Posts by John DeFerrari

The building's interior is apparently in poor condition, having been neglected for many years, and some floors are reported to be partially collapsed. Reclaiming it won't be easy. Yet however much the structure has suffered, we owe it to ourselves to save this fine old mansion.

It seems odd to encounter a residential building like this on K Street, the avenue of "trophy" office buildings, and it's even odder that the building has languished for so long. Many see it every day and wish that it would be restored after such profound neglect. Its woes have been written up on Peter Sefton's engaging Victorian Secrets web site and noted in blogs such The Other 35 Percent.

Many were shocked to learn of the recent plans to tear it down. After the filing of the raze permit was first publicized on the H-DC History Net, local blogs quickly reported the alarming news, including The Location, Prince of Petworth, and the City Paper.

But the house is not yet doomed. The DC Preservation League filed an historic landmark nomination for the property in 2008, and thus the city's Historic Preservation Review Board will be required to review the case before a raze permit can be issued. If the property is designated a landmark, the raze permit will be denied, although the owner will still have the right to appeal the decision.

Architectural historian James Goode has called K Street between 9th and 20th streets the "Park Avenue of Washington" in the late 19th century because of its distinguished mansions and their prominent owners. "In the 80's and 90s K street was the most exclusive residential section of Washington and the center of social life of the city," wrote The Washington Post in 1929. "In those days all entertaining was at home and diplomats from foreign countries mingled with Government officials, statesmen, and ranking Army and Navy officers in the big, handsome houses set far back, fronted with deep lawns, hedges and trees, that lined the street."

Among the most opulent were the Childs House at 1527 K, built by a wealthy Philadelphia widow in 1894. Designed purely for socializing, the mansion was in the French Renaissance style of Parisian townhouses. Nearby, wealthy Senator Stephen Elkins (1841-1911) built a massive Georgian Revival house at 1626 K in 1892. Elkins had made millions from land speculation in the west and mining in West Virginia. The mansion's ballroom could accomodate 200 guests, was approached by a grand walnut staircase, and was decorated with gilt Louis XV furniture.

The fine house at the corner of 11th and K was not at the center of K Street's gilded age excesses (which is one reason it has survived), but it has many of the key elements of the street's lost residential format, including a spacious front lawn, officially called "parking" because it was reserved by city regulation for park-like features.

The distinguished building and adjoining structures were constructed in 1878 in the then-prevailing Second-Empire style by successful Washington builder Michael Talty (1812-1890), an Irish immigrant. An early resident of the house was William H. Burr (1819-1908), a former Senate stenographer who had become a well-known proponent of philosophical skepticism.

Peter Sefton has called Burr "one of Washington's most notorious curmudgeons, iconoclasts, and disturbers of the cultural status quo." After raising eyebrows with such incendiary tracts as Self-Contradictions of the Bible (1860) and Revelations of Antichrist (1879), Burr settled in at 1017 K as a kind of genteel retirement home in his later life.

Another well-known resident was General Harrison Allen (1835-1904), who came to Washington in 1901 to be second deputy auditor of the Post Office department. During the Civil War, Allen had been commander of the 151st Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, which he led at the Battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.

During an artillery bombardment shortly before Chancellorsville, a shell passed only a few feet over his head. Just before the Battle of Gettysburg, Allen was given leave, causing him to miss most of that big event. He was nevertheless retroactively promoted to Brigadier General in 1865 for "faithful and meritorious services."

After the war Allen entered politics, serving as a delegate to the 1868 Republican Convention, as state senator, and as Pennsylvania's auditor general. In 1882 he was appointed United States Marshal for the Dakota Territory, where he pursued stage coach robbers and horse thieves until getting his Washington appointment from President McKinley.

On September 22, 1904, he spent the evening playing cards with his wife and friends in the downstairs parlor at 1017 K and appeared to be in perfect health. However, the next morning he was found dead in his upstairs bedroom, the apparent victim of a heart attack. I'll leave it to others to speculate whether his ghost still haunts the old house.

After Allen's death, the inexorable process of change for 1017 K—and all of downtown Washington—slowly took shape. The wealthy began moving to the trendier, northwestern "suburban" neighborhoods of Dupont Circle and Kalorama and ultimately out of the city altogether. Many of the large buildings they left behind were subdivided for boarders or converted for commercial uses before eventually being torn down.

A photo from the Library of Congress of a K Street row near 14th Street, circa 1915, shows the transition taking place: A large Department of Justice building rises between two elegant Second Empire houses, looking ready to push them out. They'd all be gone before long.

The mansion at 1017 K had a notable second life when it became the headquarters of the DC Statehood Party, organized in 1969. As described by Cultural Tourism DC, the DC Statehood Party gained prominence in 1971 when Julius Hobson (1919-1977), a noted civil rights activist, ran for the non-voting delegate seat in Congress now held by Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Hobson was a civil rights pioneer who between 1960 and 1964 had led more than 80 pickets of downtown retail stores, successfully gaining jobs for thousands of African-Americans who had previously been barred from or severely limited in working at these establishments. Hobson's campaign for delegate, though unsuccessful, raised the profile of the Statehood Party and helped establish it as a viable third party in the District. The party continues to this day as the DC Statehood Green Party.

It's been many years now since 1017 K has been occupied by the Statehood Party or any other organization, despite its unique status as the last of its breed. Striking parallels can be drawn with a legendary historic preservation case from the past, the Rhodes Tavern at 15th and F Streets NW. In the late 1970s and early 1980s an extraordinary effort was mounted by concerned local preservationists to save the tavern, which had been built in 1801 and was a polling place in the first DC municipal elections held in 1802.

There were many very good reasons to save that rare building, but one of the most compelling was that it was one of the last reminders we had left of the type of building that used to line Washington's central business district in the the city's earliest days. As Nelson Rimensnyder has pointed out, Washington's first building regulations, decreed by George Washington himself in 1791, specified that "the wall of no house be higher than forty feet to the roof" and that "the outer and party walls of all houses...be of brick or stone." The result was uniform rows of simple but elegant Federal-style townhouses along the city's few main thoroughfares, including Pennsylvania Avenue and F Street.

The strategically located Rhodes Tavern, a prominent example of this type, witnessed every Presidential inauguration from Thomas Jefferson to Ronald Reagan. It was devastating when the fight to save the humble building ended in 1984 with its complete destruction. Not only was this particular jewel of early Washington gone, but all traces of the original building type specified by George Washington were lost forever from the inaugural parade route.

The K Street mansions of the late 19th century were another major defining element of the city's built environment that are now—almost—all gone. If 1017 K is torn down, we will have no reference point left on K Street to recall this part of our shared past. There will be nothing but office boxes, and we'll never be able to undo the loss of this last reminder of the genteel residences that once lined this busy office canyon.

Cross-posted at Streets Of Washington.

The Star began inauspiciously enough in December 1852, one of dozens of newspapers that sprang up for limited runs in 19th century Washington City. In fact, two other DC newspapers had already used the Star name, the Columbian Star from 1822 to 1827, and the first Washington Star in 1841.

The third Star, the one that would matter, began as a four-page broadsheet with a run of 250 copies, printed on a hand press in a small office at 8th and D Streets, NW. The paper's first owner, Captain Joseph Borrows Tate, sought to distinguish the Star from all the other rags published throughout the city by striking a tone of impartiality: "The Star is to be free from party trammels or sectarian influences...devoted in an especial manner to the local interests of the beautiful city which bears the honored name of Washington."

The paper's neutral stance and focus on local news became its trademark and, in time, gave it broad appeal and commercial success. It also led at times to overly innocuous reportage, as in this oft-quoted remark by reporter William Tucker that appeared in the paper's first edition: "Our courts are sitting, but the business with which they are engaged is not of a very interesting character."

Tate sold the paper within a year to William Wallach (1812-1871), an aggressive Texan who worked hard to build up the business, moving its office to the southwest corner of 11th and Pennsylvania in 1854.

Wallach hired a promising young reporter, Crosby S. Noyes (1825-1908), in 1853, and Noyes quickly became the Star's star. One of his many assignments was to report on the hanging of John Brown at Harper's Ferry, WV, in 1859, which he did in flowery, dramatic prose. The Star maintained an anti-slavery stance in those days and, once the Civil War began, was decidedly pro-Union, despite the strong Southern sentiments then common in Washington.

The paper grew in prestige during the war years, aided by its exclusive connections with an early incarnation of the Associated Press. Through the AP, the Star's vivid coverage of the war's impact on Washington was relayed across the country. The New York Times often reprinted war reports from the pages of the Star, and the paper's prestige increased. Supposedly, as soon as Abraham Lincoln finished delivering his second inaugural address, he handed the text to Crosby Noyes so that it could be printed in the Star.

In 1867, Wallach retired and the paper was bought by Noyes and four other investors: Samuel H. Kauffmann (1829-1906), Alexander "Boss" Shepherd (1835-1902), Clarence D. Baker, and George W. Adams. Shepherd, who would become governor of DC in 1873, sold his share of the enterprise within a few years, as did Baker, and Adams remained a behind-the-scenes investor. That left Noyes and Kauffmann to establish a family dynasty that would preside over the Star for another 100 years. Noyes exercised editorial control, while Kauffmann served as publisher and handled the business side.

In 1881, the Star was forced to move from its quarters on the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue to make way for construction of the grand Post Office Department building, so well-known now for its iconic clock tower. Kauffmann and Noyes decided to move directly across the street to a narrow, four-story building on the northwest corner of 11th and Pennsylvania.

The paper was steadily growing during these years, and the new building was almost immediately too small. The company gradually acquired adjacent properties on Pennsylvania and 11th until it had a large enough plot to build a monumental skyscraper of a building.

The project began in 1897 with many of the leading architects of the day participating in a competition to design the Star's new home. James G. Hill, architect of such prominent buildings as the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the Stoneleigh Court Apartments, submitted a proposal, as did the firm of Hornblower & Marshall, designers of the Smithsonian's Natural History Building, and Glenn Brown (1854-1932), an influential secretary of the American Institute of Architects and author of the landmark History of the United States Capitol.

