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Richard Selden • April 28, 2015

This Friday and Saturday, visitors to the stretch of upper Wisconsin Avenue known as Book Hill may feel like calling it “la Colline aux Livres.” That’s because the 12th annual Georgetown French Market, organized by the Georgetown Business Improvement District, will have once again turned the blocks between P Street and Reservoir Road into an open-air Parisian-style bazaar.

Between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. both days, more than 40 local fashion and home boutiques, antique shops, art galleries and cafés will be offering special displays and discounts. The sidewalk-sale ambiance will be enhanced with strolling entertainers.

On Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., the TD Bank parking lot on Wisconsin Avenue above Q Street will become a gathering place for families with children to listen to live music, interact with mimes and have their faces painted and caricatures sketched.

Live music with a Louisiana-gypsy-jazz flair will also be presented at Wisconsin Avenue and P Street and the 1600 block of Wisconsin Avenue near Urban Chic. The list of performers includes acoustic swing quartet Laissez Foure (a play on laissez faire – get it?), Yamomanem (said to be New Orleans patois for “your mother and the rest of your family and friends that always seem to be around the house”), the Rachel & Sean Jazz Duo, Swing Guitars DC and the Red Hot Rhythm Chiefs.

With some help from the Alliance Française of Washington, the Georgetown Public Library at the top of Book Hill is going Gallic with three special programs. On Friday at noon, art historian Vanessa Badré will lead a discussion, “From Versailles to China.” On Saturday at 10:30 a.m., there will be a Madeline storytime, with a reading of “Madeline at the White House” and a workshop in which participants will make their very own yellow hat. On Saturday at 2 p.m., Jacques Bodelle will talk about and sign copies of his book “Petite(s) Histoire(s) des Francais d’Ameriqué [A Brief History of the French in America].”

At Wisconsin and Volta Place, Georgetown Lutheran Church, founded in 1769, will invite French Market visitors to stop in for water and treats.

Among the curbside food options will be merguez sausages, sweet and savory crepes, Vietnamese bánh mì sandwiches, BBQ chicken skewers, pizza and dipped fruit. Patisserie Poupon – which will feature chicken with lemon and olive tagine along with their extensive selection of fresh-baked pastries – is running a drawing to win an Illy Y5 Duo espresso machine, now through Saturday.

Free parking will be available Saturday at Hardy Middle School across from the Georgetown Safeway, near the intersection with 34th Street, where there is also a Capital Bikeshare station.
Participating Retailers (west of Wisconsin, north to south):

All We Art
Unique international fine art, wooden/textile handmade crafts, jewelry and bags.
30% off select items.

Urban Chic
Up to 80% off sale items; 15% off full-priced clothing and denim.

Simply Banh Mi
Banh mi sandwiches, Vietnamese coffee, milk tea and more.

Vicky’s Nail Boutique
25% off select nail polishes.

Kennedy & Co.
Stop by to meet our associates and pick up your free gifts.

Edible Arrangements
$3s moothies, $6 six-count and $12 twelve-count of dipped fruit.

Café Bonaparte
Crepe stand, $5 per crepe.

The Phoenix
50% off select clothing, jewelry and accessories.

Little Birdies
10% off spring/summer clothing, shoes and accessories, plus 40% off sale items.

Ella Rue
In-store select merchandise 50-75% off.

P Street Gallerie
Original works and prints by local, regional and international artists. Receive 10% off framing coupon with purchase.

Participating Retailers (east of Wisconsin, north to south)

A Mano
Up to 75% off house and garden.

Cross MacKenzie Gallery
10% off work inside the gallery; 40% off ceramic items outside.

Pretty Chic
60% off jewelry; 50% off clothing, shoes and handbags. Check out our backyard Secret Garden Sales.

Maurine Littleton Gallery
SwitchWood bow ties, art books. 30% off select artworks on paper.

The Bean Counter
BBQ chicken skewers, lemonade, cold and hot drinks. 10% off sandwiches.

