History

Lost Washington: Tuckerman House

by Kent Boese   •   January 19, 2010 4:00 pm

The Tuckerman House, once located on the southwest corner of 16th and I Streets, NW, was built for Lucius Tuckerman in 1886 by the Washington architectural firm of Hornblower and Marshall. Tuckerman was an iron manufacturer in New York and decided to build a home in Washington due to failing health and the District's milder climate.

The residence in Washington was constructed of red brick paired with smoothly cut and rusticated red sandstone. It illustrated Hornblower and Marshall's interpretation of architect H.H. Richardson's style. The nod to Richardson was not out of place considering that his four Washington houses we're completed in the mid-1880s and all within a block of the Tuckerman residence.

Following the death of Mrs. Tuckerman in 1906, the home became the residence in 1909 of Congressman Henry Kirke Porter of Pittsburgh. His daughter, Annie-May Hegeman, left the house jointly to the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution upon her death in 1939.

These institutions sold it in 1945 to the Motion Picture Association of American, which used it as their headquarters until 1967, when the structure was razed and replaced by a new headquarters building.

More images below from the Library of Congress Historic American Building Survey collection. The structure was photographed in 1967 prior to and during demolition.

(Images ca. 1900s, from Library of Congress collections)

Kent Boese posts items of historic interest primarily within the District. He's worked in libraries since 1994, both federal and law, and currently works on K Street. He lives in the Park View neighborhood, and is the force behind the blog Washington Kaleidoscope.