Crystal Heights

The project would have been built on one of the largest remaining undeveloped tracts in the city, known as the Oak Lawn estate or Temple Heights, on the edge of the Adams Morgan and Dupont Circle neighborhoods.

One version of the design called for 2,500 hotel rooms, small apartments, parking for 1,500 cars, shops, and a 1,000-seat theater – a diversity of uses almost never seen in structures of the time – all within a complex consisting of a broad base covering the whole site topped by 15 towers.

The proposal was defeated primarily by zoning requirements that prevented a multi-purpose structure at the site and forbade towers from rising more than 110 feet.

After his design was rejected, Wright heavily criticized local officials and the National Capital Planning Commission.

Despite raising a large amount for the project, the plan was canceled following the 1929 stock market crash and start of the Great Depression.

[1][6] In August 1940 a syndicate led by developer Roy C. Thurman acquired the estate, which at the time was described as "the last great undeveloped piece of property close to the center of the downtown area.

[7] The following month Thurman hired noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design a massive $12–$15 million project, an early example of a mixed-use development.

The Masons had experienced difficulties in the 1920s with zoning officials due to their planned complex being too tall, and despite convincing President Herbert Hoover and Congress to grant them a religious exemption, the NCPC had the final say and denied the project.

"[8] His plan for Crystal Heights received a mixed reaction and his attitude toward local officials that were concerned with his design also may have played a part with its eventual rejection.

He had reduced the tallest building to 135 feet (41 m), but this design was rejected by city officials who refused to make a height exemption for the project.

[13][14] Zoning officials were open to allowing commercial businesses on the property, but were opposed to have stores along Connecticut Avenue and a theater in a residential area.

When Wright learned that the project had not been approved, he wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post lambasting the decision: "I had supposed our strength and greatness as a nation...not to lie in a leveling-off process characteristic of totalitarian government."

A few years later Percy Uris hired William B. Tabler to design the Washington Hilton, which stands on the Crystal Heights site.

"[26] Had Crystal Heights been built, it would have been the largest project designed by Wright and according to scholars, "it might have been the supreme achievement of an achievement-packed career, forerunner of a kind of architecture that the country embraced only decades later.

"[5][10] The director of the city's Office of Planning said Wright's mixed-use ideas would be welcomed by local officials in the 21st century, but that the height limit would still apply.