The Dandelion Patch
50-90% off select items in our Georgetown store only. Restrictions apply.

Egg by Susan Lazar
Up to 70% off fall/winter apparel, $5 and $10 baskets filled with past season merchandise and 20% off our brand-new spring line.

Comer & Co.
Antiques and home furnishings. Check out our expanded collection of discounted items.

Moss & Co.
Up to 75% off. Assortment of home accessories, antiques, furniture, garden items, jewelry.

David Bell Antiques
Antiques and home furnishings.

Matt Camron Rugs
Rugs and textiles.

Marston Luce
Broad selection of antiques, accessories and jewelry.

Sherman Pickey
Up to 80% off men’s and women’s merchandise.

Patisserie Poupon
Croissants, macarons, and more. Grilled merguez, chicken and steak sandwiches. Illy coffee. French tablecloths, handmade African baskets and more.

Susan Calloway Fine Arts
Middle Kingdom porcelains and discounted frames.

Manny & Olga’s Pizza
$2.50-$3 fresh pizza slices and $1 drinks.

Pho Viet & Grille
30-40% off Vietnamese sandwiches, salads and coffee drink.

Reddz Trading
20% off all merchandise except Chanel and Hermes; table specials.

Bacchus Wine Cellar
Six-pack of French wines in reusable canvas tote, $50. Wine tasting at the cellar, prior to purchase. 15% off all French wines.

Nectar Skin Bar
Spring glam-a-rama sale: select make-up and beauty products 30-50% off.

Illusions
Hair artist styling outside (weather permitting), giveaways and gifts with purchase.

Kiki Lynn
25% off all full-price Kiki Lynn items.

Britt Ryan
Special prices/discounts off select dresses, tops and bottoms.

Winifred Paper
15% off ready-to-order stationery and ready-made note sets.

Ella Rue
50-75% off jewelry, 30% off scarves and hats, 50-75% off select designer merchandise.

Artist’s Proof
20% off art books by Phaidon, Taschen, Rizzoli and many other fine art book publishers. Stop by and indulge in works by both local and international contemporary artists.

Jaryam
Additional 20% off on sale items for savings up to 70% off.

Via Umbria
Take a break from the Frenchiness of the Market and shop Italian artisanal products. Umbria handprinted ceramics, pastas and tools for your Italian kitchen.

Appalachian Spring
Unique gifts and fine American crafts. 20% to 50% off select items. [gallery ids="102058,134553,134552" nav="thumbs"]

Linnea Kristiansson • April 23, 2015

”This is a clear violation of the District of Columbia Whistleblower Protection Act,” said Metropolitan Police Department officer Hilton Burton, as he initiated a lawsuit against MPD Chief Cathy Lanier in August 2012. The suit finally went to trial last week.

Burton filed a whistleblower lawsuit after he was demoted two ranks and transferred from his position in the Special Operations Division following a police escort of actor Charlie Sheen nearly four years ago.

In the lawsuit, Burton claims that the MPD did not have a ”clear policy in place to safeguard the health and safety to the public as it relates to non-dignitary escorts.”

Burton is suing for alleged violations of the Whistleblower Protection Act and seeking $1 million in compensatory damages. He also wants $1 million in punitive damages, lost wages, further attorney’s fees and costs, plus reinstatement to his previous police rank. Lastly, he’s looking to impose a civil fine in the amount of $10,000.

Lanier said that Burton’s demotion was performance-related, but he believes it was retaliation for questioning the veracity of the chief.

On April 19, 2011, Sheen traveled to Dulles International Airport to D.C. He received a police escort in order to be able to make an appearance at an event held at Constitutional Hall.

Sheen was so impressed by his escort that he tweeted with a photo attached: ”In a car with Police escort in front and rear! Driving like someone’s about to deliver a baby!”

After the details of the Sheen escort were revealed, the MPD released a statement informing the public that the incident was under investigation. More importantly, it said that it wasn’t its practice to utilize emergency equipment for non-emergency situations.

