Mihran Mesrobian

Mihran Mesrobian was born 10 May 1889 in Afyonkarahisar, Ottoman Empire to Gaspar and Miriam (née Palanjian), an Armenian family of merchants. Mihran's immediate family consisted of three brothers and one sister. The Mesrobian family had lived in Afyonkarahisar for generations and were involved in the opium and cereal trade. While a student at Sahakian, he further developed his talents by receiving education in penmanship, math, drawing, and manual labor/construction. Sahakian also taught various languages including French, Ottoman Turkish, Armenian, and English, all of which helped Mesrobian in his education and future career. , a member of the renowned Balyan family of Ottoman imperial architects, the Dolmabahçe Palace served as the administrative center of the Ottoman Empire. As chief architect of the Ottoman sultan, Mesrobian conducted an extensive restoration of the palace. At the age of fifteen, Mihran Mesrobian's talent in drawing and sketching was noticed by his father who then sent him to Constantinople to take entrance exams at the Academy of Fine Arts. Already a skilled drawer, Mesrobian did exceptionally well in the exams and was then placed in second-year of courses, instead of the beginning first-year. As a result, he finished the academy in four years rather than the conventional five. After his graduation in 1908, Mesrobian started a construction firm with a classmate. However, the firm turned out to be unsuccessful and Mesrobian subsequently moved to Smyrna (present-day İzmir). ==Career in the Ottoman Empire==

After Mesrobian moved to Smyrna, he was appointed as municipal architect of the city in 1909. The Dolmabahçe Palace had been neglected for thirty years and was in a state of disrepair during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II, who preferred to live in the Yildiz Palace instead. When the Dolmabahçe Palace was restored as an administrative center for the Sultan, a massive restoration of the building was needed. Mesrobian was subsequently employed as the chief architect of the restoration. After the war, he returned to Constantinople in June 1919 and was immediately employed as the architect of the city administration of Istanbul. He resumed his work on the Dolmabahce Palace, which was left incomplete due to the war. He also continued designing apartment buildings in the city just before emigrating from the Ottoman Empire in 1921. ==World War I==

At the start of World War I, Mihran Mesrobian was conscripted into the Ottoman Army in August 1914. Mesrobian was then transferred to the Russian front during the winter. The journey to the front was delayed by heavy snow. Thereafter, Mesrobian's battalion was transferred to the Palestinian and Syrian front to combat Arab forces. In the fall of 1918, during an offensive spearheaded by British forces who were assisted by the Arabs, most members of the 4th Army Corps to which Mesrobian was attached were captured by the Arabs. But Mesrobian managed to flee and was left wandering for several days. While in Palestine, he was ultimately captured by the Arabs and Mesrobian and his unit were then sentenced to death by their Arab hostage-takers. However, T. E. Lawrence, who is better known as Lawrence of Arabia, happened to be in the area and was able to intervene and save their lives. Mesrobian was then transferred to a British encampment in Zagazig, Egypt and was held there as a prisoner of war (POW) from late fall 1918 until his release in May 1919. ==Armenian genocide==

In April 1915, while Mesrobian was stationed in Gallipoli, the Ottoman government began the systematic extermination of its minority Armenian subjects known as the Armenian genocide. The genocide carried out during and after World War I was implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and subjection of army conscripts to forced labour, followed by the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches leading to the Syrian Desert. Driven forward by military escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre. The deportations in his native town of Afyonkarahisar, where Mesrobian's family still resided, began on 15 August 1915. Mihran Mesrobian returned to Constantinople after the war and discovered that fifteen members of his family and relatives in Afyonkasarhisar were deported. All were never to be heard of again, though it is believed that they were deported to Iraq. Among those whose whereabouts remain unknown were his three brothers, their families, and his younger sister. In a desperate attempt to save his property, Mesrobian returned to Afyonkarahisar to reclaim and ultimately sell it, but was unsuccessful since the property had been confiscated. ==Career in the United States==

