A DC firehouse for sale In honor of October, a serious question: Did you want to be a fireman when you were little? I know that I did! And I am sure that I dressed my children as firefighters for Halloween when they were little – a yellow slicker, a plastic fireman’s hat and boots! The perfect Halloween costume – visible, warm and made from things you already had at home!
You can come close to achieving that childhood dream in this 130-year-old building at 219 M Street, Northwest, that recently hit the market.
A quick look at the offering:
The history: Located in the Truxton Circle neighborhood, the firehouse was built in 1895. It operated as such until sometime in the 1960s, according to owner Ray Valentine, who’s also acting as the listing agent with Keller Williams Capital Properties. It was then that Valentine and his twin brother, William, leased the building from the city to operate an entertainment production business.
“We did sound, lights and staging in there,” he said. “We wound up providing production for shows up and down the East Coast. We had a Black sound company, and we were doing the ‘Chitlin’ Circuit’—name any of the old R&B guys from the ’60s and ’70s, we worked with them all.”
After about 10 years of renting, the Valentines bought the firehouse from the city as part of the DC surplus property disposal program. Since then, it’s been home to the Valentine Brothers’ entertainment production company and two gyms, among other things. One former longtime resident ran a parkour business on the bottom floor and lived in the penthouse, where he’d haul his dog up by using a pulley and bucket. (Don’t worry, the other floors have stairs.)
The potential: The building is in the Mount Vernon Square Historic District, which means the Victorian-era facade must be kept as is. But it’s zoned for mixed use, so it could be a living space. You’d have to do some work: The firehouse, which doesn’t have many historical touches inside, currently lacks a kitchen and only has one and a half bathrooms.
Now that the current owners are selling the firehouse, it could make an unconventional fixer-upper project. You could create a single-family home out of the building as it’s already zoned for residential use or turn it into great condos.
“They could make it into a really nice residence,” Valentine said. “It has a good amount of window space—not as much as a contemporary home with walls of windows, but the way the building is made toward the rear on the second floor, there are a lot of windows in the back.”
The price: It’s listed for $2.7 million, with two levels totaling 5,776 square feet. Not included, sadly: the fire pole, which was removed long ago.