I lived here for a year and a half or so and it was a good experience overall. 4.5/5
The building is nice and the people are chill and friendly. Management is super cool, maintenance is fast and nobody ever bothers you.
It's also very quiet (except for the train - see below). I rarely heard any noise of my neighbors in all my time here, but you can hear hallway noise through the front door which is pretty natural for apartments.
The parking situation is a nightmare, though. They have parking on the 2nd floor but it was never available during my time here. Otherwise for $150/mo. you can get a parking spot in one of the remote parking nearby, which are pretty awful unless your lucky to get one behind the building. And when I say awful, one of my parking spots bordered 3 trash dumpsters (gross) and another one was in a parking lot that was frequented by drugged up homeless people. If you're having people over they have to pay metered parking outside the building before 8pm (including weekends). You can have them park on I street in one of the hourly, non-metered spots but it's still a pain in the ass nonetheless. Having a few guest parking spots would have been impractical I'm sure but a godsend for residents.
The neighborhood is also a mixed bag and filled with a lot of homeless people, so get used to seeing them around the building and nearby streets. It's not a great area to look at it, but it's ripe with cool places to eat and a local farmers market on Saturday right outside the building (very convenient and fun). You take the good with the bad I guess. That being said, grocery shopping is super easy with a Target nearby and the Natural Foods Co-Op a mile and a half away.
The worst thing about the building, though, is the lack of nearby high-rise buildings. There is simply no respite from the sun. If you're facing East, prepare to melt 6 months out of the year from the nuclear blast of the sun. It's blinding and absolutely scorching. On a summer day I would wake up to a thermostat reading 80+ degrees by 10am. One time I returned from a trip during summer and it was (I'm not joking) 91 degrees in my apartment. You can not, and I stress, can not open your window in an east facing apartment for half the year. Black out curtains are a MUST. The AC units work good but I've never been a fan of the combination of molten radiating heat from windows and artic chilled air from the AC. It's just not comfortable. 19J doesn't have any buildings, or trees or anything shading the sun from the East and I recall many summer nights being hot and cold at the same time from the combination of AC and lingering summer heat. Also, the sun blasts the lobby all day in the summer and it's pretty gross coming into the building without AC. *Also, management, you guys need to start temperature controlling the lobby (and the laundry room - it's suffocating in there in the summer and freezing in the winter).
The other issue for east (and south/north) facing apartments is the train. I didn't think it would be such a big deal but it was hellacious. The 19th street train comes barreling right past the building multiple times a day and often the train lasts 5-10 minutes. The train is known to last 10+ minutes with large hauls. It's loud even with the windows closed and with them open, well you can imagine. There's also delivery trucks that park on the corner of 19&J by the Starbux and deliver supplies to nearby buildings. They leave the engine running and the noise and bangs of dollies can last up to 30 minutes. This happened every single night.
Beside the heat and the noise it was a good living experience and I could recommend living here if your windows face any other direction than East. read more