Washington, DC has never been a flashy city. Sure, there are vulgarities in McLean and Potomac. But there’s an almost WASP-like tendency here to avoid the things you’d expect in wealthy neighborhoods: houses are big but not palatial, and cars are expensive but not flashy. Because the city is awash with money, people wear ‘nice’ clothes, but it’s not common to stop because you’re impressed by an outfit someone is wearing.
And while I will cheerfully defend DC as perhaps the American city with the highest quality of life and a place I like to return to after my travels, the social events there don’t have nearly the same excitement that those in NYC, Paris or even Los Angeles do.
But a few months ago I said yes to an opening party in Georgetown. This was a new concept, and a surprising one because it had gone completely under the radar. A couple had converted an old estate with an acre of gardens in the heart of Georgetown into a villa that would cost tens of thousands of dollars a night.
A look through the rooms of LXIV
LXIV DC is the name of the villa, an anything but subtle reference to the ubiquitous influence of luxury on the nose of the past four centuries, Louis XIV. It’s located just off the M Street shopping strip at 30th Street, in a sprawling Georgetown townhouse. The complex consists of two homes – one dating from the 1840s – and was joined by Ruth Hanna McCormick, the daughter of Ohio Republican Party boss Mark Hanna. She was one of the first women elected to Congress (in 1928), the first to win a party nomination for the Senate (she lost), and the first to run a presidential campaign (1940s for Dewey, who lost). She was also married to Medill McCormack, heir to the Medill publishing company and McCormack’s industrial fortunes, and later to another congressman, Albert Gallatin Simms. The gardens at the house were landscaped by Rose Greeley, an employee of House Beautiful who designed a number of DC estates, and Perry Hunt Wheeler, who created the White House Rose Garden.
Without going too far back to the early 20th century, when DC was a glamorous city that hosted legendary parties with guest lists that filled the tabloids, we can say that this was a house with quite the history.
In 2022, it was purchased by DC developers Ezra and Jessica Glass for almost $9 million. They have transformed it over the past two years into a contemporary luxury offering that will compete with the top suites at hotels like The Jefferson, Four Seasons and Rosewood (which also have mansions) for visiting heads of state, CEOs and wealthy individuals. individuals.
One bedroom on LXIV
The house is protected so the exterior remains untouched, but as you wander inside it’s hard to imagine you’re in a historic Georgetown residence. Rather than leaning toward the quaint and creaky, the choices remind me most of the kind of decor you’d find in the homes of oligarchs in London: historic on the outside, barely understated contemporary on the inside.
It was a conscious choice, given the geographical diversity of potential guests. And while you or I might find the quirks of an old house charming, a CEO preparing for a congressional hearing and paying at least $15,000 a night probably won’t.
The walls are covered in hand-applied Matteo Brioni plaster, the bathrooms are modern and clad in stone, and the decor is sleek. Spread across a rabbit-hole-like 12,000-square-foot house are six suites, fourteen bathrooms, a drawing room, a living room, a dining room, a ballroom and an orangery.
The interior of the house was designed by Jessica Glass and Eric Chang. One of the benefits they offer guests is that everything in the house is for sale. If a guest sees something they like, it can be purchased in the LXIV app and shipped to their home. The house is also a kind of ‘smart house’ with a voice-activated concierge (and a real concierge too) whose job it is to fulfill the wishes of the demanding clientele.
The real showstopper, and what makes this truly unique in the middle of the city, is the hectares of manicured gardens with a spa, a huge swimming pool, a gated entrance at the back and a spa house with a sauna, a hammam and a sauna. cold dip.
The gardens of LXIV
This is not a second AirBnB.
I’ve rarely focused my reporting on the highest end of the travel industry, so I wouldn’t bet on the success of the accommodation. But it’s a fascinating project for a few reasons.
The first is that luxury travel as a whole has been utterly transformed post-pandemic. This is in large part due to the explosion of ultra-high net worth individuals (defined as assets exceeding $30 million). In 2017, 226,450 people worldwide fell into this category. In 2023, that number will be 426,330 and it is expected that this number will rise to 587,650 in the next five years. That’s a market of potential customers large enough to ensure steady growth in luxury goods. (In my conversations with Glass, this was a big part of their bet: that the ultra-high net worth market is now so big that these types of properties are needed.) LXIV is planning more projects, with the next ones in New York City and the South of France.
A living room at LXIV
This ties in with the second reason why this fascinates me: the private villa trend is exploding. Abercrombie & Kent relies heavily on it. Every few days I receive another pitch from Travel PR about a high-end villa concept somewhere in the world in my inbox. One can only hope that this will have a trickle-down effect on better boutique villa rental concepts, given how bad AirBnB and Vrbos have become in terms of quality of design and experience.
Few SNL skits have succeeded as well as this recent classic in AirBnB design.
The final reason LXIV DC excites me is that it’s happening as Georgetown is having a mini-renaissance. Once synonymous with all things fun in DC, Georgetown has become a sleepy afterthought over the past fifteen years. The best restaurants and bars, and anyone who wasn’t ashamed of not living in New York City, moved further east to Logan Circle and beyond. Typical of how Georgetown had fallen behind was legendary developer Herb Miller leaving for 14th Street.
But Lutèce, Wisconsin is one of the busiest restaurants in recent memory, and the line for Yellow (a new fast-casual concept in a city that created Sweetgreen and Cava) is always long. Jose Andres builds his first hotel here. And Stephen Starr’s long-awaited transformation of the former Dean & Deluca on M Street into a DC outpost of Nancy Silverton’s Osteria Mozza opened. (I went to an opening party a few weeks ago and it was great to see the space in glamour. I have no doubt this will have transformative effects on the area.)
Maybe the ubiquitous phrase “Georgetown set” will even make a comeback.