The winner, however, was William J. Marsh (1864-1926). Marsh had just started an independent practice with Walter G. Peter (1868-1945), whom he had met while they were both working at Hornblower & Marshall. Marsh may have had the inside track on this competition since he had previously designed homes for Crosby Noyes and two of his sons.

Marsh designed an ostentatious, marble-faced office tower in the then-fashionable Beaux-Arts style. The shining white structure was a powerful statement of the Star's position of power and pre-eminence. In comparison, the Washington Post's smaller grey-granite building up the street, done in the Romanesque-Revival style, looked out-of-date. A postcard of the new building unabashedly proclaims, "The Evening Star Building of white marble is the most beautiful newspaper building in the world."

The building was completed and opened for business in June 1900. As described in great detail in the rival Washington Times, its interior held many wonders. Inside the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance, one passed through a marble-clad lobby to the richly-decorated business office.

The walls were clad in exquisite white Paonazzo marble from the famous Carrara quarries of Italy and carved into elegant Renaissance Revival arches and pilasters. Frederick Dielman (1847-1935), a celebrated painter who had recently produced murals for the new Library of Congress building, was commissioned to prepare seven great allegorical paintings of the newspaper industry for the lunettes in the upper portions of the walls. The effect was of being in a Renaissance church or grand library rather than the business office of a newspaper.

Editorial offices were on the seventh floor, with a commanding view of the city from the windows to the west and south. Editors (the news editor, city editor, telegraph editor) had their desks along the windows, all equipped with telephones, electric bells, and pneumatic tubes for sending messages around the building.

The open space in the middle of the room was filled with roll-top reporters' desks, a typewriter on each. On the other side, a row of telephones stood at the ready, providing instant communications with the Senate, House of Representatives, City Hall, and District Building. It was the height of modern journalistic efficiency.

On the eighth floor was the composing room, in a double space that extended through the ninth floor to provide a cavernous, skylit working space. It was outfitted with 18 of the latest Morgenthaler linotype machines, sophisticated devices that set lines of type in cast bars of lead for use on the two enormous printing presses down in the basement. The equally large basement printing plant included not just the presses but also electric generating equipment capable of independently supporting all of the building's needs.

Management of the paper passed to a new generation with the deaths of Samuel Kauffmann in 1906 and Crosby Noyes in 1908. Two of Noyes' sons took over, Frank taking Kauffmann's place as president in 1906 and his brother Theodore becoming editor in 1908. Under the Noyes brothers, the Star's greatest period of expansion took place, and it became one of the most profitable newspapers in the business. It continued to focus on local news and printed only the safest of opinions on its editorial pages, thus ensuring that none of its many advertisers were offended.

Meanwhile, its competitors languished. The Post had sullied its reputation by seeming to incite the race riots of 1919. According to Constance McLaughlin Green, "Newspapermen despised the Washington Post, a 'poison sheet' without moral integrity." Of the other two major papers, the Times had "swung far to the right," according to Green, thus marginalizing itself, while the Herald "offered a bland diet only occasionally spiced with biting, politically loaded comments." With such anemic competition, the Star could afford to be arrogant.

In 1918, the company built a large annex next to the original building along 11th Street, and it became the industrial heart of the expanded business. The new space was equipped with no less than 34 Morgenthaler linotype machines and four presses in the basement.

On an average day, 890 4-pound ingots of lead were melted down to make the day's press plates. (The metal was melted down and re-used each day.) A typical print run in 1927 was 100,000 copies of a 32-page paper, requiring 38 massive rolls of newsprint, or 596 miles of paper. The finished papers were loaded on to 17 trucks for distribution across the city each weekday afternoon and Sunday morning.

Everyone seems to agree that the real turning point for the newspaper—from rising star to falling star, as it were—came in 1954, when the Post absorbed the Times-Herald. (The Times and the Herald had merged in 1939.) The Times-Herald had had a slightly higher circulation than the Star, although the Star's advertising volume far outpaced any of its competitors. But the acquisition of the Times-Herald put the Post well ahead of the Star in circulation for the first time—over 380,000 by 1955 compared to the Star's 250,000.

By 1959, the Post pulled ahead in advertising volume as well, and the Star never caught up. While the Post had taken over the spot as the city's newspaper of record, having come a long way from its "poison sheet" days of the 1920s, top management of the Star seemed oblivious to the sea-changes. Insular and used to longstanding success, they thought their paper was invulnerable. Instead, it was doomed.

As if to symbolically punctuate the Star's decline, the company decided in the late 1950s to abandon its venerable home on Pennsylvania Avenue and construct a new building at 225 Virginia Avenue, SE. The move gained key logistical advantages for the paper's printing operations; the soon-to-be-constructed I-395 freeway would provide direct access for speedy afternoon distribution, and a railroad spur offered equally direct access to newsprint and other raw materials.

In addition, the new building boasted roughly three times the floor space of the old one. Nevertheless, the company had traded an elegant structure at a prestigious address for a hulking, utilitarian box in an out-of-the-way, run-down area.

The demise of the Star was a long and drawn-out affair. Circulation actually continued to increase throughout the 1960s, although advertising revenue steadily dropped off. The afternoon format became more and more of a liability, no longer fitting the daily routines of a changing culture and also posing distribution challenges.

"Realistically, it was probably hopeless by '65 or '66," a former executive was quoted as saying in the Star's final edition. As the paper relentlessly lost money, the Kauffmann and Noyes families began to look for an outside buyer. In 1974, a wealthy Texas banker, Joe L. Allbritton, took control of the paper, eventually buying out the shares owned by the Kauffmann and Noyes families.

Allbritton wanted to turn the paper around, but he faced insurmountable odds. A key part of his strategy was to leverage the income from the company's profitable WMAL broadcasting stations to cover the paper's losses while fixes were being planned. However, the Federal Communications Commission balked at Allbritton holding on to two different mass media outlets in the same market.

Tense times at the paper ensued, with staff accepting pay cuts and a reduced work week to keep the business alive. In 1978, four years after taking over, Allbritton sold the Star to Time Inc. The media giant made more changes, bringing in new editorial leadership, changing the physical design of the paper, and switching to morning delivery. It didn't help. After just three more years, Time closed the Star for good in 1981.

Meanwhile, the old Evening Star Building endured quietly on Pennsylvania Avenue. Initial plans, after its namesake had moved out, were to convert it to a 330-room hotel. Instead, it was converted to generic office space, and much of it was rented to the federal government. As various "modernizations" were undertaken, nothing of the original interior decoration was preserved—the Carrara marble, the mahogany trim, the Dielman murals—all vanished.

In 1981, the owners proposed a massive renovation and enlargement of the building, a project that was finally carried out 9 years later. The 1918 addition on 11th Street was torn down in 1987, as were smaller structures abutting the building on Pennsylvania Avenue, and a large new addition, designed in a style sympathetic with the original, was put up in their place. The Evening Star Building is now one of the most valuable properties in downtown Washington.

The 1959 building in Southeast was sold to the Post, which used it as a printing plant for many years. The DC government leased the building in 2007 with the intention of using it as a new police headquarters but subsequently determined that that option would be too expensive. The city bought the building outright in 2009, and it is currently being extensively renovated to house several other DC government agencies.

Thanks to Kim Williams, DC Historic Preservation Office, for her assistance with this article. Sources included Fred A. Emery, "Washington Newspapers" in Records of the Columbia Historical Society (Vol. 37-38, 1937); Merrill E. Gates, Men of Mark in America (1906); Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: A History of the Capital, 1800-1950 (1962); John Clagett Proctor, Washington Past and Present: A History (1930); Pamela Scott and Antoinette Lee, Buildings of the District of Columbia (1993); Washington Board of Trade, The Book of Washington (1927); a draft National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Evening Star building from 1990; and, of course, numerous newspaper articles from the Star as well as its chief rivals.

Cross-posted at Streets Of Washington.

By the 1960s, the neighborhood was changing. After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968 and the ensuing riots, the theater's old clientele were virtually gone. The following year, the theater switched to a Spanish-language format, the first theater in DC to cater to the burgeoning Latino community.

By the early 1970s, Sunday afternoons at the Ontario became the social center of the Latino community. Extended families would show up every week; for recent immigrants, spending Sunday at the Ontario represented a chance to attend an enjoyable, affordable social event on the one day of the week they had free.

This stability was threatened in 1977 when new owners took over and tried to convert the theater back to its former first-run format, on the theory that Adams Morgan had been taken over by yuppies. "There is no Spanish Community here any more," one of the new owners was quoted as saying. In response, Latinos picketed the theater, issuing a statement asking, "Who says we don't exist?" The Spanish-language films were soon restored to the all-important Sunday afternoon time slot.

Throughout the rest of the week, the Ontario took on a new life as the venue for some of the leading rock and punk bands of the era, including The Clash, Blondie, U2, and the Police. The promoter who booked these and other artists would go on to organize the celebrated 930 Club downtown in the mid 1980s. At that time, the Ontario was sold yet again, and the new owners tried to re-establish a first-run movie format.

The attempt didn't work this time either, and the theater closed in 1987. The building was then divided up for various retail businesses, including a drug store, discount store, and other shops. The theater has been vacant for the last several years.

The Historic Preservation Review Board is scheduled to consider a landmark nomination for the Ontario at its November meeting. The current owners are reportedly considering redeveloping the property as condominiums.

It would certainly be a shame if nothing can be saved of the Ontario. Besides its rich cultural history, the theater is also unique architecturally, representing a mid-century modern aesthetic as expressed by one the leading movie theater architects of the 20th century, John J. Zink, who also designed the Uptown Theatre.

The Ontario, of course, isn't nearly as beloved as the Uptown, and it has several potential strikes against it. Many people just don't care for the mid-century style, which has far fewer followers than does the art deco design of the Uptown. Additionally it's been decades since it was actually in use as a theater. An entire generation hasn't had the chance to see a movie there. Furthermore, it's run-down and simply looks ratty.

There have been other occasions when historic buildings were destroyed because they were decaying and dilapidated. Perhaps the most notable was Rhodes Tavern, one of the most historic buildings in the city at the time, which was torn down in 1984 despite a citywide referendum endorsing the need to preserve it.

