It will have two distinctive features which other buildings of its type in the District lack – a combination gymnasium and assembly hall and adequate outdoor play space.

[4] It was deemed significant for its architecture: The Janney Elementary school is a three-story, three part brick building with a long central pavilion, two end wings and a rear auditorium/gymnasium.

Designed by Municipal Architect Albert Harris, Janney Elementary School is executed in a Colonial Revival style characteristic of the architect, and built as the first of Harris’s “extensible” schools for the city.

At the time of its construction, Tenleytown was experiencing a major population boom as the former 19th-century working-class village was being transformed into a residential neighborhood of the District of new single-family, detached dwellings that catered to the city’s burgeoning white professional class.

A separate renovation took place in 2012, that expanded the west wing of the school, and added classrooms.