Burton said the MPD provided new policies on its escort procedure earlier this year, but at the time of the Sheen incident, Lanier told the Washington Post that the department did not give escorts to celebrities.

“There are limited circumstances where we do police escorts,” Lanier said in April 2011. She explained that those circumstances are based on security need and that protocols are needed to be followed when they do escorts.

In a curious twist, Charlie Sheen visited D.C. earlier in the week and tried to get Old Ebbit Grill to stay open past closing time on Super Bowl night. On Feb. 3, Sheen was at Charlie Palmer Steak along with his agent to have lunch with his father, actor Martin Sheen.
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Peter Murray •

According to a new community survey conducted by the Palisades Citizens Association, local residents support upgrading the old Glen Echo Trolley, the 3.1-mile path that runs along Canal Road between Georgetown University and Galena Place.

The Glen Echo Trolley line ran from Georgetown proper to the Glen Echo Park but hasn’t been in service for 52 years. Now overgrown with grass, the area is popular for recreational activities like jogging and dog walking and is utilized by Pepco and the D.C. government for select purposes. However, there is a dearth of park infrastructure in the area and existing fences and drains have decayed to an unusable state.

In response to PCA’s poll, more than 60 percent of respondents expressed support for improving drainage, mowing and erosion control. About the same amount of respondents said that bikers should have access to the trail as long as speed controls are instituted.

Creating a new parking lot and installing benches with lighting were unpopular proposals, while respondents were split on whether or not a new surface should be laid down on the old trolley line.

After releasing the poll’s results, the PCA’s trails committee recommended unanimously that the D.C. Department of Transportation perform a “comprehensive feasibility study” to look into upgrading and reconnecting the trolley trail. DDOT says that trail improvements will come in the next few years. The full PCA will hold a meeting to uncover the survey’s findings on March 6 at the Palisades Recreation Center at 7:30 p.m.

The survey was conducted between mid-October and mid-January and included 806 community members from the Palisades, Foxhall Village and Georgetown.

Gary Tischler •

These days, St. Patrick’s Day, the American national holiday saluting this country’s Irish heritage, which holds multitudes, sneaks up on you.

There was and will be a parade, and there will be green beer and Guinness, in all the establishments calling themselves worthily or not Irish, and there will be singing and beer on the floor and bragging and the telling of tales, perhaps. It’s the cliché of it all.

Someone somewhere, whole slew of somebodies are reading one by one out loud “Ulysses” and the lads will be hoping that there’ll be a lass, like Molly in that same book saying “yes, yes, yes.”

But there is something about the Irish worth celebrating, and it has less to do with froth on a glass, than it does the way the Irish have made their presence felt in the world, here, for certain, aye, but also elsewhere wherever they showed up in numbers.

Our histories—that sea of Americans different from one another and the same—are intertwined, beginning with early immigrants and landowners, going on to the flood of migrants in the wake of the mighty, blighted potato famine which brought a flood of the Irish to these shores, some of them just in time for the Civil War.

There is something about the Irish—they came from a country beautiful, but hard in giving out its natural wealth. They come from a country full of tillers and priests and nuns and publicans and teachers and politicians and rebels and thinkers, and the men and women of words, words, words, and actors, poets and playwrights and the mighty mothers of them all.

Getting older makes wretched excesses of Irishism less appealing, but the song on songs linger, and the words remain strongly spoken and go on being written. I remember the celebrants, too: once, I went to a St. Patrick’s Day bar in San Francisco accompanied by a young lady named Margie O’Clair, black of hair and smart of whip-like wit and beauty, too. She asked me why I wore an orange jacket to an Irish bar and proceeded to tell me why I shouldn’t have. And yet, I survived, because the Irish, I guess, can tolerate a German’s stupidity. [Editor’s note: orange is the color for Irish Protestants, who also have been called Orangemen.]