Built around 1800, the little tavern at 15th and F Streets NW, had been one of the first meeting places of the young city's new government. Designated an historic landmark, it was the subject of an intense effort at preservation. But it was in bad shape. Part of it had been torn down in the 1930s, and the remainder looked out-of-place and even "ugly," in many critics' view. So in the end it came down and was replaced by a large, respectable-looking office building.

Will the Ontario share this same fate? Should it? Isn't there some way to develop this underused property without completely obliterating the old theater?

In those days, Washington City was largely a field of dreams. The Capitol and President's Mansion were under construction, and a scattering of other buildings, none very remarkable, demonstrated the desire that a town grow here.

Georgetown, at the time a separate entity in the District of Columbia, was better established. It had been established in 1747 as a tobacco inspection site, being located at the highest navigable spot on the Potomac River. Maryland farmers, who grew highly-prized "sweet-scented" tobacco, rolled great hogsheads of it down to the wharf at Georgetown to be exported to Scotland.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the high ridge above the port of Georgetown became the site for a number of "great houses," removed as it was from the hurly-burly waterfront and offering commanding views of the river and the new city emerging just to the east.

The land had originally been part of a 795-acre patent obtained in 1703 by Col. Ninian Beall (1625-1717). Beall called his property "Rock of Dumbarton" after a famous site in his homeland of Scotland, and the Dumbarton name survives today in many area place names.

Dumbarton House was constructed on this ridge in about 1799 by Samuel Jackson (1755-1836), a Philadelphia merchant and land speculator who lived in the new mansion with his family for about two years. One of his daughters may have been born in the house.

It's not clear why he built such an elegant house and then left it as soon as he did, but, as David White points out, Jackson was a creature of his times. He was involved in complex business deals involving extensive land holdings in Tennessee, where he eventually settled his family. Jackson would gain passing notoriety in 1807 when he was wounded by President-to-be Andrew Jackson (no relation), who stabbed him with a sword-cane, perhaps over a dispute about a horse race.

The house Jackson built is one of the best examples of the emerging Federal style in architecture in the District. The Federal style often brings to mind plain brick townhouses, two or three stories tall, with gabled roofs; Washington once had blocks and blocks of them.

This is one of a much smaller number of Federal great-houses, laid out in careful Palladian symmetry with wings on each side of a stately central block. At first glance, the building might seem little different from the brick Georgian mansions of the 18th century, but it was actually markedly new and stylish in 1800. The Flemish-bond brick walls no longer seem as heavy and squat as on many Georgian mansions (the James River plantations in Virginia come to mind), and the interior is no longer dim.

When you enter Dumbarton House you are welcomed with bright light from a large Palladian window gracing the stairway landing at the rear of the central passage. Upstairs, the south-facing front windows rise dramatically from the floor, flooding the front rooms with light. No longer content with boxy spaces, Dumbarton House's designer added a pair of great rounded bow walls to the rear of the house, extending the back rooms with gracious, curved spaces.

The first residents after the Jacksons left were Joseph Nourse (1754-1841) and his wife Maria (1765-1850), who moved in in 1804 and purchased the house shortly thereafter for $7,500. The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America (NSCDA), which owns Dumbarton House, has chosen to focus on the Nourse residency for the historic museum portion of the structure and has a long-term project underway to restore the first floor of the house as closely as possible to its appearance when the Nourses lived there.

The son of a successful merchant, Joseph Nourse was a skilled bookkeeper. When serving as a military secretary for General Charles Lee during the Revolution, he was noticed by George Washington. After independence, he was chosen the first Register of the Treasury and kept that position until the Jackson administration. Much of the early Continental currency issued by the new government bears Nourse's signature.

Nourse was an unassuming individual, a family man with a curious intellect. His Georgetown property eventually included 8 acres of land, enough for a modest subsistence farm where wheat, rye, and hay were grown. Outbuildings included a carriage house, stables, barn, icehouse, and dairy. To keep all this running, the Nourses kept about 10 servants at any given time, some free and some enslaved.

The wheat and rye produced on the estate could be easily carried a short distance down the hill to Rock Creek, where it could be ground into flour at Lyons' Mill. Joseph likely spent little time overseeing these activities, however. In addition to being "America's first civil servant," as he was dubbed in an exhibition in the 1990s, Nourse could just as aptly be considered Washington's first suburban commuter, traveling daily from his house on Cedar Hill, as it was then called, to his Treasury Department office on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington City.

In 1813, the Nourses sold the house, and within a few years they moved to the current site of the National Cathedral on upper Wisconsin Avenue. The Nourses' son, Charles, built his mansion, The Highlands, just north of that, and it now serves as the administration building of the Sidwell Friends School.

The Georgetown house was sold to Charles Carroll (1767-1823), a prominent landowner from the powerful Carroll family of Maryland, which included one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll, who was one of the owners of a paper mill on Rock Creek and also had extensive real estate investments in New York, called the property Belle Vue.

Being friends with President James Madison (1751-1836) and Dolley Madison (1768-1849), Carroll played a key role in aiding the Madisons when the British attacked and burned Washington in 1814. After the Battle of Bladensburg went badly for the Americans on the morning of August 24, President Madison knew the British were going to occupy the city, and he asked Carroll to assist Dolley in escaping.

As to what happened next, Dolley later gave biographers the following description, which she said was from a letter she wrote to her sister that day:

Three O'clock. Will you believe it, my Sister? We have had a battle or skirmish near Bladensburg, and I am still here within sound of the cannon! Mr. Madison comes not; may God protect him! Two messengers covered with dust, come to bid me fly; but I wait for him.... Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and is in a very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until the large picture of Gen. Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall.... It is done.... And now, dear sister, I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it, by filling up the road I am directed to take. When I shall again write you, or where I shall be tomorrow, I cannot tell!!

Carroll safely spirited Dolley to Belle Vue, where she stopped briefly on her way to sanctuary in Virginia. If she were still at Belle Vue that evening, she could have seen the fires in the distance from the Capitol, White House, and Navy Yard burning.

Carroll lived at Belle Vue only a few years before moving to New York, after which he rented the house out. One of his first tenants, beginning in 1815, was Commodore John Rodgers (1773-1838) a naval hero who had been honored by the citizens of Baltimore for helping defend their city from the British in 1814. His daughter Elizabeth was likely the second child born at the Georgetown house.

Rodgers eventually built his own mansion on Lafayette Square, the same house where Secretary of State William H. Seward (1801-1872) was attacked in April 1865 as part of the conspiracy to kill Abraham Lincoln, Vice President Johnson, and Seward.

The property was leased for many years to Samuel Whitall, a New Jersey Quaker, and his family. Whitall's son bought the house from Carroll's heirs, passing it to his sister Sarah (1824-1892), who married banker Charles E. Rittenhouse (1814-1880) in 1855.

In the Civil War years and afterwards, the house was known as Rittenhouse Place. Though the house itself seems to have changed very little, Georgetown changed all around it.

The war brought many unruly (and largely unwelcome) Union soldiers who seemed to have little respect for local residents, many of whom sympathized with the South. Troops camped at the Lyons Mill complex on Rock Creek, for example, would occasionally take potshots at the stained glass windows of the chapel in Oak Hill Cemetery, just to the north of Rittenhouse Place. To the south was an encampment of former slaves who had fled across the Potomac from the plantations of Virginia.

Meanwhile, lower Georgetown, along the waterfront, had become a rather seedy industrial zone. Massive amounts of silt had filled the harbor, making it nearly useless as a shipping port. Once seafaring trade had diminished, business activity shifted to the assorted mills and factories lining the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. It was a place for gentlefolk to avoid.

After Sarah Rittenhouse died, the old house on the ridge was sold to Howard Hinckley, who around 1900 made a number of renovations, such as adding decorative Georgian-style "quoins" on the exterior corners of the house and removing an interior wall on the first floor to create a large entertainment room.

Hinckley sold the property in 1912 to John L. Newbold (1871-1931), a prominent local businessman and founder of the Merchants Transfer & Storage Company. Newbold made the purchase knowing that he was acquiring a house with a serious problem; it stood directly in the path of a planned extension of Q Street.

The Q Street extension was part of a scheme to link the Heights of Georgetown with the well-to-do Sheridan Circle neighborhood via an elegant new bridge (which would become known as the Dumbarton Bridge) spanning the valley of Rock Creek.

Wealthy Washingtonians had been building extravagant mansions along Massachusetts Avenue for several decades, turning the neighborhood into a posh enclave. Isolated on the other side of Rock Creek were the homes of the wealthy Georgetowners, who didn't have a convenient option for crossing over to the main city.

To extend Q Street, the District planned to tear down Newbold's mansion, but he got a court order holding them off until he could get it moved. Newbold hired Washington architect Thomas J.D. Fuller (1870-1946) to plan the move and "restoration" of the house, which included dismantling the two wings and then reconstructing them at the house's new location.

The move of the main house was undertaken by Caleb L. Saers, a Civil War veteran who had run a business of raising and moving houses in the Washington area since at least the 1880s. He found the Newbold mansion particularly challenging. It took three weeks and 200 jacks to raise the old house a half-inch off the ground and probably several months after that to drag it into its new resting place, a spot that had been dug out of the hillside some 60 feet to the north. Regretfully, no pictures have been located that show how this complicated engineering feat was accomplished.

The mansion's modern-day history began in 1928, when the NSCDA bought it to serve as their National Headquarters and gave it the name "Dumbarton House." This time, a thorough and historically-sensitive restoration was undertaken under the leadership of two distinguished architects, Fiske Kimball (1888-1955) of Philadelphia, who had spearheaded the restoration of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, and local architect Horace Peaslee (1884-1959), the primary designer of Meridian Hill Park.

Various alterations, mostly done by Hinckley, were reversed, bringing the house back to something close to its original appearance. Many fine details, such as the decorative plaster cornice in the main parlor and dining room, were restored to their original beauty. Decorated with exceptional early American furnishings, many of them donated by state societies associated with the NSCDA, the restored Dumbarton House was opened as a museum in 1932.

Renovations were undertaken again in 1991, modernizing the building's systems, adding an elevator to enhance accessibility, and increasing office and meeting space apart from the historic core. This unique museum is now open to the public Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 am to 3 pm.

