We attended an open house of the entire Pierce School Lofts building last weekend and were given permission to photograph whatever we wanted. Naturally, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to finally record the interior of one of these conversions after seeing so many of them only from the outside.

The Pierce School was built in 1895 and converted to condos in 2005, after which most of the units were rented out, with the owners occupying the penthouse. Now the units are for sale, ranging in price from $359,000 to $699,000 for the lower lofts and $3,399,000 for the 9,500 square foot penthouse.

An article on Urban Turf http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/own-a-piece-of-the-pierce-school/13587 describes the Pierce School as rundown, waterlogged and rodent infested when the conversion was begun and says “the bones of the Pierce School were largely kept intact as part of the conversion, creating 8 units with ceiling heights from 13 feet to as high as 35 feet-tall in the penthouse unit. Condos on the second floor also retained their chalkboards … and aside from the penthouse, the units range in size from 750 to 1,775 square feet … .”

The owners had purchased the school for only $275,000 in 2000, a mere shell with four feet of water in the basement and inhabited only by rodents and pigeons, and spent five years doing extensive repairs and renovations. When they decided to move out in 2015, their penthouse went on the market for $12,493 a month, one of the most expensive rentals in DC at the time.

I photographed the whole thing but will try to restrain myself ;-) and post pictures that give a glimpse of some of the features I found interesting.

Carriage house conversion on the alley, posted earlier