Crescent Place
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History | Crescent Place Crescent Place A co-op in Washington, DC History The People of 1661: A History Original Floor Plan Notable Residents THE PEOPLE OF 1661: A HISTORY Compiled by Mary Adams Catanzaro in 1981 “1661 Crescent Place” was built by M. & R. B. Warren, Realtors and Builders of Washington, DC as a cooperative—one of the first in the City. The architect who designed the building was Joseph Younger. The exterior was made to be architecturally compatible with the Meyer mansion across the street, a condition of the sale of the land to the Corporation. The building was originally designed to contain 50 apartments on the upper floors. In addition, there were maids’ rooms and apartments for three employees located on the ground floor. The property was valued at $931,400.00. The building was completed by October 1, 1926. However, the first occupants, Mr. and Mrs. Charles J. Brand (Apt. 610) moved into their apartment on September 30, 1926. Read the full history. ORIGINAL FLOOR PLAN 1 of 6 6/19/2013 12:30 PM History | Crescent Place View larger size image of floor plan. NOTABLE RESIDENTS Dorothy Detzer Denny – Apartment 605 Dorothy Detzer (l893-l981), writer, lobbyist, and pacifist, was for twenty-two years the National Executive Secretary of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (l924-l946), a disarmament organization founded in 1915 by Jane Addams and still active today. After graduating from high school in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Detzer traveled in the Far East and lived for a time in the Philippines. Returning to the United States, she went to live at Jane Addams’s Hull House, attending the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy while working as an officer of the Juvenile Protective Association. At the end of World War I, Detzer spent a year in Austria doing relief work for the American Friends Service Committee. She later spent two years in the USSR as an AFSC famine relief administrator in the Volga Valley. The ravages of war and the loss of her twin brother Don, who was gassed during World War I and died from a lingering illness, convinced Detzer that social work was not enough and that she wanted to work actively for pacifist causes. Upon her return to the U.S. in l924, Detzer assumed the national secretaryship of WILPF, U.S. Section. Dorothy Detzer’s abilities as a lobbyist facilitated numerous legislative investigations, notably one launched by Senator Gerald P. Nye on the munitions industry (l933-l936), and prompted the New York Times to call her “the most famous woman lobbyist.” She chronicled the events of two decades in Washington in her book Appointment on the Hill (l948), written the 2 of 6 6/19/2013 12:30 PM History | Crescent Place year after she resigned her post with WILPF. She married Ludwell Denny, a journalist, in l954 and spent the next several years freelancing as a foreign correspondent. Shortly before Ludwell’s death in l970, the Dennys left Washington, D.C. for the west coast, where Dorothy Detzer Denny remained in Monterey, California, until her death in January, l98l. Thomas Gore – Apartment 308 Thomas Pryor Gore (1870-1949), the first blind US Senator, was born in Old Choctaw (later known as Webster) County, Mississippi. An accident at the age of eight caused his blindness. After working briefly as a teacher, Gore went to law school and was admitted to the bar. He joined the Populist Party and was soon considered its most able stump speaker. When the Mississippi Populists were defeated in 1895, the “Blind Orator,” as he had come to be known, moved to Texas, where he continued to be an active member of the Populist Party and practiced law. Defeated in 1898 as a candidate for Congress, Gore joined the Democratic Party in 1899. In 1901, Gore moved to the new Territory of Oklahoma. His oratorical ability and the support of the powerful Daily Oklahoman, soon made him a leading politician. In 1902, he was elected to the Territory Council, and when Oklahoma became a state, Gore helped write the State Constitution and was elected one of its first US Senators. In the Senate, Gore opposed trusts, tariffs, and monopolies. An early supporter of Woodrow Wilson, Gore endorsed President Wilson’s domestic legislative program but opposed his foreign policy and America’s entry into the World War I. This opposition led to Gore’s defeat by a Wilson supporter in the Democratic primary of 1920. He returned to the Senate in 1931, where he strongly opposed the New Deal, which he considered an over-centralization of government power. For a second time in his career as a Senator, his opposition to the policies of a popular President led to his defeat. After leaving the Senate in 1937, Gore spent the final thirteen years of his life practicing law in Washington, specializing