This Georgetown Mansion Is Now a $15,000-a-Night Villa Rental

Washington, D.C. has never been a flashy city. Sure, there are pockets of vulgarity in McLean and Potomac. But there’s an almost WASP-like tendency here to eschew the things you might expect to see in wealthy neighborhoods—houses are large but not palatial, and cars are expensive but not conspicuous. As the town is awash in money, people wear “nice” clothes, but you wouldn’t find yourself habitually stopping because you’re floored by an outfit somebody has on.

And while I will gleefully defend D.C. as arguably the American city with the highest quality of life and a place I love returning to after trips, its social events don’t have nearly the same frisson of excitement that those in NYC, Paris, or even Los Angeles do.

But a couple of months ago I said yes to an opening party in Georgetown. It was for a novel concept here, and a startling one in that it had flown completely under the radar. A couple had turned an old estate on an acre of gardens in the heart of Georgetown into a villa rental that would be going for tens of thousands of dollars a night.

LXIV D.C. is the villa’s name, an anything-but-subtle reference to that pervasive influence of on-the-nose luxury for the last four centuries, Louis XIV. It’s just off the M Street shopping corridor on 30th Street in a sprawling clapboard mansion in Georgetown. The compound is formed from two houses—one dating back to the 1840s—that were joined by Ruth Hanna McCormick, the daughter of Ohio Republican Party boss Mark Hanna. She was one of the first women elected to Congress (in 1928), the first to win a party nomination for Senate (she lost), and the first to run a presidential campaign (1940s for Dewey, who lost). She was also married to Medill McCormack, heir to the Medill publishing and McCormack industrial fortunes, and later to another congressman, Albert Gallatin Simms. The gardens at the house were laid out by Rose Greeley, a contributor to House Beautiful who designed a number of the estate grounds in D.C., and Perry Hunt Wheeler, who laid out the White House Rose Garden.

Without getting pulled too far into the early 20th century when D.C. was a glamorous town throwing legendary parties with guest lists that filled the tabloids, let’s just say that this was a house that comes with a pretty high pedigree of history.

In 2022, it was bought by D.C. developers Ezra and Jessica Glass for nearly $9 million. They spent the last two years transforming it into a contemporary luxury offering that will compete with the top suites at hotels like The Jefferson, Four Seasons, and Rosewood (which also has townhouses) for visiting heads of state, CEOs, and high net-worth individuals.

The house is protected, so its exteriors remain untouched, but wandering inside you’d be hard-pressed to imagine yourself in a historic Georgetown residence. Rather than lean into the quaint and creaky, the choices remind me most of the type of decor you’d find in the houses of oligarchs in London—historic outside, barely restrained contemporary inside.

It was an intentional choice, given the geographic variety of potential guests. And while you or I might find the quirks of an old house charming, a CEO prepping for a congressional hearing paying at least $15,000 a night likely will not.

The walls throughout are covered with hand-applied Matteo Brioni plaster, the bathrooms modern and clad in stone, and the furnishing sharp. Spread out over a rabbit-warren-like 12,000-square-foot house are six suites, 14 bathrooms, a parlor, a living room, a dining room, a ballroom, and an orangerie.

The house’s interior was designed by Jessica Glass and Eric Chang. One of the perks they’re offering guests is that everything in the house is for sale—if a guest sees something they like, it can be bought in the LXIV app and shipped to their house. The house is also a sort of “smart house” with a voice-activated concierge (as well as an actual concierge) whose job is to make the wishes of its demanding clientele come true.

The real show-stopper, and what makes this truly unique right in the middle of the city, is the acre of manicured gardens with a spa, enormous pool, gated entrance in the rear, and a spa house with a sauna, hammam, and cold plunge.

A twee AirBnB this is not.

I’ve rarely focused my reporting on the highest end of travel, so I don’t have a bet on the property’s success. But it’s a fascinating project for a few reasons.

The first is that luxury travel as a whole post-pandemic has been utterly transformed. This is in large part due to the explosion of ultra-high net-worth individuals (defined as having assets of more than $30 million). In 2017, 226,450 people fell into that category worldwide. As of 2023, that number is 426,330 and it’s expected to hit 587,650 in the next half-decade. That’s a sizeable enough market of potential customers to ensure a steady stream of growth for luxury goods. (In my conversations with Glass, this was a big part of their bet—that the ultra-high net worth market is now so large, that properties like this are needed.) LXIV is planning more projects, with the next ones in New York City and the south of France.

This fits the second reason this fascinates me—the private villa trend is exploding. Abercrombie & Kent is leaning heavily into it. Every few days, my inbox has another pitch from travel PR about a high-end villa concept somewhere in the world. One can only hope this has a trickle-down effect on better boutique villa rental concepts given just how bad AirBnB and Vrbos have gotten in terms of quality of design and experience.

Few SNL skits have nailed something as well as this recent classic on AirBnB design.

The final reason LXIV D.C. excites me is that it’s happening as Georgetown is having a mini-Renaissance. Once synonymous with anything nice in D.C., the last decade and a half has seen Georgetown become a sleepy afterthought. The best restaurants and bars, as well as anybody who wasn’t ashamed of not living in New York City, headed further east to Logan Circle and beyond. Emblematic of how Georgetown had fallen behind was that legendary developer Herb Miller left it for 14th Street.

But Lutèce on Wisconsin has been one of the buzziest restaurants in recent memory, and the line for Yellow (a new fast-casual concept in a city that created Sweetgreen and Cava) is always up the block. Jose Andres is building his first hotel here. And the long-awaited Stephen Starr transformation of the former Dean & Deluca on M Street into a D.C. outpost of Nancy Silverton’s Osteria Mozza opened. (I went to an opening party a couple of weeks ago and it was wonderful to see the space glammed up. There’s no doubt in my mind it will have transformative effects on the area.)

Maybe the one-ubiquitous phrase “Georgetown set” will even make a comeback.

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