Overall, we've been quite pleased with our apartment. The building and its management company certainly has a few ideosyncracies, but we've been happy with our apartment and expect to stick around a while longer.
To start with, the building itself is marvellous. The lobby is really quite something, and doesn't everyone need a fountain with a naked boy holding a fish' A good job has been done keeping the theme up around the rest of the building - carpet is suitably 'Moroccan Art-Deco-esque' and appropriate furniture dots the public areas. It's in the Washington 'Best Addresses' book, which in certain social circles will get you far.
Many of the apartments have sun porches that make great dens - so we've essentially got a 1bed den setup which is lovely - and it overlooks a spur of Rock Creek Park. Heaps of sun too.
The location is well-nigh perfect. Two blocks to the Metro, lots of lovely things to see and do in Cleveland Park, Rock Creek Park just down the hill, the Zoo an easy walk - we absolutely love Cleveland Park.
Many of the studios, and a couple of the others, have lovely big bay windows.
But there are some odd things and annoyances...
- The walls, door frames, etc. have been painted over so many times that many of the doors were very difficult to close due to the thickness of accumulated paint - I did a lot of sanding in the first month or so we were here.
- The electrical outlets, though three-pronged, don't seem to be grounded. There are also old screw-in fuses rather than circuit breakers.
- The water is constantly being 'repaired' - fortunately this usually only affects the other side of the building, so all we see are notices, but it gets us some times too - be it no hot water or no water for a few hours now and then. They usually try to do it during daytime hours though.
- The management staff is also profoundly disorganized, though the day-to-day desk staff do, for the most part, try to make up for this as best they can. For the staff, I would've given the Daro higher-ups two stars (at least everyone we dealt with was nice), but the building staff are much better. Patrick at the front desk is a star.
- I've heard that the apartments facing Connecticut Avenue can be loud (we're near a fire station too), but ours facing the back and those facing Sedgwick Street are much quieter. Likewise the low-numbered apartments on the back face the dumpsters, which seem to get emptied at odd times. Through-wall noise isn't terribly bad compared to other places I've lived.
- Laundry is bleed-you-dry expensive. We've taken to using a drying rack rather than pay three dollars to get everything dry in the machines.
- Grammar hilarity on posted notices - someone tries to use fancy language, but doesn't quite grasp the whole meaning of words or sentence structure.
- No heating control. Open the windows if you get too hot in winter. With lots of sun and just two window A/C units, if we're doing a lot of summer cooking or a lot of people are over, the A/C struggles to keep up.
- I've seen roaches in the basement, but never on upper floors. But this is DC; it's built on a swamp...
Overall, I'd definitely recommend it, though I've pointed out some imperfections. Also, I'd recommend the higher numbered apartments on each floor (x13 and up) which either face Sedgwick Street or face the back but aren't near the dumpsters or back doors where people loiter and smoke while talking on their phones. I'm happy to live here.

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