The staff and volunteers at Dumbarton House have done much extensive research into the house's history, which was very helpful in preparing this post. Frances White and Scott Scholz were particularly helpful in providing advice and correcting factual errors. Additional sources included Deering Davis, Stephen Dorsey, and Ralph Hall, Georgetown Houses of the Federal Period (1944); Harold Eberlein and Cortlandt Hubbard, Historic Houses of George-town & Washington City (1958); Oscar P. Fitzgerald, In Search of Joseph Nourse 1754-1841 (The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America, 1994); Mary Mitchell, Divided Town (1968); Kathryn Schneider Smith, Port Town to Urban Neighborhood: The Georgetown Waterfront of Washington, D.C. 1880-1920 (1989); David D. White, Samuel Jackson: The First Occupant of Dumbarton House (unpublished, 2010); The National Register of Historic Places nomination for Dumbarton House (Dec. 14, 1990); as well as numerous newspaper articles.

Cross-posted at Streets Of Washington

For 150 years, the AFRH has offered veterans a restful retreat amidst a cluster of striking historical buildings. Most well-known nowadays among Soldiers' Home buildings is the once-endangered Lincoln Cottage, a Gothic Revival country house built by banker George W. Riggs (1813-1881) in 1842 and used by President Abraham Lincoln as a summer retreat.

It has been named a national monument, restored, and made into a fascinating museum by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. But the attention given to the Lincoln Cottage seems to have pushed the rest of the Soldiers' Home buildings into undeserved obscurity.

To appreciate the Sherman Building, one has to start at the beginning of the story, with the founding of the Soldiers' Home. As Matthew Pinsker has explained, the institution was a long time coming. There had been talk in Congress as early as the 1820s of establishing a facility to care for disabled veterans who were unable to support themselves, but little came of it.

In the 1840s, Maj. Robert Anderson (1805-1871)—best known as the commander of the besieged Union forces at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in the opening days of the Civil War—mounted a determined effort to establish a soldiers' retreat. At his urging a bill to create a military asylum to aid such unfortunates was introduced in 1841, and much debate was held on the subject in the early 1840s, but again no asylum was actually established.

The turning point came as a result of the invasion of Mexico City in 1847 by American forces led by Gen. Winfield Scott (1786-1866). True to historical form, the conquering army extracted a tribute ($150,000) from the good people of Mexico City to spare their fine city from being looted and destroyed.

Rather than turning the money over to the War Department, Scott then took the extraordinary step of putting $100,000 of it into a bank account to be reserved for establishing an Army asylum, "subject to the order of Congress." The War Department tried to get the money back but was blocked by Senator Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) of Mississippi—later to become president of the Confederacy—who shepherded a bill through Congress that finally established the asylum in 1851.

The law establishing the military asylum designated two other locations, in Mississippi and Louisiana, but the one in Washington was the only one that lasted. Using the Mexican tribute money, Congress bought the 200-acre country estate of banker Riggs, including his Gothic Revival cottage, and later purchased additional properties, including the adjoining Harewood estate of Riggs' partner, William W. Corcoran (1798-1888), ultimately creating a 500-acre bucolic, wooded reservation. As originally established, the Soldiers' Home welcomed veterans of the regular army with 20 or more years of service as well as disabled veterans with any amount or type of service.

The first inmates of the military asylum lived in the old Riggs cottage beginning in 1852, but clearly more room was needed. The asylum's board authorized construction of a new main hall to accommodate up to 250 residents as well as two other large cottages, all to be clustered around the Riggs cottage near the northwest corner of the huge property. Lt. Barton S. Alexander (1819-1878), an experienced Army engineer who would later have a key role in the Civil War defenses of Washington, was chosen to oversee the construction.

The new main hall would later be named Scott Hall, after Gen. Winfield Scott, and it has remained the centerpiece of the Soldiers' Home until this day. Construction began in 1852 and continued for five years. For its design, Lt. Alexander imitated James Renwick's Smithsonian Institution building, now known as the Smithsonian Castle, a triumph of the "picturesque" mode of architecture promoted by Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852).

Picturesque buildings aimed to use eclectic designs based on historical architectural styles to blend in with their natural settings. The picturesque precedent fit the new Soldiers' Home building perfectly, situated as it was on top of an idyllic wooded hilltop with sublime views of the capital city. Its Romanesque-arched windows, wistfully reminiscent of a medieval abbey nestled in the remote countryside, gave dignity and architectural flair to what could have been a drab government dormitory.

While the Castle was made of red sandstone, Scott Hall used white New York marble. Its construction was overseen by Gilbert Cameron, a master builder and stonemason from New York whom Renwick had  brought to Washington in 1847 to work on the Smithsonian project. As completed in 1857, the building was two stories tall with cast-iron balconies, a large clock tower rising up at its center, and a stately, arched front porch.

Once Scott Hall and the other two new cottages were complete, Soldiers' Home found itself—temporarily—with more than enough room. The commissioners decided to build goodwill by offering to provide accommodations to President Buchanan in the summertime as a retreat from the stifling heat and humidity of downtown Washington. Buchanan stayed in one of the new cottages rather than the original Riggs house, where the Home's superintendent lived.

When the Lincolns arrived, they wanted the Riggs house. One suspects that Mary Todd Lincoln was behind this decision. Abraham Lincoln enjoyed staying at the cottage and was said to have drafted the Emancipation Proclamation there. Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester A. Arthur summered there as well. James and Lucretia Garfield had been planning to spend the summer of 1881 at Soldiers Home, but they never got the chance; Garfield was felled by an assassin's bullet at the Baltimore & Potomac train station on the Mall in July 1881.

As originally built, Scott Hall quickly proved to be too small, and the building was remodeled in 1869 by adding a third floor under a fashionable, Second-Empire style mansard roof. The building was then remodeled again in 1887 after a large annex had been constructed behind it. The resulting structure, completed in 1890, is even more castle-like than before, with crenellated parapets and a truly monumental Richardson-Romanesque clock tower.

At 320 feet, Scott Hall boasts the third highest elevation in Washington, DC. The vast grounds of the Soldiers' Home surrounding it were kept open to the public after it was built, and a network of scenic roads was constructed that made the property a great destination for a Sunday outing, especially before the roads and amenities of Rock Creek Park were developed. As described in Joseph West Moore's Picturesque Washington (1887):

A short distance from Washington, on the Rock Creek road, is the Soldiers' Home, a most beautiful sylvan retreat where the aged and invalid soldiers of the regular army can pass their days in peace and comfort. There are few finer rural estates in the land, and it is often called "the Central Park of Washington," as it is constantly open to the public, and over its five hundred acres of beautifully diversified hill and dale, every one can wander at will, enjoying the charming views and attractive surroundings.

Within the grounds there are seven miles of drives on broad, well-made roads, shaded in summer by gigantic oaks with luxuriant leafage; and there are lakes with swans, long stretches of meadow-lands, handsome arbors perched on hills, whence can be obtained delightful prospects of the country for several miles; ornate villas, statuary, and various adornments. It is, indeed, a pleasant spot, with plentiful means for peaceful enjoyment, and, doubtless, many a "weary pilgrim on life's devious course," as he strolls through these grounds almost envies the superannuated warriors their privilege of residing here.

Soldiers' Home has undergone many changes in the intervening years. Many buildings have been added; much land has been lost. When large new buildings, a dormitory and hospital, were completed in 1954, the Scott Hall name was transferred to the new dormitory, and the historic Scott Hall became the Sherman Building. Safety concerns then led to the closing of the grounds to the public in 1968.

The complex used to include a large and productive dairy farm, worked, in part, by some of the residents. The dairy farm and other land located to the south of the property—40 percent of the Home's acreage—was lost in the 1960s when it was appropriated for development of a large hospital complex that now includes the Washington Hospital Center, Children's National Medical Center, the National Rehabilitation Hospital, and the local Veterans Affairs Medical Center. The land grab also included acreage for the extension of North Capitol Street and Irving Street.

Renamed the Armed Forces Retirement Home in 2001, the now-venerable institution receives no taxpayer money to fund its operations, relying instead on a 50-cent weekly payroll deduction contributed by all active enlisted military personnel. To earn more income, the home developed a master plan, approved in 2008, that calls for development of some of its underutilized property. An early version of the plan was scaled back in response to concerns about density and historic preservation.

Last Tuesday's earthquake only added to the Home's financial challenges. According to Carrie Barton, an historic preservation specialist with EHT Traceries, Inc., a number of carved stone pieces from the Sherman Building's pinnacles and crenellated parapets fell off, either inward through ceilings or outward to the ground. Stone masons were marking and cataloging the pieces for eventual repair.

More seriously, the building's iconic tower was severely compromised. It sustained major cracks and was leaning toward one side. An emergency effort was undertaken on Saturday to stabilize it as Hurricane Irene approached, but engineers were uncertain whether it could be repaired or would need to be entirely rebuilt.

This coming week, engineers expect to develop a plan for how to proceed with the building's restoration. Additional photos of the earthquake damage can be found on the DC Preservation League's Facebook page.

Cross-posted at Streets of Washington.

In 1912 Hammel moved his lunchroom to 922 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, occupying the same space that had previously hosted Henry King's millinery store. Hammel's Buffet kept its casual atmosphere but started offering a more full menu, including the planked rock bass which would become the restaurant's signature dish.

Like Bassin's Restaurant, Hammel's was quietly successful in its early lunchroom years. Carl Hammel became a fixture of the local community, active in German-American affairs and a member of the Board of Trade.

It wasn't easy running a German restaurant in Washington in those days. The onset of World War I brought anti-German sentiment. Even more significantly, the temperance movement was gaining traction. The noose began to tighten with passage of a law in 1913 restricting the number of restaurants that could sell alcohol. Hammel's was lucky to retain its permit for a few years, until prohibition came to DC on November 1, 1917 with passage of the Sheppard Act.

As Garrett Peck engagingly describes in his new book, Prohibition in Washington, D.C.: How Dry We Weren't, Washington never stopped drinking alcohol, and lots of people never stopped buying it at restaurants and speakeasys. Enforcing the ban became an overwhelming task. Hammel's was just one of many DC establishments raided by authorities trying to stem the illicit trade. According to The Evening Star, prohibition enforcement officers found 1,200 gallons of beer and red wine in the cellar of Hammel's on April 25, 1923. Hammel and his clerk were arrested.

