Church Street Inn Charleston Sc

B.F. Saul wraps up Kennedy-Warren renovation

Take the Kennedy-Warren Apartments, the grand dame address on Connecticut Avenue that recently underwent a $50 million renovation — and has been in the Saul family since 1931.

The 81-year-old building, nestled between the National Zoo and Rock Creek Park, has long been known as a home to celebrities, including FDR confidant Harry Hopkins, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, H.R. Haldeman, baseball player Frank Robinson, former Obama economic adviser Larry Summers, the parents of Hillary Clinton, humorist P.J. O’Rourke and assorted senators, ambassadors, financiers and other bigwigs.

B.F. Saul Co., the local real estate/investment firm that three years ago sold its Chevy Chase Bank to CapitalOne Financial, bought the property when the owners went bankrupt in the Great Depression. The firm added 114 rooms in its new south wing in 2004 at a cost of $70 million.

The building’s 425 apartments rent from $2,000 a month for a studio to $8,650 a month for a three-bedroom penthouse with private elevator and six parking spaces, quite a leap from the $65- to $259-a-month range when the building opened in 1931. There’s a pool, gym, library and piano club — complete with seasoned bartender — for kicking back.

Benjamin Francis Saul established the family’s real estate business on upper 16th Street NW in the 1890s, according to “Best Addresses: A Century of Washington’s Distinguished Apartment Houses,” by James Goode.

The company eventually got into banking, which led to it taking over the mortgage to the Kennedy-Warren.

Saul II still runs the company day-to-day from its Bethesda headquarters at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and East-West Highway.

The Buzz Hears . . .

• Falls Church-based SmithGifford advertising snagged a three-year contract to make locals feel good about Washington Gas, the District-based utility that serves 1.2 million customers in the region. That’s three in a row for SG, which is run by Karen Riordan . The firm signed NISH , a job-help group for the disabled, in April and Jose Andres’ ThinkFoodGroup in May.

• Capital Teas opened its Dupont Circle store June 4, the fifth bricks-and-mortar location for the Annapolis-based chainlet. The Dupont shop, on Connecticut Avenue, is 500 square feet.

On the Road: Charleston, SC and The Church Street Inn | Timeshare ...

Spanish moss drips from old oaks on the lawns of restored plantations, azaleas blaze in the sun of a lazy afternoon, a horse and carriage clops by on an old cobblestoned street.

Welcome to Charleston, South Carolina, a city where the old rests easily alongside the modern, and where manners are important. America’s most-published etiquette expert, Marjabelle Young Stewart, recognized Charleston in 1995 as the “best-mannered” city in the U.S, a claim lent credibility by the fact that it has the first established Livability Court in the country.