One Washington Circle Hotel, Tapestry Collection by Hilton

AKA opened its third Washington, D.C.-area property on May 1, 2024, installing 151 rooms and suites inside a nine-story tower on Washington Circle that George Washington University had used as a hotel, then as student housing, before selling it in 2022. A $30 million renovation by Gensler stripped the building back to a neutral, residential-leaning interior, and the ground floor now holds a.kitchen+bar, a restaurant from Philadelphia restaurateur Ellen Yin.

The place

The hotel sits directly on Washington Circle in the Foggy Bottom/West End neighborhood, a few blocks from the George Washington University campus and hospital and within walking distance of the Kennedy Center and the Lincoln Memorial. Embassies and federal offices ring the area, giving it a steady flow of institutional and academic visitors alongside tourists headed for the National Mall. The building itself predates the current hotel by six decades: constructed in 1964, it operated for years as the independently run One Washington Circle Hotel before GW bought it in 2001, ran it as a campus-adjacent hotel, and then converted it into temporary student housing in 2021 when a dormitory renovation elsewhere on campus left it short of beds.

The concept

Hotel AKA Washington Circle is the third AKA-branded property in the DMV market, following AKA White House and Hotel AKA Alexandria, and it extends the group's extended-stay-luxury format — furnished rooms and suites built for both overnight and multi-week stays — into a building with an unusually specific institutional past. George Washington University sold the property to Electra America Hospitality Group, a joint venture between Electra America and AKA parent Korman Communities, in June 2022, and the partners spent roughly $30 million converting nine stories of former dorm and hotel rooms into 151 upscale accommodations, including king and queen rooms, one-bedroom suites and penthouses. Gensler served as both architect of record and design architect, redoing the exterior and reworking the public spaces before addressing guestrooms, which now run to floor-to-ceiling windows, kitchenettes or full kitchens, and Nespresso machines — the kind of self-catering detail that signals the property's extended-stay lineage even at its most transient end. The result reads as AKA's standard formula — quiet, neutral design paired with residential-scale amenities like a private cinema and a landscaped terrace — applied to a site whose most recent former life was housing GW juniors and seniors rather than hotel guests.

Dining & wellness

The hotel's restaurant, a.kitchen+bar, is run by High Street Hospitality Group and its founder Ellen Yin, the James Beard Foundation's 2023 Outstanding Restaurateur, marking her third collaboration with AKA after AKA Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. Executive chef Eli Collins leads a hyper-seasonal, American-inspired small-plates menu, backed by a wine and cocktail program that has drawn James Beard semifinalist nods for Outstanding Wine Program. Beyond the restaurant, the property keeps its food and beverage footprint modest, with a lobby lounge, a Technogym fitness center and a landscaped terrace rounding out the amenities.