Mihran Mesrobian

Mihran Mesrobian. . , Woodley Park’s most prolific architect, Mihran Mesrobian (1889-1975) started his career as a palace architect in Constantinople during the twilight of the Turkish sultans. The Turkish-born Beaux-Arts trained Armenian worked on the restoration of thirty palaces, including the famed Dolmabahce in Istanbul. Drafted into the Turkish army during World War I, he participated in the Dardanelles-Gallipoli campaign against the British, serving directly under Mustafa Kemal Pasha (Ataturk), considered the founder of modern Turkey. A prisoner of war in Egypt, Mesrobian credited Lawrence of Arabia - T.E. Lawrence - with saving his life. , In 1921, he emigrated to the United States and became chief designer for Washington’s premier real estate developer, British-born Harry Wardman, just as Wardman was developing large tracts of Woodley Park. Mesrobian was the architect of several majestic apartment buildings that have long defined Woodley Park, including a section of the Cathedral Mansions complex (1922-1924), the Wardman Tower (1928), and the Devonshire/Cortland Streets Apartments (1936). He also designed about two-thirds of the houses in the northern part of the community in subdivisions Wardman named English Village and Woodley Park. Wardman’s elegant 16th Street hotels - the Carlton (1926), now the St. Regis, and the Hay-Adams (1927) - were also designed by Mesrobian.