On Saturday I took the Georgetown House Tour, an annual Washington, D.C., institution put on by St. John's Episcopal Church. Of particular interest to me were the three architects' own houses on the tour.

Architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen's renovated 1810 home provided a great opportunity to check out his signature egg-crate bookshelves and his general love of classical proportion applied to modern geometry. Dale and Melissa Overmyer's residence (exterior photo below) gave me a chance to see how skillfully Dale Overmyer's architecture mixes traditional detailing with contemporary lifestyles (the family's sunny kitchen addition onto their 1877 rowhouse was quite the crowdpleaser.) And architect Christian Zapatka's semi-detached gut renovation of an 1830's home was elegantly restrained.

If you have the chance to go on this tour in the future, do! It's self-guided, which I always prefer, and you get to see quite a few houses (there were 9 this year) all within walking distance of one another. It's a nice way to spend a spring Saturday in Washington.--m.d.