Designing New Routes

Carolyn Muraskin ’10 might have the only tour in D.C. that seamlessly flows from the city’s “Mean Girls” (led by Teddy Roosevelt’s oldest daughter) to the “Battle of the Currents” between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse to young Al Gore’s water balloon attacks—all rooted in buildings reflecting Washington’s eclectic blend of styles.

“People don’t think of architecture when they think of D.C.—they think of Chicago or New York for that—but D.C. has such amazing architecture, beyond the neoclassical white columns and marble,” she says. “There’s so much diversity, especially in Dupont Circle and Capitol Hill,” including Beaux-Arts, Queen Anne’s, and even Gothic and Spanish Mission-style mansions.

She founded D.C. Design Tours last spring to give both tourists and locals a chance to see what they’ve been missing. Since then, she’s added three part-time guides and climbed to No. 39 on TripAdvisor’s “Tours and Activities” in the city—her goal is to rank in the top 10.

She offers seven options: Dupont Circle (the most popular), Georgetown, Capitol Hill, Columbia Heights/Adams Morgan, Federal Triangle and two on the National Mall. They last about two hours and cost $35 per person.

“It’s a smart, friendly and fun tour,” says Jeanne Haffner, a postdoctoral fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. “You get the sense that you’re with someone who’s thought about this stuff a lot and is really invested in what she’s showing you—it’s not a cookie cutter thing.” (She liked her experience so much that she’s now working with Muraskin to develop urban landscape tours for teens, focused on the historic Georgetown estate.)

So how does an architecture grad go from sketches and site visits to guiding school groups, the Colonial Dames of America and even the CFO of Ikea across the nation’s capital?

Since middle school, Muraskin had her heart set on becoming an architect. Inspired by a little marble catapult she designed and built for class, the northern New Jersey native took drafting and art classes in high school, then came to Maryland to pursue architecture.

She worked in the field for five years, first for Facilities Management at UMD, managing projects like the renovation of the Pocomoke Building, then for MV+A, a D.C.-based firm that specializes in mixed-use development and works closely with Whole Foods (including on the Riverdale development near campus).

While she was there, she realized she didn’t want to complete the 10-year process to become fully certified and licensed in the field. “It’s a pretty solitary work environment, where you sit at your desk and stare at computer screen with your headphones in. I wasn’t able to use my interpersonal skills or love of history.”

She found that outlet outside of work, where she took her experience as a Maryland Images summer guide to the National Park Service as a volunteer. Tourists loved asking her architectural questions about the monuments once they found out about her background and asked if there were architectural tours they could take.

No, as it turns out—so she decided to fill that void. To prepare herself for the guiding lifestyle, she freelanced for D.C. by Foot and dived deep into the collections at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, the Library of Congress and Dumbarton Oaks. She also tested potential routes and chatted up park rangers and hotel staff for little-known tidbits.

She quit her job in February 2015, and today D.C. Design Tours hits the streets mostly on weekends (though people can email her to schedule other times).

“Don’t be afraid to be a little bit different,” she says. “I always thought I’d follow that traditional path, but there are different ways to use your degree. You just have to do a little creative thinking to find them.”