In years gone by, I knew the local places here—some still surviving—the Dubliner and Kelly’s Irish Times, cheek to cheek near Union Station, Danny Coleman and Hugh Kelly, proprietors, respectively, and I heard a gentleman from the Irish Embassy, at three in the wee morning sing “Danny Boy” in the kitchen of the Irish times., red faced and white haired and in fine voice as he was.

Here in Washington, we always tell the tales of the Kennedys, the brothers, John, Robert and Ted, the father Joe, and the mother Rose, and the not-so-holy ghosts of their stories. Boston, no matter who lives there will always be an urban shrine to the Irish.

Washington always had a lively Irish music scene, and in the 1980s, there was the Irish Tradition, the closest thing to local Irish rock stars, with accordionist Billy McComiskey, guitarist Andy O’Brien and champion Irish fiddler Brendan Mulvihill, singing “The Wild Rover” in the Dubliner and Times.

It’s the music and the poets that survive and count for so much. The Chieftains were just in time, and the plays and playwrights always are—George Bernard Shaw, the greatest and smartest wit that ever lived, Oscar Wilde, the most sophisticated man who came to such a sad end, Brendan Behan, Samuel Beckett and a whole new generation of Irish Playwrights. And let me just list: Joyce Himself and Flann O’Brien and Yeats and Seamus Heaney and the American Eugene O’Neill.

In the wiki wonderland, there is a category called “List of Irish People”. Not all, but it seems so. And the longest list are made up of writers, actors and musicians, not generals or Wall Streeters. To with: actors: Stephen Boyd, Kenneth Branagh,Pierce Brosnan, Gabriel Byrne, a number of Cusacks, including Sinead, wife to Peter O’Toole, Daniel Day Lewis, Colin Farrell, Barry Fitzgerald, whose horse knew the way in “The Quiet Man”, Fionnula Flanagan (ah, what a name), several Gleesons, including Brendan, Richard Harris, Micheal Mac Liammhoir (co-founder of the Gate Theatre), Colm Meaney, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Liam Neeson, Maureen O’Hara, Milo O’Shea, Niall Toibin, Fiona Shaw.

Towith: musicians: Chloe Agnew, Big Tom Of big Tom and the Mainliners, Enya, Sinead O’Connor, Vivian Campbell of Def Leppard, Liam, , Paddy, Tom and Willie Clancy, The Corrs, The Edge, Seamus Ennis , Uilleann piper, Angela Feeny opera singer, Rory Gallagher, blues/rock guitarist, and I could go on, but here’s one that sums it up: Finbart Furey, singer/songwriter, uillean piper, 5 string banjo player and actor.

Towith: writers: John Banville, Brendan Behan, Maeve Binchy, Patrick Bronte, Brian Coffey, Roddy Doyle, several Delaneys, Thomas Flanagan, Brien Friel, F. Scott Fitzgerald (says so here), Oliver Goldsmith, Seamus Heaney, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, Benedict Akiel (Saoi of Aosdana) C.S. Lewis, Malachi Martin, horror writer, Frank McCourt, poet Nuala Nik Dhomhnaill, the glorious O’s, Edna O’Brien, Sean O’Casey, Frank O’Connor, Mairtin O Direain, Sean O’Faolain, George Bernard Shaw, Laurence Sterne, Bram Stoker, horror writer, John Millington Synge, Twenty Major, blogger, Oscar Wilde. And so on.

So many words, so many characters, so many songs.

So, I would suggest what we can all do for St. Patrick’s day. Say a word or two, sing a song, act a part. And, of course, say a prayer.

David Roffman •

All right, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament has arrived. So, it’s time to make our 2015 NCAA predictions.

There are lots of ways to measure the performance of a team when preparing our 2015 NCAA predictions. Some examples, moving from least useful to most, are won-loss record, RPI rating, average margin of victory, NCAA tournament seed, and predictive power ratings. Yes, that’s correct: won-loss record is at the bottom of the list when it comes to making your NCAA predictions. Luck plays a large role in wins and losses, so margin of victory is a better predictor to use when making predictions for the 2015 NCAA tournament. Our power ratings combine margin of victory with information about who a team played, where they played them, and when they played the game. These are the most important factors when rating a team.

