Squat building squeeze: in megacities with huge land costs, how do tiny buildings survive?

As if it weren’t obvious already, I’m fascinated by architectural oddities—aesthetic efforts that don’t quite come together as intended, or fail to mesh with their surroundings.  Plenty of people feel much the same, as evidenced by the numerous blogging initiatives on the subject, though many bloggers are more vituperative than I intend to be.  (Then again, if the interiors feature outright code violations that could easily result in serious injury, I suppose there’s a case for a good rant.)  Unusual juxtapositions are what routinely catch my eye.  Last year I noticed an older, squat building next a mammoth new multifamily housing development in the Union Market neighborhood of Washington DC, and my research uncovered a mostly forgotten old restaurant mini-chain called the Little Tavern.  Crossing the Potomac River into Alexandria, Virginia, I recently encountered a similarly odd juxtaposition between a squat building and its immediate neighbors in Old Town North.

I’m not great at eyeballing the size of a structure, but I could be worse.  And I’d be surprised if this squat building at the corner of Fairfax Street and Canal Center Plaza measures more than 1,000 square feet.  In fact, it’s about the same size as the iconic Little Tavern restaurants that finally gave up the ghost in 2008, after an 80-year run.  The Little Taverns even had signature green roofs, albeit clad with shingles instead of the corrugated material seen here.  This squat building on the corner never was a Little Tavern—the closest remnant in Alexandria of that mythic burger chain is a few blocks away—but the aesthetic approach and boutique character of Little Taverns might have inspired it.  Size isn’t the only thing that distinguishes the squat building in the photo above: the unusually small windows, the chamfered edge to the entrance door with pointy gable, and the thickness of the brick, which probably shaves 5% off the interior floor space compared to the normal brick treatment.  It even has a bizarre, seemingly unfinished cupola hosting a large clock, which, to these eyes, looks like it’s missing a spire.

Not many people would likely describe this corner building as beautiful, but the hodgepodge of styles and its nebulous intent help it stand out despite its unusually small size.  And it completely clashes with its neighbor.

The brown townhome next to it seems to come from a separate architectural mind, which is no surprise: it’s part of an entirely different development that has only stood at this site for a couple years.  Until about 2020, the squat building at the corner stood in relative isolation, surrounded by a parking lot that serviced a mid-rise hotel building, part of the Crowne Plaza chain.  The block looked like this.  A developer purchased the hotel, converted it to condominiums while modifying the façade, then filled the remaining surface parking lot with townhomes that surrounded the former hotel.  It obviously represents a higher intensity use than the hotel, however nice it might have been; the replacement of all the parking with owner-occupied homes reflects the high land values in Old Town North, a previously underdeveloped Alexandria neighborhood that is quickly catching up.

The townhomes flank the squat building on both sides of its corner perch, but they do not touch it.

It’s a peaceful coexistence, so it seems!  But this gargantuan residential development engulfs a tiny commercial corner, which begs the question: why did the developer retain the squat building instead of buying it, demolishing it, and using the ground for another townhome?  It was the same question I asked last year with Little Tavern in Washington DC.  Simply put, the juxtaposition is more interesting than a replacement: a weird, squat building on the corner inadvertently draws more attention to the surrounding townhomes than if it had been another townhome.  It also fosters the sort of urban granularity that Jane Jacobs extolled decades ago in her Death and Life of Great American Cities: a variety of small buildings on a block—all of varying uses, ages, and architectural styles—fosters vibrancy and adaptability more than a megalith.

Furthermore, the occupant of the squat building may have refused to sell.  Though not the original builder, Mediterranean fast-casual The Perfect Pita has called the building home for thirty years, and its success has allowed it to expand modestly: currently it has four locations.  The size works just fine for the Turkish-American family who run Perfect Pita; chances are they got the building for a song in 1994.  The architect who designed it in 1985 admitted that the goal for a limited-service bank branch never really took off.  But the Old Town North area was nowhere near as desirable, filled with a smattering of residential buildings amidst great deal of surface parking.  (Not all that different from the configuration of the Crowne Plaza Hotel until a few years ago.)  Although a banking use helps explain the thick walls and tiny windows, this original tenant folded quickly after opening in 1986, and the building struggled to find a good long-term tenant until The Perfect Pita Stepped in.  Lacking room for much seating, this branch of The Perfect Pita focuses on a carry-out business; the back half along Canal Center Plaza serves as the kitchen and storage.

This strange strip of concrete behind our squat building is particularly unusual, because it doesn’t go anywhere.  Perhaps, before the redevelopment of the Crowne Plaza property, this stretch of pavement connected to the street and served as a loading dock for The Perfect Pita’s kitchen.  But now it basically leads directly to the front yard of the adjacent townhome.  Parcel lines around here result in some weird geometry, which is typically more likely to prompt property disputes.

Strange though it may appear, The Perfect Pita (or its building’s owner) possesses this land.  And the family-run business has declared its intent to expand into this disconnected concrete strip, allowing  the restaurant to relocate its kitchen, which in turn would make space for on-site seating, additional bathrooms, a larger menu, and maybe even retaining enough space for al fresco dining along the sidewalk, a reconfigured roof, or a new second floor.  My hope, for the sake of this restaurant, is that it improves the signage and makes its logo more visible.  (Not that weak branding seems to have blemished its 30-year run.)  The restaurant in this squat little building will have to close temporarily for these substantial upgrades, but it reaffirms the notion that, however humble this building might be, it achieves a sort of symbiosis with the ambitious new multifamily condo/townhome project that has enveloped it.

The quirky structure on the corner helps relieve monotony in the design to the townhomes.  And the added density of all these new households helps bolster the customer base for The Perfect Pita, incentivizing it to recapitalize by growing on what little remaining undeveloped land exists to its name.

The Perfect Pita obviously can’t stretch back so far that it obstructs access or views from the townhome with address number 228.  But it can build right up to its own lot line—an additional 300 square feet or so, which allows the restaurant to recapitalize and expand its vision.  After the upgrades, it may not be such a squat building, but it will still punctuate the street corner as an aesthetic counterpart to the three- and four-story townhomes that have become increasingly ubiquitous as land values in Alexandria continue to surge.  Needless to say, bigger isn’t always better, and this squat building in particular proves that, when shrewdly poised and curated for specific users, “small” promotes itself to “boutique”—a magnet for the microretail business that covets visibility more than volume.  Adaptability is the secret for the Perfect Pita and its perfectly proportioned pavilion (FKA “that squat building on the corner”).