Carl Hammel retired from the business in 1929. He left the restaurant to his son, Louis J. Hammel (1899-1990), and his son-in-law, Harry G. Kopel (1887-1964), a native of Austria who had previously served as the headwaiter at the Willard Hotel. In 1931, after their old building was acquired by the government for the Federal Triangle project, Hammel and Kopel moved the restaurant a short distance to its final location on 10th Street. It was here that Hammel's enjoyed its greatest success.

Phyllis Richman, writing her first review as restaurant critic for The Washington Post in early 1977, had this to say about the Hammel's of that era:

...in the Thirties and Forties, if you were downtown at night, which was the fashionable place to be—social Washington took evening strolls around the Ellipse—you dined at Hammel's.

This was a restaurant the national guidebooks touted as one of Washington's finest. It was noted for its German food, its deviled crabs and especially its beef. But eventually its fame rested on Hammel's invention born of Depression thrift: Roast Beef Bones Diablo. It was a hangout of tax court judges and bureaucrats, a lively restaurant with waiters in white aprons...

However good the Roast Beef Bones Diablo was, or the planked rock bass, food was probably not the only reason to visit Hammel's during the Depression. There was also "near beer," which was supposed to lack the alcohol content of real beer, but that often was more "real" than "near".

In August 1932, less than 2 years before Prohibition was repealed, the police conducted a major raid on Hammel's. This time they meant business. As reported in the Post, they brought a chemist along to test the alcohol content of 70 gallons of "alleged beer" that were found on the premises. They then proceeded to remove not only the restaurant's beverages but also virtually all of its fixtures, from the massive bar to the collection of autographed photos of celebrities that had adorned its walls. Hammel, Kopel, and two other staff were arrested. Hammel's was out of business.

About a month later, a trial was held in police court, and the restaurant men were all acquitted. It seems that an undercover prohibition agent had drunk a near beer at Hammel's and reported that it gave him a "glow". The raid was then conducted on his word. The jury found that the agent had no sound basis to conclude that the beverage exceeded the allowable amount of alcohol. Although the chemist's on-site tests indicated alcoholic content varying from 2.5% to 9% in drinks at Hammel's, the police had lacked the proper authority to conduct the raid in the first place. Further, the jury also concluded that the police exceeded their authority in confiscating the restaurant's fixtures.

However, despite their legal victory, Hammel and Kopek were still stuck with paying the storage company that held their fixtures, both for storing them and for transporting them to and from the restaurant. All told, they estimated their expenses at $1,200. But at least they got the autographed photos back.

The end of prohibition in March 1934 didn't mean the end of legal hassles for Hammel's. The World War II years brought strict rationing for both businesses and individuals, and many DC restaurants, including Hammel's, ran afoul of the strict rules. More problematic was a 1949 campaign by US Attorney George Morris Fay against illegal gambling.

In March, Fay's agents (pointedly without any involvement by local police) raided 8 sites around the city and arrested 40 men. While some of the sites had equipment and furnishings that clearly suggested they were involved in gambling rackets, it was surprising that Hammel's, a popular and respected establishment, was also hit.

Harry Kopel and a young waiter named Danny Plummer were arrested. It was alleged that Plummer had accepted bets on horse races from Wilfred Barrett and "pretty" Edith Wildrick when serving them at Hammel's. Barrett was a law student moonlighting as an undercover agent, and Wildrick was a stenographer in the US Attorney's office. When the raid came, Kopel was found with a numbers slip in his possession.

Like the earlier prohibition case, this one also fell apart in the courts. As reported in the Post, Kopel argued that he didn't know anything about gambling and had no idea what the slip of paper was about. He claimed not to know what an Armstrong scratch sheet was, and that the numbers found printed on a card in his wallet were the serial numbers of his two Army sons. He was soon acquitted. Young Danny Plummer, on the other hand, admitted taking bets from the undercover agents but argued he was just passing them on to bookies as a favor and that he had been entrapped. He was initially convicted, but the conviction was overturned on appeal.

Meanwhile, Hammel's continued its thriving business. The restaurant settled in for several more decades without any reported harassment by government agents. A Post review in 1968 called it a "handsome, comfortable restaurant with an air of graceful middle age." By then Hammel's carried an extensive menu of mostly seafood and steaks, offering large portions with filling sides, such as potato pancakes and dumplings. Donald Dresden reviewed the restaurant in 1970, finding the waiters gracious but the food rather poor, except for several outstanding desserts.

By the time Phyllis Richman arrived in the late 70s Hammel's was clearly in decline. "A little of the old world is left in Washington at Hammel's," she wrote in a summary review, noting the "enormous array of German dishes, seafoods, organ meats, stews, grills, and international dishes" at lunch time "in a club-like room crowded with gilt-framed paintings and beer steins, even an electric organ." Still highly recommended were the desserts, especially the authentic German pastries.

Hammel's downtown neighborhood had gone into serious decline by the 1970s, of course. Around the end of the decade the restaurant moved from 10th Street to a new location in Georgetown, but the change didn't help. Within a few years, the venerable eatery closed for good.

Cross-posted at Streets Of Washington.

Henderson was famous for having co-sponsored the 13th Amendment to the Constitution banning slavery. In the spring of 1868, he and six other Republican senators defied their party as well as public sentiment by voting against conviction of Andrew Johnson during his impeachment trial.

Mary Foote was in the gallery looking on as he cast his momentous vote, which effectively doomed him to a single term in the Senate. Once the drama of the impeachment was over, in June 1868 John and Mary were married. It was said that the whole Senate attended the wedding.

When Henderson's Senate term expired the following year, the couple moved back to Missouri, where  Henderson made much of his fortune from local Missouri bonds, which he bought cheaply and then redeemed at full value, benefiting from a favorable court ruling.

Meanwhile, Mary built up her social credentials, founding the St. Louis School of Design and becoming known as an excellent hostess. She was the author of "Practical Cooking and Dinner Giving" in 1877 and "Diet for the Sick, A Treatise on the Values of Foods" in 1885.

The Hendersons decided to move back to Washington in 1887. They purchased several lots along 16th Street NW on a steep hill just north of Boundary Street (now Florida Avenue). Just beyond the original limits of Washington City, the area was still semi-rural in those days.

The Hendersons constructed a massive mansion of Seneca sandstone on top of their hill. The house, designed by Massachusetts architect Eugene C. Gardner (1836-1915), was in the fashionable Romanesque Revival style and was supposedly modeled after a castle Mrs. Henderson had seen in the Rhine country. Boundary Castle, as they called it, was a sprawling brownstone pile very much in the wistful, Romantic aesthetics of the late Victorian age.

Completed in 1888, the castle's sprawl was extended to the west with a huge service wing, designed by Washington architect T. Franklin Schneider, in 1892. The new wing featured crenelated battlements that made it look very castle-like. The main house didn't originally have such battlements, but in 1902 they were added, completing the structure's medieval-fantasy appearance.

The Hendersons' first formal dinner, held in February 1890, drew a rave review from The Washington Post, which marveled at Mrs. Henderson's elegant attire—her Felix gown of old rose velvet trimmed in gold—as well as the lavish furnishings of her castle: the "mellow" Moorish entrance hall, plush-lined picture gallery used as a ballroom, and grand oak-paneled dining room hung with oak-leaf embroidered tapestries. An invitation to dine with the Hendersons immediately became a highly sought-after status symbol.

Ensconced in her intimidating palace, Mary Henderson proceeded to exert her influence on the character of her immediate neighborhood as well as on Washington society at large. There had been talk by 1898 of the need to expand the White House to meet the needs of the contemporary presidency.

Late that year, Mary began promoting on Capitol Hill an alternate plan for a grand new Executive Mansion to be built on the crest of Meridian Hill (directly across the street from her house). Collaborating with architect Paul J. Pelz (1841-1918), one of the designers of the Library of Congress, Henderson envisioned a massive temple-like complex with sprawling terraces and columned arcades that The New York Times called a "pretentious structure."

The proposal was politely tabled. Two years later, Henderson made another attempt, this time based on a proposal by Franklin W. Smith (1826-1911). Smith's Executive Mansion was similar to Pelz's but instead straddled 16th Street, which passed through it under an enormous arch. It too was set aside.

Undaunted by these defeats, Henderson began re-making the rough-and-ready Meridian Hill neighborhood into a grand European-style enclave of exotic chateaux. The Hendersons bought up properties all along 16th Street and began erecting lavish palaces to be rented or sold to high government officials and diplomats.

The first were along the west side of 16th in the blocks north of Boundary Castle, including the Venetian-style "Pink Palace" (1906) at the corner of 16th and Euclid, which was rented to Oscar Strauss, Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of Commerce and Labor. There was a new Embassy of France (1907), just south of the intersection with Kalorama Road, done in a supremely Parisian-looking Beaux-Arts style.

Several additional large residences were constructed over the next few years in the same block as the Pink Palace. These imposing palaces would be occupied by the Danish, Swedish and Polish embassies. In Henderson's eclectic vein, each of these would be designed in a different architectural style and lined up neatly in a row, like postage stamps in an album.

These houses, as well as more to come in the future along 15th Street, were all designed by Mary Henderson's favorite architect, George Oakley Totten, Jr. (1866-1939), who had handled the renovations to Boundary Castle in 1902. Totten was a prolific Washington architect who also designed a number of lavish diplomatic residences in other parts of the city. In 1915, he built his own Arts-and-Crafts-style house on the east side of 16th Street in the block above Euclid Street.

Neighborhood real estate development was not Mrs. Henderson's only interest. She also became an impassioned evangelist of healthy living. Writing in her 1904 book, "The Aristocracy of Health," she rhapsodized almost maniacally about her vision of the human body reaching an ideal state "when blood-corpuscles are no longer disintegrated, spiculated, and pale, but round, red, and rich laden; ... when the body-machine is no longer oppressed with the clinkers of surplus material; when reserve forces are no longer wasted or dissipated by avoidable devitalizing expenditures..."

This bizarre vision stood in contrast to what she saw as the deplorable contemporary state of humankind: "The violation of hygienic laws has been so general and long-prevailing that human degeneracy has come to be accepted as the appointed lot of humanity. Human life is but an apology, a makeshift, a compromise..."