I must interject here that several teams in the select 64 simply do not deserve to be in the tournament. Texas and UCLA come to mind. They both have 13 losses on the season. Pathetic! Indiana doesn’t deserve to be in the tournament either.

I might also interject here that every sports pundit in America thinks Kentucky –including the President of the United States — will win it all, based on the fact that Kentucky has a purported five players who will go in the first round of the NBA draft this year. And they’re all freshmen. They may all make NBA teams in the first round, but they will not win this year’s NCAA Tournament. Stay tuned for my upset prediction.

Locally, it is impressive that Georgetown University, University of Maryland, University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University have all made the cut to the select 64. They will all win their first two games which will take them to the Sweet Sixteen, but only U.Va. will advance any further.

I am also impressed by the state of Iowa, which is fielding three teams in the tournament: Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa. All three are sleepers and could surprise a lot of people. Another powerful sleeper to watch is Wichita State. They got to the Final Four last year remember, and they come in with a solid team this year as well.

Here is the way I see the four divisions coming out: In the Midwest, Kentucky will make the final four by narrowly defeating a tough Notre Dame squad.

University of Virginia emerges out of the East defeating a super Louisville team.

In the West, I see Wisconsin and Arizona in a heated battle with Arizona coming out on top.

And in the Southwest, it will come down to Gonzaga and Duke, but the stronger team will be victorious, and that is Gonzaga.

Thus, my Final Four will be Arizona playing Kentucky, and Gonzaga meeting UVA. Two great games for sure. The upset of upsets will be Arizona beating Kentucky handily, and meeting Gonzaga in the Final game for the title. Arizona has a solid starting five, including a very hot three point shooting guard and a big, tough center. Gonzaga also is solid, with a 5th year senior at point guard and he too can knock down the threes with ease.

I predict Arizona will be victorious in the end. And it will be great for college basketball to see the all freshman Kentucky squad go down in defeat.

Although a few games have begun, there is a link to this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament brackets. Take a chance, fill them it and see whether you, I or President Obama is right.

NCAA.com

Caitlin Franz •

The seventh annual Potholepalooza will begin in Washington, D.C., April 1 and continues throughout the month.

Major evacuation routes and federal aid roads will receive priority repairs, according to the District Deparment of Transportation (DDOT).

However, Potholepalooza creates a month-long series of repairs directed by requests made to the city. In that time frame, the crews will work as quickly as possible, including on nights and weekends.

Pothole repairs are considered to be an effective temporary repair to extend the life of the driving surface before repaving takes place.

You can request pothole repair services by calling 311 or by completing a service request online through DDOT’s website. All you have to do is indicate the pothole location (i.e., address, intersection) and describe the severity of the problem (i.e., depth, width, number of potholes in one location). A service request will be put into the tracking system with a service request number.

It is DDOT’s standard to fix potholes within three business days of the time they are reported.

If the pothole hasn’t been repaired by the specified date of completion, you are encouraged to call 311 or 202-727-1000 with your service request number.

Peter Murray •

Peter Thiel, the multi-billionaire investor who founded PayPal and Palantir Technologies and played a key role in funding Facebook, SpaceX and LinkedIn, comes to Georgetown University on Tuesday, March 31, to deliver “Developing the Developed World,” as part of the Michael Jurist Memorial Lecture series.

The lecture is cosponsored by Georgetown Young Americans for Liberty, Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative, and online publication Venture Capitol and will touch upon Thiel’s philosophy regarding technology and innovation, the focus of his new book “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build The Future.”

The event runs from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the ICC Auditorium and admission is free with a complimentary copy of “Zero to One” for the first 300 attendees. For any questions or concerns, contact Christopher Grillo at cfg32@georgetown.edu.

The Washington, D.C. office of Thiel’s company Palantir Technologies jumped from the suburbs to the city in January, when it moved from McLean to 1025 Thomas Jefferson St. in Georgetown between Baked & Wired and Washington Harbour.

