boards of Directors and an active membership are ensuring the next century of the Altmont’s existence as a best address.