in taxes and Indian affairs. He died on March 16, 1949, at 1661, three weeks after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. He is buried in Oklahoma City’s Rose Hill Cemetery. (Thomas Gore is the maternal grandfather of author Gore Vidal.) Claude Pepper – Apartment 401 Claude Denson Pepper (September 8, 1900 – May 30, 1989) represented Florida in the Senate from 1936 until 1951, and in the House from 1963 until 1989. Born in Dudleyville, Alabama in a poverty-striken sharecropper shack, Pepper was elected to the Senate in a 1936 special election. In the Senate, Pepper became a leading New Dealer and close ally of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and sponsor of the Lend-Lease Act. He lost his bid for a third full 3 of 6 6/19/2013 12:30 PM History | Crescent Place term in 1950 by a margin of over 60,000 votes. Pepper returned to law practice in Miami and Washington, failing in a comeback to regain his Senate seat in 1958, In 1962 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives from a liberal district around Miami and Miami Beach. He remained there until his death in 1989, rising to chair of the powerful Rules Committee in 1983. Pepper served in Congress and the Senate longer than any other Floridian and became known as the “grand old man of Florida politics”. He was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1950 and 1983. Republicans often joked that he and Tip O’Neill were the only Democrats who really drove President Reagan crazy. When he died, his body lay in state for two days under the Rotunda of the United States Capitol. John William Elmer Thomas – Apartment 305 John William Elmer Thomas (1876–1965), a Representative and a Senator from Oklahoma; born on a farm near Greencastle, Indiana, September 8, 1876; attended the common schools; graduated from the Central Normal College (now Canterbury), Danville, Indiana, in 1897 and from the graduate department of DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, in 1900. He studied law; admitted to the Indiana bar in 1897 and to the Oklahoma bar in 1900, and commenced practice in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; moved to Lawton, Oklahoma, in 1901 and continued the practice of law; member, State senate 1907–1920, serving as president pro tempore 1910–1913; founded the town of Medicine Park, Oklahoma 1918; unsuccessful candidate for election in 1920 to the Sixty-seventh Congress; elected as a Democrat to the Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth Congresses (March 4, 1923–March 3, 1927). He was not a candidate for renomination in 1926, having become a candidate for United States Senator; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1926; reelected in 1932, 1938 and 1944 and served from March 4, 1927, to January 3, 1951; unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1950; chairman, Committee on Indian Affairs (Seventy-fourth through Seventy-seventh Congresses), Committee on Agriculture and Forestry (Seventy-eighth, Seventy-ninth and Eighty-first Congresses), Committee on Indian Affairs (Seventy-eighth Congress); engaged in the practice of law in Washington, D.C., until August 1957; returned to Lawton, Oklahoma, where he died September 19, 1965; interment in Highland Cemetery. Thomas J. Walsh – Apartment 205 Not many observers in Washington thought that Thomas J. Walsh (1859-1933), Democratic senator from Montana from 1913 to 1933, had much of a chance to uncover anything of consequence when he chaired an investigation of the sale of naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming. The administration of President Warren G. Harding denied any wrongdoing and turned over a truckload of 4 of 6 6/19/2013 12:30 PM History | Crescent Place documents to support its case. But Walsh, a prosecutor before his election to the Senate, was a careful and persistent investigator who diligently followed all leads until he had uncovered evidence that Secretary of the Interior, Albert B. Fall, had taken bribes from an oil company. Fall became the first cabinet secretary to go to jail for corruption and the historical reputation of the Harding administration was irreparably damaged. Born at Two Rivers, Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, Walsh graduated from the law department of the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1884; was admitted to the bar in 1884 and commenced practice at Redfield, Dakota Territory; moved to Helena, Montana, in 1890 and continued the practice of law; and was an unsuccessful candidate for election in 1906 to the Sixtieth Congress and in 1910 for the United States Senate. Elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate in 1912, Walsh died on March 2, 1933, on a train near Wilson, N.C., while en route to Washington to accept the appointment as Attorney General in President Franklin D.