Linnea Kristiansson •

Few people know that the Williams sisters weren’t the first African American siblings to take tennis by storm. Before Venus and Serena, Margaret and Roumania Peters were an unbeatable pair in the Jim Crow tennis era of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. Council member Jack Evans will ask the District Council to name Rose Park tennis courts at 26th & O Streets after the sisters.

Having begun playing tennis as young girls in Georgetown, the sisters were eventually offered tennis scholarships to Tuskegee University in Alabama. Due to segregation, the Peters sisters could play only in the all-black American Tennis Association. Established in 1916, ATA is the oldest black sports organization in the country.

During their time in Alabama and for a decade after leaving, the Peters sisters dominated the women’s game, winning 14 doubles titles between 1938 and 1941 and between 1944 and 1953. Roumania won ATA national singles titles in 1944 and 1946. Films of their ATA victories were shown at black movie theaters, including the Mott on 26th Street NW near P Street in Georgetown, where they were local heroes. The Peters also played matches in front of the British royalty on a trip to the Caribbean. Celebrities such as actor-dancer Gene Kelly practiced with them when he was in Washington.

Both Peters sisters earned master’s degrees in physical education from New York University and returned to Washington to work. The little-known predecessors of Althea Gibson, who, in 1956, became the first person of color to win a Grand Slam title (and went on to win Wimbledon and the U.S. Nationals), their wider recognition is long overdue.

Sallie Lewis •

On a rainy Friday morning in April, a throng of visitors waited for their tour time inside the new National Public Radio headquarters at 1111 North Capitol St. A man in black skinny jeans wove through the crowd carrying a guitar case covered with stickers. In the entry, a massive LED media mosaic flashed large images while a ticker streamed the day’s top headlines in bright, bold letters.

Since 1973, NPR has been creating conversations. It’s a place where the stories of our day reach millions of radios across the nation, where curiosity and exploration come together. Reimagining a new home for this institution was no small feat. But today, the 440,000-square-foot LEED Gold landmark building has shown what can happen when a strong company mission teams up with a clear vision of sustainability.

In 2008, the Georgetown-based architecture firm Hickok Cole created the winning entry in a competition to design NPR’s new D.C. headquarters in the NoMa (North of Massachusetts Avenue) neighborhood. Hickok Cole was inspired by the building’s history, which dates back to 1926, when it was a warehouse and workshop for the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company, and later, a storage facility for the Smithsonian. NPR’s new home is made up of three main elements: the entry block, the old four-story warehouse building and a new seven-story office block.

Mixing old with new was an important priority for the firm. The design incorporates many of the building’s existing features, including pre-cast concrete, which references the original cast-in-place concrete facade. In the building’s entry, visitors can see the original mushroom-cap columns alongside new, modern interpretations. The team put a great deal of effort into restoring and exposing elements of the past while implementing fresh, forward-thinking, sustainably-minded designs.

“NPR was very focused on being sustainable,” said Robert Holzbach, who led the design team at Hickok Cole. “So much of sustainability is not visible, but they wanted to be visibly green too,” he added.

Completed in spring 2013, the building earned LEED Gold Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, and has a number of systems in place that helped it earn this accolade. One of the largest challenges faced in D.C. is storm-water collection. At NPR, the small plots of trees and plants that hug the edge of North Capitol Street are actually bio-retention ponds or rain gardens. Rainwater running off the streets is captured and steered into these ponds or gardens so it can percolate into the ground. The permeable paving along the main plaza also takes advantage of any excess rainwater.

Green roofs are another design feature that assist with this effort. The team at Hickok Cole sees great value in their implementation.

“We love green roofs,” said Bryan Chun, the firm’s project architect on the NPR building. “They decrease heat-island effect and add insulation to the roof. The biggest component is storm-water retention, so the sewer facility doesn’t have to treat it,” he added.

NPR has three green roofs that cover everything except for the very top portion of the building, where the mechanical elements are. Hydrated purely by rainfall, these roofs are home to an ever-changing show of natural vegetation, not to mention active honey beehives.