Due to growing maltreatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, Mesrobian decided to move to the United States in the early 1920s. With the allowance of Armenians immigrants into the United States reaching its limit, Mesrobian was given special permission to enter the country by the Secretary of Labor due to his expertise in architecture. The project also included another housing development near Woodley Park called the Cathedral Mansions off Connecticut Avenue. The hotel was eventually resold in 1953 to Sheraton Hotels, which renamed the hotel the Sheraton-Carlton Hotel. Immediately after the success of the Carlton Hotel, Harry Wardman planned another hotel near the site where the 1885 homes of John Hay and Henry Adams once stood at 16th and H Streets NW. The building was done in an Italian Renaissance style and it featured Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian columns of the classical Greek era. Wardman was forced to sell the hotel in 1931, due to the Great Depression, to Washington Properties. Mesrobian became an American citizen when he was naturalized in 1927. Nevertheless, Mesrobian continued designing for Wardman until his death in 1938. In 1940, Mesrobian designed the Glebe Center, also known as Glebe Shopping Center located in the Ballston neighborhood of Arlington County, Virginia. It is a one-story, L-shaped cinder-block building with a flat parapet roof and clad in a six-course, American-bond brick veneer with cast-stone decorative accents. It features large store-front windows, Art Deco decorative elements, and a central square tower surmounted by a glass-block clerestory capped by a pyramidal-shaped metal roof. It was built to serve the residents of the Buckingham apartment complex and Ashton Heights, as well as the many motorists traveling along Arlington Boulevard and North Glebe Road. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. In 1943, Mesrobian designed the Wakefield Manor, a garden apartment complex located at 1215 N. Courthouse Road in Arlington. The design of the building incorporates an art-deco and moderne style and was built under standards promoted by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Though Mesrobian was the architect behind the apartment, he held its ownership. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 15 December 1997. The Calvert Manor also was awarded the Arlington County Preservation Design Award in 2002. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004. Mihran Mesrobian retired in the early 1950s and lived in 7410 Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase, Maryland in a house he designed himself in 1941. The house is a two-story building made of brick and includes a pavilion that transforms into a porch. The front facade is asymmetrical with a wall of glass on the right and the front door on the left. Mesrobian lived in the house until his death in 1975. It was then listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017. ==Later life and death==

In 1956, Mesrobian stepped out of retirement and volunteered to design the restoration of the St. Mary Armenian Apostolic Church in Washington D.C. The restoration included a new design for the sanctuary of the church. Mihran Mesrobian died on 21 September 1975 at the age of eighty-six in Chevy Chase, Maryland and is buried at the Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington D.C. ==Awards and decorations==

• Iron Cross (Germany) • Gallipoli Star (Ottoman Empire) • Liakat Medal (Ottoman Empire) • Iftikhar Sanayi Medal (Ottoman Empire) ==Selected works==

• The Carlton Hotel (now The St. Regis Washington, D.C.), 1926 • Hay–Adams Hotel, Washington, D.C., 1927 • Wardman Tower (now a wing of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel), 1928 • Dupont Circle Building, Washington, D.C., 1931 • Sedgwick Gardens, Washington, D.C., 1931 • Glebe Center, Arlington, Virginia, 1940 • Wakefield Manor, Arlington, Virginia, 1943 • Calvert Manor, Arlington, Virginia, 1948 • Lee Gardens North, Arlington, Virginia, 1949–1950 ==Gallery==

File:St. Regis Washington, D.C.jpg|The Carlton Hotel, now known as The St. Regis, was designed by Mesrobian in 1926. File:806 15th Street NW.jpg|The Shoreham, completed in 1929, is now the Sofitel Washington, D.C. Lafayette Square. File:Hay-adams hotel.jpg|The Hay–Adams Hotel is on Lafayette Square across from the White House. File:Marriott Wardman Park Tower on a sunny summerday view from east.jpg|The Wardman Park Tower, designed by Mesrobian in 1928, expanded the original Wardman Park Hotel with an additional eight-stories and a 350-room residential-hotel annex File:Dupont circle building 3c14961u.tif|Originally erected as an apartment building, the Dupont Circle Building was designed in the art deco style by Mesrobian in 1931. File:Sedgwick-gardens.jpg|The Sedgwick Gardens, designed by Mesrobian in 1931, has been an exemplary model of Art Deco porte-cochère architecture. File:Glebe Center.JPG|Designed by architect Mesrobian in 1940, the Glebe Center was eventually added to the National Register of Historic Places. File:Calvert Manor - Arlington, Virginia.JPG|Designed by Mesrobian in 1948 in the Moderne style, Mesrobian was the builder and owner of Calvert Manor. File:Calvert manor.jpg|An older photograph of The Calvert Manor, a building added to the National Register of Historic Places. File:Lee Gardens North Historic District 01.JPG|The Lee Gardens North was designed by Mesrobian under standards promoted by the FHA. The brick buildings are in Colonial Revival style, with some influence of Art Deco and Moderne. ==See also==