By the time her screed on healthy living was published, Mrs. Henderson was famous for her elegant dinners featuring strictly vegetarian cuisine and no alcohol. A 1905 fete included a fruit soup, mock salmon in hollandaise sauce, broiled slices of pine-nut Protose (Protose was a meat substitute made of peanut butter, wheat gluten, and corn starch, among other things), unfermented Catawba wine, iced fruit, and Kellogg Gelatine for dessert.

As reported in the Post, the printed menu cards for this dinner included "figures corresponding to each item on the bill of fare, showing the number, kind, and proportion of the food units, or 'calories,' contained in each dish." Like all meals prepared by Mrs. Henderson's accomplished English chef, it was said that the uninitiated couldn't tell that they weren't eating meat or fish.

In May 1906, Mary famously decided to dispose of the plentiful and expensive stocks of fine wine that Mr. Henderson had accumulated over the years in the cellar of Boundary Castle. Her butler was a member of the Independent Order of Rechabites, a Christian temperance society, and he had asked for the use of the castle grounds for an assembly of his group.

With Mrs. Henderson's acquiescence, members of the butler's "tent" brought armfuls of wine bottles up from the castle's cellars and smashed them on a large rock in the front lawn. There was so much wine that it ran down into the gutters of 16th Street. The newspapers loved the story. With racial insensitivity typical of the day, The New York Times reported:

Along the gutter down the hill Negroes gathered, and with tomato cans and other utensils scooped up what they could of the liquor and drank it. As they enjoyed themselves they sang old-time plantation melodies, while the Rechabites within the courtyard sang stirring temperance hymns.

Soon, however, there would be many fewer African-Americans in the neighborhood to benefit from Mary Henderson's accidental largesse. After many years of persistent lobbying, Mary succeeded in 1910 in getting Congress to authorize the purchase of land for construction of Meridian Hill Park across 16th Street from Boundary Castle where she had previously hoped a new Executive Mansion would be built. She argued that the stunning views from this site as well as the opportunity for elegant terracing and cascades made the spot ideal for a formal park.

As Congress and city officials were won over, no one seemed to care that the site was already densely occupied by African-Americans living in mostly single-story frame houses. Since the Civil War, African Americans had settled in this area, which had been just outside the city limits. The future park site had been subdivided in 1867, and many of its residents owned their own homes. They were all forced to leave.

Later, Mary Henderson would boast to a reporter that "we bought out the owners of the shacks on our hill and pulled them down." Once the land was cleared, it took many years to construct the park, one of the most beautiful in the city. No trace remains of its previous inhabitants.

Mary Henderson fought many battles. She wanted the Lincoln Memorial built on Meridian Hill rather than the Mall. She had a house built on 15th Street that she offered to the government as a residence for the Vice President (predictably, it was thought too extravagant). She thought 16th Street should be lined with busts of the Presidents and renamed the Avenue of The Presidents (it was indeed renamed in 1913, but only for a year before it was changed back).

More successfully, she pushed for the city's first zoning regulations, adopted in 1920, to help control the erection in her neighborhood of large apartment houses, such as the ones that the brash Englishman, Harry Wardman (1872-1938), was building everywhere. There seemed to be no end to her energy and aspirations.

After she died in 1931, the neighborhood began to change again. Mary Henderson's vision of Meridian Hill as an exclusive residential enclave began to fade. Wealthy people headed further to the west, and the spaces in and around the elegant 16th Street houses began to fill with apartment buildings.

Boundary Castle—now known to most people as Henderson's Castle—was rented in 1937 by a Texan named Bert L. Williams, who reopened it as the Castle H Tennis and Swimming Club. The old ballroom was fitted out with a stand-up bar. Mary would have been horrified.

As early as 1935, there had been talk of tearing down the old castle, but it hung on until January 1949, when it was finally razed. Wealthy neighbors Eugene and Agnes Meyer had purchased the mansion in order to get rid of the rowdy club. Being a flight of Victorian fancy, the castle had grown distinctly out of favor by the 1940s.

At the time of its destruction, the Post ran an editorial dismissing the castle as a relic of the "brown decades" of the late 1800s, when everyone was gloomy because of the Civil War. (Huh?) "It is well that this brownstone ghost is at last laid low by the hammers of the wreckers," the paper intoned.

Not everyone agreed, however. A Post reader, Horace Monroe Baxter, fired back an angry letter calling the editorial a "nauseating shock." "I would suggest to you," he continued, "in furtherance of your love of modernistic architecture, that you make arrangements to have the lovely Washington Post Building ... torn down and replaced by one of those slab-sided architectural monstrosities of soulless modernity."

This, of course, is exactly what did eventually happen to the Post's beautiful Richardson-Romanesque building on E Street downtown, perhaps as punishment for condoning the destruction of Henderson's Castle.

Meanwhile, by the early 1970s, Mary Henderson's elegant Meridian Hill Park had become a staging ground for civil rights rallies and was widely known as Malcolm X Park. It was in for hard times. Across the street, a developer bought the empty Henderson tract and in 1976 built an enclave of pricey townhouses called Beekman Place. He left in place the sturdy brownstone retaining wall along 16th Street that was built for the castle, and it remains there to this day.

Landing at Baltimore, he soon found his way to Washington, where he got a job sweeping the floors of Moses Ring's clothing store on Pennsylvania Avenue. When he turned 21 in 1855, he proudly became a U.S. citizen.

In those days, much of the city's retail commerce took place along Pennsylvania Avenue, and there King learned the ins and outs of the retail clothing business. After a couple of successful years with Moses Ring, he opened his own Pennsylvania Avenue clothing store in 1859.

He also met and in 1861 married Caroline Straus King (1842-1909), another young German immigrant. Caroline took a strong hand in helping run Henry's store and developed a specialty of making fancy hats. The couple would have seven children—six sons and one daughter, the youngest.

Presumably Henry planned to leave the store in Caroline's hands when, filled with patriotic fervor, he tried to enlist in the Union Army in 1861. His military career, however, never materialized; he was rejected because of a "muscular affliction" in his right arm.

King's store was very successful in the 1860s and 1870s. Newspaper articles would occasionally mention trips by either Henry or Caroline to acquire stocks of the most fashionable hats from New York or Paris. According to later articles, King sold hats to Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882) and Julia Grant (1826-1902) when they were in the White House, both ladies having an eye for fine clothing.

President Grant sometimes accompanied his wife when she went shopping, and it was said that he would sit in the back of the store with Henry King smoking large black cigars while Caroline King helped Julia choose a hat.

The Henry King clothing store changed locations a number of times in the 1870s and then around 1878 finally settled at 814 7th Street NW, where it remained for more than half a century. The business was christened "King's Palace," and became a lasting Washington retail fixture.

Starting with a simple storefront on 7th Street, King gradually expanded both along 7th and to the rear. By 1882, the store extended all the way through the block to 8th Street.

The Post reported that year that King had installed "a row of handsome French mirrors" to assist women trying on hats, and in the evenings "one hundred and twenty-five brilliant gas jets flood the store with light."

For the fall season's "opening," King offered everyone who entered the store "an elegant, fine and expensive souvenir, while an additional souvenir will be presented to each purchaser."

If you want to buy goods, and wish to save your money, and desire to be treated well, and wish to find a choice and largest stock to select from, you are in duty bound to go to the Great Headquarters, the largest Millinery House, KING'S PALACE, 814 Seventh Street.

A full-page advertisement in The Washington Herald in September 1890 advertised the "opening" for that fall, complete with "All the Latest Parisian Hats and Bonnets and all the Novelties in the Millinery Line."

The ad went on to boast that, after "extensive improvements," King's Palace had "the largest First-Floor Business House and one of the handsomest show window fronts in this city... You can do all your shopping at KING'S PALACE without risking your life in elevators and without climbing any stairs, which makes shopping in out Mammoth Establishment a pleasure."

Across the street from the rear of King's Palace, on 8th Street, stood a church building that had been taken over by the Washington Hebrew Congregation in 1863. The Kings were members of this congregation, and Henry King became its president in the 1880s.

At Caroline's prodding, King began a campaign in the 1890s to raise money for a new and much-larger temple building. By 1897, funds had been secured and a competition was held to design the new building. The winning architects were Louis F. Stutz and Frank W. Pease, a well-known firm in Washington, according to the Post.

Stutz and Pease designed a unique, granite and limestone building meant to evoke the Holy Land.

Its façade was "somewhat Byzantine in effect," the Post observed, although it also reflected Romanesque Revival styling. It included two commanding 135-foot-tall towers. President William McKinley and his entire cabinet were on hand for the laying of the cornerstone of the new building in September 1897.

Unfortunately, Henry King was not there. He had died just one month earlier. The structure remained the home of the Washington Hebrew Congregation until 1954, when the congregation moved to a new building at Massachusetts Avenue and Macomb Street, NW. The Greater New Hope Baptist Church then purchased the building and has been using it ever since.

Meanwhile King's sons continued to operate King's Palace on 7th Street, expanding the business from its original emphasis on millinery to become a full-fledged, modern department store. A branch store opposite Center Market on Pennsylvania Avenue had been in operation since the 1880s, but that store was closed in 1907 after expansion of the 7th Street store allowed all merchandise to be consolidated there.

In July 1914 a fire caused significant damage to the building, necessitating extensive rebuilding. The King brothers managed to keep parts of the store open while an entirely new façade—the one that remains there today—was built.

Completed in November, the new façade received rave (and identical) reviews in the Post and the Herald:

The front is constructed of glistening white hollow tile. Four massive square columns, surmounted by a towering, deep cornice, give an effect of dignity and strength, which is pleasingly combined with ornate capitals and relief work. The whole result is one of remarkable richness.... A graceful wrought iron balcony extends across the entire front on the second-floor level, and will be utilized for a display of evergreens and perennial vines and flowers.... The show windows are the last word in modern construction, with copper frames and marble bases. Circassian walnut is employed for the window backgrounds in an artistic arrangement of columns and panels, and the hardwood parquet flooring is laid to match....

