On the southeast corner of Connecticut Avenue and M Street in Washington, D.C., an ornate four-story Victorian townhouse still stands, its octagonal tower and ribbed tin dome rising incongruously against a twelve-story postmodern office tower that seems to grow directly out of its roofline. This is the Demonet Building, and its survival is not an accident of neglect. It is the result of a bitter, years-long legal fight that began in 1979, when a developer's demolition plans collided with a citizens' group determined to save one of the last unaltered Victorian residences on the avenue.
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