Town Center East

When it was launched, the renewal of Washington's Southwest quadrant was the biggest urban renewal scheme in the country. In 1954 the agency in charge, the Redevelopment Land Agency, gave the developer William Zeckendorf exclusive rights to build over much of the area; Pei was then head of the architectural team of his firm, Webb & Knapp. The Zeckendorf-Pei plan, drawn up under Pei's direction with help from Harry Weese, was formally presented in April 1956. It included a neighbourhood centre, Town Center Plaza, for which Pei foresaw apartment towers, public green space, a library, churches and shops.

Work was held up for years while the agency and Zeckendorf bargained over who would pay what, and Webb & Knapp's finances went from bad to worse. Ground was broken on 15 January 1960. Town Center East opened with a party in two model apartments on 9 February 1961; the first residents moved into the northeast building in March, and the southeast one was occupied by May. In 1964 Webb & Knapp, heading for bankruptcy, had to sell its Town Center holdings to the Maryland developer Charles S. Bresler and his partners.

In January 1964 Town Center Plaza won the Federal Housing Administration's First Honor Award for residential design; the American Institute of Arts and Letters had named it among the achievements for which Pei received the 1963 Arnold W. Brunner Prize. In 2009 the southeast building became a condominium called Waterfront Tower: for the developers Bernstein Companies and Abdo Development, Torti Gallas & Partners stripped and remade the interior in line with historic preservation guidelines, and the windows were refitted with energy-saving glass. Town Center East was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 15 January 2014.

The two buildings are twins. Each sets eight apartment floors on pilotis above an entrance level whose walls, pulled back from the pilotis, leave a loggia about fifteen feet (4.5 m) deep all the way round. The upper floors are marked out by ten bays of window bands trimmed in aluminium-coloured metal, and the pilotis meet the beams in rounded rather than square angles. At the corners the glazing is cantilevered past the pilotis and seems to reach out into space unsupported, so that the block appears to float. The concrete was poured on site and has a smooth, almost glassy finish, obtained with plywood formwork faced with plastic laminate. In the southeast building the eye passes straight through the lobby, from the M Street doors to the courtyard.

The courtyard belongs to the composition, balancing the bulk of the two buildings. Laid out by the landscape firm Zion & Breen, it was meant as a meeting place and as a source of light and air for the flats; its original planting has since gone.

Two apartment buildings; the southeast one, Waterfront Tower, holds 123 condominium units.

Private apartment buildings. They can be seen from 3rd Street SW, between K Street and M Street: the courtyard between them opens onto that street.