The alterations to the structure, costing $30,000, were designed by Frederick B. Pyle (1867-1934), an accomplished Washington architect who also designed several other landmark D.C. buildings, including the restrained, neoclassical "modern" half of the Woodward & Lothrop building as well as the 1903 Hecht Company building at 7th and F Streets NW.

Like King's Palace, the Hecht Company building makes rich use of decorative terra cotta, which had become a popular materiel for decorating steel-frame commercial buildings since the late 19th century.

King's Palace continued to do business until it disappeared in the mid 1930s. One presumes it was a victim of the Great Depression. The ornate storefront was taken over by the G.C. Murphy Company, which specialized in very inexpensive merchandise and did well during the Depression. Murphy's stayed in the building through the 1960s and was followed by a variety of other tenants as the neighborhood went into decline after 1968.

In 1977, a blue jeans outlet called The General Store moved in. Then around 1990, the north half of the block, including the old King's Palace store, was redeveloped into a large office building, and the façade of the old store was preserved, with new construction set back behind it.

A Brazilian churrascaria called Coco Loco moved into the redeveloped space in 1994, marking one of the earliest indications that this neighborhood would develop into the trendy entertainment district that it is today.

Cross-posted at Streets Of Washington

Evans was born in Delaware, Ohio, a town just north of Columbus, just as the Civil War was ending. He spent time as a child in Minnesota and then moved to Washington, D.C., when he was 15 years old. According to the National Cyclopedia of American Biography, he joined the firm of J. Henry Kiser as a patent draftsman at the age of 18.

He continued to work as a draftsman, running his own drafting business for awhile, as he learned the ropes of patent law. He founded Victor J. Evans & Company, Patent Attorneys, in 1898, and soon had a booming business.

It seems likely that his success was due at least as much to his business acumen as to his legal skills. His firm offered full refunds to inventors if they were unable to secure their desired patents, a strategy the Cyclopedia article says that Evans originated and that was perceived as a key to his success.

Evans built up an extensive, high-volume business. By the 1920s, his firm had offices in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago and San Francisco and was routinely touted as the "largest patent firm in the world." An ad in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1916 listed the various departments of the Evans firm—Aeronautics, Electricity, Ordnance, Toys & Novelties—and urged readers to send for four inspiring booklets: "How to Obtain a Patent," "What to Invent," "Patents that Pay," and "Foreign Patents."

In 1907, Evans acquired an old mansion at the corner of 9th Street and Grant Place NW (now G Place), with the aim of building a headquarters for his business on the site. As constructed for $150,000 in 1909, his Victor Building is a handsome, six-story Renaissance Revival structure that projects the stature and success of the Evans company.

Evans chose Appleton P. Clark (1865-1955) as his architect, one of the most prolific in Washington. Although he had no formal education as an architect, Clark designed some 20 distinguished downtown buildings, many of which still survive. The Renaissance Revival style he adopted for the Victor Building was particularly in vogue at the time, reflecting the strongly neoclassical influence of the 1902 McMillan Commission.

The original building has a rusticated limestone first story, separated from the upper floors by a heavy limestone string-course. The entrance on 9th Street is framed by massive, banded pilasters and surmounted by a heavy, broken pediment, with the words VICTOR BLDG inscribed in the entablature, conveying an air of both dignity and self-importance.

The building was extended along G Place to the rear in 1911, also under the supervision of Clark. In 1925, a large addition was constructed to the north, along 9th Street, in a similar but not identical style, and two floors were added to the top of the original building at the same time. The designer of the 1925 addition was Waddy B. Wood (1869-1944), another prominent Washington architect.

For Evans, the Victor Building was not just a home for his patent business, it was also a real estate investment. His plan from the start was to rent out retail and office space in the building. Evans would go on to invest in a number of other D.C. real estate projects, particularly office buildings for government tenants. He built an office building for the Department of Commerce in 1913 at the northeast corner of 19th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW and a similar-looking building for the Interstate Commerce Commission a block away at 18th and Pennsylvania.

But real estate was just one of several pursuits that Evans took on beginning in the early 1900s. He dabbled in politics, at least for a while, being one of the organizers of the Washington chapter of the Independence League in 1908. Members of the League, known as Hearstites, supported William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) as an independent candidate for president that year. Evans was one of the D.C. delegates to the Chicago convention of the League, which didn't last long.

The emerging field of aeronautics, ripe as it was for patents, fascinated Evans, so he jumped into that business too. In 1910, he partnered with another patent attorney, Rexford Smith (1862-1923), to establish the Rex Smith Aeroplane Company at the pioneering airfield in College Park, Maryland. The company manufactured biplanes designed by Smith and made a business of flying celebrities around the Washington area.

Also, in 1911, Evans put up $10,000 for star aviator Harry N. Atwood (1884-1967) to fly from Milwaukee to New York, a record distance in those days. In 1910, Atwood had won a prize from The New York Times for flying from Boston to Washington. His 1911 flight to New York took 11 days with 20 stops along the way and was considered a sensational success. Asked if he would next attempt a coast-to-coast trip, Atwood said it would be too risky.

Though the Rex Smith company lasted only until 1916, Evans had plenty of other interests to keep him occupied. The Washington Herald reported in June 1913 that Evans was planning to produce his own Independence Day Parade, a procession of 11 colorful floats depicting favorites from the comics sections of the Sunday newspapers. For the first time anywhere, or so it was claimed, Happy Hooligan, Gloomy Gus, the Katzenjammer Kids, Little Nemo, and several others would be represented in a carnival-like parade. There would even be a float with Uncle Sam and his performing animals, the donkey, elephant, and bull-moose.

Evans, who had long thought D.C. should have a raucous annual celebration like Mardi Gras, submitted his mini-circus to be included in the official Independence Day celebration. He was told that it was "out of harmony with the spirit and design of the pageant," but he put his show on anyway. It departed from and ended at the Victor Building, of course.

Evans also developed a taste for Native American artifacts and, beginning in the 1910s, amassed an extensive collection of them, including "beaded clothing, ponderous saddles, fine needlework and basketry, implements of the hunt and war, peace pipes, rugs and blankets, gorgeous feather headdresses," and more, according to The Washington Post. It was considered to be one of the finest in the world, and in 1923 Evans asked for a plot of land from the federal government, preferably at the National Zoo, where he could build a replica Mayan temple to house his collection as a gift to the nation.

Evans commissioned distinguished architect George Oakley Totten, Jr. (1866-1939) to prepare a design for this "Temple of the Tigers," which won a medal in Paris but was never actually built. Nevertheless, at his death Evans left all his relics to the Smithsonian, which has been trying ever since to pinpoint exactly where and how they were collected.

The story goes that Evans one day arrived at his office at the Victor Building to discover a group of 40 Native Americans waiting for him. They wanted him to be their attorney. Evans supposedly answered that he knew nothing of Indian affairs, but the visitors insisted; how could he have such a fine collection of relics if he didn't understand Native American life? Whether the story is true or not, Evans did represent Native American tribes in a number of important property claims against the federal government.

Perhaps most eccentric of Evans' many personal indulgences was his collection of exotic animals. Post columnist John Kelly has written about Evans' personal zoo, called Acclimation Park, located on his estate off of Foxhall Road in upper northwest D.C.

Evans was convinced that exotic animals kept at his zoo—there were 300 of them—would gradually become acclimated to Washington's weather. He had several monkeys, a zebra, a mountain goat, many parrots, pheasants, and assorted other animals, and was always on the lookout for something new and rare.

Evans regularly donated animals to the National Zoo, so when Zoo Superintendent Ned Hollister learned in 1917 that a trader in Alaska was in possession of a rare Alaskan Blue Bear that he was willing to sell for $400, Hollister immediately telephoned Evans, who just as quickly sent a check to the trader on behalf of the zoo.

The blue bear arrived with much fanfare in August to become the only such bear in captivity. According to The Washington Times, Zoo officials planned to name the bear "Victor." While the Alaskan Blue Bear was thought in those days to be a unique and rare species, it is now understood to be just an unusual "phase" of the common Black Bear.

Early in 1931 Evans was at Emergency Hospital recovering from a routine operation for gall stones when he suffered a heart attack and died suddenly. After his death, his animals were turned over to the National Zoo, and the property divided up; part became Battery Kemble Park, while another part was divided into large house lots.

Evans' wife continued to run his patent business from the Victor Building into the 1940s. The building had many different tenants after that, including the iconic Central Liquor Store in the 1980s. After it was sold in the late 1980s, preservationists became concerned that much of the building would be destroyed in the process of being "renovated" and enlarged as a new office building. An extensive legal struggle ensued that fortunately ended with the most significant parts of the old building preserved.

The D.C. Preservation League filed an historic landmark nomination in 1990, citing the building's architectural and historical significance. Of the three large Renaissance Revival office buildings that had been built close to the Patent Office (now the Smithsonian American Art Museum) in the first years of the 20th century, the Victor Building was the only one still standing (the other two were the Ouray Building, on the northwest corner of 8th and G Streets, and the Barrister Building, on the north side of the 600 block of F Street—both torn down in the 1980s). The Victor recalled an important era in the city's history when this busy neighborhood was dominated by lawyers and other professionals, of whom Victor Evans was clearly one of the most prominent and unique.

In 1992, the nomination came before the Historic Preservation Review Board for approval, and the board issued a somewhat ambivalent verdict. Calling it "an unusual and imperfect structure," the board in its report expressed reservations about the 1925 addition designed by Waddy B. Wood, an "impure, even awkward architectural composition" that disrupted the balance of the original design, especially with the two incongruous stories added above the 1909 facade. Nevertheless, the board voted to landmark the entire building, including both the 1911 and 1925 additions.

The owner, Banyan Management Corporation had already submitted a proposal by Hartman-Cox Architects to preserve the 1909 and 1911 portions of the building but raze the 1925 segment and fill the entire site with a large, new structure. The D.C. Preservation League as well as other preservation organizations, including the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, opposed the plan, arguing that to destroy the 1925 building would be to lose the progression of history embodied in the entire structure. A selective preservation of only certain elements would be a distortion of history and a loss for the city.

While the legal process of weighing Banyan's proposal against preservationists' concerns began in a deeply antagonistic vein, as time went by both sides made concessions. By 1994, all parties signed a covenant that allowed Banyan to demolish the interior of the building but preserve the entire historic facade.