From the street, a cluster of satellite dishes can be seen from the roof. These satellites are what beam out NPR’s content to all of the United States. Because of their obvious, symbolic importance, they became an integral part of the design, a means for passersby to visibly witness what the NPR mission is all about.

One of Hickok Cole’s main goals was to incorporate NPR’s vision and ethos into the project whenever possible. Along the exterior of the large glass office block there are waves of blue fins, long rectangular sheets of glass with a color fill sandwiched between them. This glass, though decorative and aesthetically pleasing, is also a subtle notion of NPR’s vision, expressed abstractly. Since NPR is all about sound, these fins are a stylistic representation of the nature of sound waves.

Fostering a positive, bright workspace was a key priority for the organization’s leadership. They recognized that the more natural light available, the more productive the work environment. Having natural light was also the number-one wish of NPR’s radio hosts.

As a result, there is a tremendous amount of natural light that filters through the building’s large glass walls and into the open offices.

“It’s like a glassy jewel box inside this concrete shell,” said Holzbach.

Light cascades through all the office windows on the upper stories in addition to pouring through a clerestory into the two-story, 100,000-square-foot newsroom on floors three and four. This addition lifted the office block up above the existing roofline, so that light could infiltrate the central part of the building. Even the studio rooms make use of small slivered windows, bringing in light whenever possible without jeopardizing the quality of the sound.

In a symbolic sense, the prevalence of glass is a great metaphor for the transparency that NPR strives for in all their work. With glass, however, came many important design decisions related to energy efficiency. At NPR, “Low-E” glass windows (referring to their low-emissivity coating) are used, reducing radiant heat.

One of the most impressive LEED features is the facility’s solar-shades system, which operates off of a central computer that gauges the location of the sun while monitoring heat gain. The computer controls the shades, mechanically lowering and lifting them to maintain optimal brightness in each room.

Even the emergency staircase is light and inviting. One of the main themes of the new design was fostering a collaborative spirit. This effort can be seen in areas such as the large stairwell landings, the office island blocks, the 30-minute meeting rooms and the large outdoor terraces.

No technology was spared in the making of NPR’s new headquarters. “It’s a building that was built for radio,” said Marty Garrison, vice president of technology operations, distribution and broadcast engineering.

Inside the Studio 31 Control Room, where many of the shows take place, it is apparent how many small but significant technical issues are involved in building a studio of NPR’s caliber. For acoustic reasons, no wall is shaped the same; the control boards, glass thicknesses and soundproofing all have to be designed and prepared with unparalleled precision. Advanced, state-of-the-art technology can be seen throughout the complex, from the master control systems to NPR’s renowned microphones, network operations and data centers.

This spring marks NPR’s second anniversary in their new location. It’s evident that fostering a healthy, productive environment is a key priority. On the top floor, with views of the Capitol and the Washington Monument, light floods over the white office space. Next to the windows are spin machines for employees to use after work. There are outdoor terraces on the fourth floor for working and relaxing during off-hours.

Each floor has its own kitchenette with free Peet’s Coffee. Downstairs, there is a fitness center with a full-time trainer and a cafeteria that serves both hot dishes and a full salad bar.

In the world of sustainability, even small decisions can have a large impact. There are many LEED accreditations within NPR that might surprise, for instance, its limited customer parking, which encourages more eco-friendly means of getting to work. The facility is located close to pubic transportation and has a bike garage for employees. Additionally, the bathrooms have low-flow toilets, the cafeteria has recyclable packaging and all the cleaning products are biodegradable. No effort is too small.

NPR is a place that seeks to inspire thought, encourage learning and develop an understanding of the world at large. The new headquarters is a beacon of great design and strong, transparent storytelling. Thanks to the large team of designers, architects, engineers and consultants who worked diligently on this project, NPR is housed in a building that will carry public radio forward in a thoroughly modern and sustainable fashion in the years to come.