The station is at the 5400 block of Wisconsin Avenue, Northwest and serves the neighborhoods of Chevy Chase and Friendship Heights. The area is a major retail shopping and broadcast media district. The station also serves as a bus depot linking Montgomery County Transit's Ride-On bus system with the Washington Metro. It is directly adjacent to the Western Division Metrobus garage on 44th Street and Harrison Street NW.
This station uses the four-coffer arch design found at most underground stations on the western side of the Red Line. Unlike its many counterparts such as Van Ness-UDC and Tenleytown-AU, the station's walls are more rounded. Friendship Heights is the only station in the system with this design that has mezzanines at both ends of the platform.
The station is one of 11 stations in the system constructed with rock tunneling and is accordingly deeper than most stations in the system.[5] Its platform is more than 100 feet (30 m) below its north entrance.[6] The escalator has a length of 130 feet (40 m) and rises 65 feet (20 m) feet above the mezzanine level.[7] The escalator ride from the common room at the north entrance to the mezzanine level takes roughly a minute and a half.[citation needed]
Two of its five exits sit on the Maryland side of Western Avenue, whereas the other three exit into the District. At the Western Avenue entrance, four separate street entrances come together in an upper mezzanine, allowing riders to access a set of three escalators that go to the platform. One entrance is located at a side entrance to the lobby of an entrance to the former C-level of Mazza Gallerie that has access to Western Avenue. Another entrance offers direct access to Chevy Chase Pavilion. The newest entrance, located off Wisconsin Avenue next to The Shops at Wisconsin Place, opened between 2011 and 2022, replacing an earlier entrance that led directly into a Hecht's. The new entrance is located across Wisconsin Avenue from the station's main entrance, which surfaces in a large bus depot underneath the Chevy Chase Metro Building. A second entrance, at the intersection of Wisconsin Avenue and Jenifer Street NW, is elevator-only, with four high-speed elevators servicing the station's south mezzanine.