The building was purchased by the John Akridge Company in 1997, and Akridge undertook the planned renovations beginning in 1998. Then in 1999, Akridge sold the still-incomplete structure, fittingly, to the Smithsonian Institution, which had earlier been the recipient of Victor Evans' largesse.

The Smithsonian moved offices into the building that had previously been in the old Patent Office building, thus freeing up space for exhibition use. Having paid $114 million for it in 1999, the Smithsonian then sold the Victor in 2005, at the height of the real estate boom, for $157 million, turning a tidy profit that was invested in the institution's trust funds. The Smithsonian continues to lease office space in the building to this day.

Invaluable assistance for this article was provided by Kim Williams of the D.C. Historic Preservation Office and Rebecca Miller and Amanda McDonald of the D.C. Preservation League. Both organizations have archived extensive materials relating to the historic designation of the Victor Building and its renovations in the 1990s. Additional information came from period newspaper articles and biographical references.

Cross-posted at Streets Of Washington.

Grace Hoadley Dodge (1856-1914) was born into a wealthy and venerable New York family. She was the granddaughter of William Earle Dodge (1805-1883), co-founder of the Phelps Dodge Mining Corporation, noted advocate for Native American rights, and one of the early supporters of the Young Men's Christian Association in the US.

Grandfather Dodge was known as the "Christian Merchant," and the family had a long association with evangelical Protestant causes. Grace Dodge continued the family tradition of benevolence toward the less fortunate but with a new Progressive-era energy and a special emphasis on women.

Though reportedly an astringent and humorless woman, she nevertheless had great organizational skills. In 1906 she became the first president of the National Board of Young Women's Christian Associations, whose budget deficits she would regularly make up with her personal funds. At her death in 1914, she left $500,000 to the board.

Soon thereafter, the onset of the first World War precipitated a housing crisis in Washington and other east coast industrial areas. By 1ate 1917, some 50,000 new workers had come to the city, overwhelming available facilities.

The federal government built a complex of 13 dormitories for 2,000 women on the west side of the plaza in front of Union Station to address the problem. But the first of these didn't open until December 1918, after the armistice ending World War I had already been signed, and the whole complex wasn't completed until 1920. Nevertheless, it helped ease the Capital's housing shortage until the structures were torn down a decade later.

Meanwhile, the YWCA had joined with 6 other charitable organizations to form the War Work Council to provide assistance to workers, including housing. Among other projects, the council provided funds to the YWCA for construction of a hotel for women in Washington.

A site at North Capitol and E Streets, NW was chosen, and under the leadership of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the new chair of the YWCA Board, the hotel was constructed. Like the Union Plaza dormitories across North Capitol Street, it was too late to help in the war. The 8-story, 376-room hotel was completed and opened in October 1921.

Designed by New York architect Duncan Candler (1873-1949), the Grace Dodge was stately and elegant but restrained in décor. It was finished in tan brick with limestone trim and featured an enormous three-story tall entrance-way with a neoclassical pediment broken by third-story windows.

In contrast with—or perhaps to complement—its other facilities that aimed to help disadvantaged young women, the Grace Dodge Hotel was conceived from the start as a for-profit enterprise, intended to be managed and operated by an entirely female staff.

It offered professional women traveling alone to the Capital a top-notch hotel experience, free from the harassment by men that they would undoubtedly suffer anywhere else. As summarized in The Washington Post,

The Grace Dodge Hotel, as it is to be called in honor of the woman who did so much for her sex, will have all the useful and attractive features that any hotel has, excepting men, and the housing committee of the "Y," of which Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is chairman, guarantees that the staff and working force of women will be every bit as efficient and courteous as the best masculine staff could be. And the hotel has some conveniences that no other public stopping-place has offered to date.

There are special suites for mothers, with heaters for baby's milk, and cribs constructed on sanitary principles. There will be a nurse on call, to be paid for by the hour. There are valeting rooms where the woman who wants her tumbled blouse laundered in a hurry can slip in and do it herself, at the cost of a small sum for the use of the tubs and electric iron. There are shampoo basins, and the guest may wash her own hair. There are vanity parlors for those who care about their complexions, and there is to be an information service where the visitor can find out what debate is on in the House of Representatives and what the Senate is doing about that bill she is interested in....

Each floor had a sitting room for quiet socializing in the blissful absence of men, and, perhaps most conveniently of all, when the overworked bellhop finished hauling all that heavy luggage up to your room, you didn't have to tip her. In fact, tipping of any kind to hotel employees, even in the restaurant and lounge, was strictly prohibited.

Tipping has a surprisingly controversial history in America, considering how pervasive and accepted the practice is now. The practice apparently had started in England when visitors to private estates would pay gratuities to servants to compensate them for extra services performed beyond their regular duties.

By the late 19th century, the practice was common in wealthy homes in America, and from there it seems to have spread broadly into business settings where "servants" of one kind or another performed services. Even as it firmly took hold, the practice was widely condemned as degenerate and un-American, because it was seen as a reflection of the class-bound society of the Old World—an attempt by the lower classes to fleece the upper. Ironically, Americans, then as now, had a reputation for tipping more generously than their European peers.

Against this complex social background, the Grace Dodge Hotel was established as a model of business virtues, the only first-class hotel in America to adopt a no-tip policy. Hotel manager Mary A. Lindsley (1876-1949) remarked in an American Magazine article in 1929 that "Fifty years from now tipping in this country will be practically abolished.... This hotel is just pointing the way, it can be done."

At that time, the hotel paid wages comparable to the minimum paid by the federal government. Hotel chambermaids earned $65 per month, as did entry-level government clerks, whereas they would earn only $35 a month in hotels where they could accept gratuities. Bellboys (the all-female staff policy does not seem to have lasted long) got $75 at the Grace Dodge, as opposed to the $25 to $35 in other hotels.

An early problem encountered at the hotel was that patrons would stubbornly leave tips despite the prohibition against them. Waitresses in the restaurant would find coins left for them under plates, for example. This was a serious problem. A meeting of all hotel staff was held in January 1922, and everyone agreed that the unsolicited tips would be donated to the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA center for the benefit of its African-American members.

The hotel's tipless policy was widely publicized and undoubtedly contributed to its success. The restaurant and lounge on the first floor were open to men, and manager Lindsley reported within the first year that these facilities were reserved at least as often by organized groups of men as by women.

Lindsley, who had previously served as a hospital director with American forces during the war and more recently as head of the dining hall at the Union Plaza dormitories, was the driving force behind the hotel's success in its early days. She had sought out the manager position when she first saw the building going up, and she left an indelible stamp on its efficient, by-the-book, economical operations.

When the American Magazine reporter asked her how she could afford to pay her staff so much more than other hotels, she characteristically pointed to the fact that none of the employees got any special privileges. "All employees live outside unless they pay guest-rates for rooms. Nobody gets free meals. I, as manager, pay like everyone else..." The strict implementation of the hotel's business and moral principles was the key to its success, she implied.

The heady idealism of Miss Lindsley and the Grace Dodge Hotel could lead occasionally to sticky situations, as when the hotel's newsstand concessionaire, a Mr. Andrew G. Pollock, filed suit against the establishment in November 1922. He claimed his contract had been terminated because he was selling tobacco products, which he said the contract allowed. He suggested to the press that he was providing an important service to the women smokers in the hotel who wanted to purchase cigarettes discreetly.

Lindsley retaliated by asserting firmly that tobacco products never had been nor would ever be sold in her hotel, but she soon found her iron principles conflicting with one another. As quoted in the Post, she asserted:

In the first place there is no demand by the type of women who patronize this hotel for such things. We have no rule against smoking, but I think since the hotel has opened, I have seen women smoking here not more than five times. We would not interfere with the guests, as they are free agents, but we will not have things for them to smoke....

She went on to say that the YWCA board wanted a woman to be the newsstand concessionaire so that more feminine things would be stocked, like "hair nets, needles and thread, candy, writing paper, dainty handkerchiefs and similar articles." Ultimately the judge decided to split the difference, allowing the hotel's ban on the sale of tobacco products but directing that Pollock's contract be reinstated.

More compromises were soon necessary. After just three years, the women-only policy fell by the wayside, although the no-tipping rule continued to attract a steady clientele. In 1936, after 15 years of service, Lindsley resigned to take charge of a new inn being built in historic Williamsburg, VA, and her departure marked the end of the hotel's golden age.

Archival notes for the YWCA suggest that by World War II the national board was troubled by D.C.'s unwritten rule against interracial hotels and didn't want their founder's name on a segregated hotel.

At some point the name was changed to just the "Dodge Hotel," and the YWCA sold it by the mid 1940s. In 1949 it was in the hands of a group of private investors, and a former Waldorf Astoria manager had been installed to run it.

Apparently all the special rules were gone by this time. In fact, in December of that year, hotel service and food workers voted to strike over poor wages and working conditions, a predicament that surely would never have arisen under Mary Lindsley and the YWCA.

The hotel continued to operate for another 22 years. In the 1940s and 1950s, its tea garden was a popular and quiet gathering place in what was a busy part of town. Then in 1959 a set of local investors bought and remodeled the hotel as the Dodge House, sandblasting the venerable building's brick and stone facade, paving over the garden as a parking lot, and fitting out a new lounge inside. In 1963 the dimly-lit bar, called The Place On The Hill, featured the Van Perry Trio, a jazz group that tended toward a Latin beat. The times were changing.

The end of the road came for the Dodge Hotel in 1972, when new owners decided to raze it to make room for a more profitable office building. In addition to $1,000 chandeliers, the going-out-of-business sale for the hotel featured a set of hand-carved doors said to have been installed by Robert F. Kennedy when a Kennedy-For-President office was located at the Dodge.

The large 400 North Capitol Plaza office complex, still standing today, was subsequently constructed on the sites of the Dodge Hotel and the Hotel Continental, which had occupied the adjacent lot on North Capitol Street and was also torn down in 1972.

Sources for this article included James M. Goode, Capital Losses (2003); Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: A History of the Capital, 1800-1950 (1962); A.K. Sandoval-Strausz, Hotel: An American History (2007); Kerry Segrave, Tipping (1998); and numerous newspaper and magazine articles.

Crossposted at Streets Of Washington.