THE WORLD of LAFAYETTE SQUARE Sites Around the Square

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THE WORLD OF LAFAYETTE SQUARE

Lafayette Square is a seven-acre public park located directly north of the White House on H Street between 15th and 17th Streets, NW. The Square and the surrounding structures were designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1970. Originally planned as part of the pleasure grounds surrounding the Executive Mansion, the area was called "President's Park". The Square was separated from the White House grounds in 1804 when President Jefferson had Pennsylvania cut through. In 1824, the Square was officially named in honor of General Lafayette of France.

A barren common, it was neglected for many years. A race course was laid out along its west side in 1797, and workmen's quarters were thrown up on it during the construction of the White House in the 1790s. A market occupied the site later and, during the War of 1812, soldiers were encamped there. Lafayette Park has been used as a zoo, a slave market, and for many political protests and celebrations. The surrounding neighborhood became the city's most fashionable 19th century residential address. Andrew Jackson Downing landscaped Lafayette Square in 1851 in the picturesque style. (www.nps.gov)

Historian and novelist Henry Adams on Washington, D.C. 1868:

“La Fayette Square was society . . . one found all one’s acquaintances as well as hotels, banks, markets, and national government. Beyond the Square the country began. No rich or fashionable stranger had yet discovered the town. No literary of scientific man, no artist, no gentleman without office or employment has ever lived there. It was rural, and its society was primitive. . . . The happy village was innocent of a club. The one-horse tram on F Street to the Capitol was ample for traffic. Every pleasant spring morning at the Pennsylvania Station, society met to bid good-bye to its friends going off on the single express. . . . The value of real estate had not increased since 1800, and the pavements were more impassable than the mud. (The Education of Henry Adams, p. 253)

Sites Around the Square

BRIGADIER GENRAL THADDEUS KOSCUISZKO (1910) northeast corner of the park Antoni Popiel, sculptor architect unknown medium: bronze

Thaddeus Koscuiszko (1746-1817)

This monument to Polish patriot Thaddeus Koscuiszko commemorates a lifetime dedicated to fighting for freedom in America and Poland. As a young military engineer, he offered his services to the American army in the darks days of 1776. His skill in building fortifications on the Delaware River, at Saratoga, and at West Point in New York, contributed greatly to the eventual American victory. In 1783, an appreciative Congress commissioned him to brigadier general and after granted him a bounty of $15,000 and 500 acres of land in Ohio. In 1784, he returned to his homeland, where he led the fight to preserve the freedom of Poland from Russia. In 1794, his outnumbered forces were defeated at the battle of Raclawice, and he himself was imprisoned. Released in 1796, he continued his efforts on behalf of Polish freedom until his death in 1817. Koscuiszko’s passionate concern for freedom extended to enslaved blacks. The proceeds from the sale of his

In this memorial, a heroic bronze of Koscuiszko stands 8 feet high upon a granite pedestal, facing north. He is attired in the uniform of a general of the Continental Army and holds in his right hand a map of the fortifications at Saratoga. Below the inscription bearing his name a proudly defiant eagle with outspread wings guards a flag, a shield, and a sword upon a quarter globe showing America. On the south face an eagle, similar to that on the north face, struggles fiercely with a snake on a quarter globe showing Poland. On the east pedestal face, a group shows Koscuiszko in American uniform freeing a bound soldier symbolizing the American army. A flag is in Koscuiszko’s left hand, and a fallen musket and overturned drum are at the youth’s feet. On the west face of the pedestal, a fallen Koscuiszko, in Polish uniform, attempts to direct a peasant soldier symbolizing the Polish army. Koscuiszko leans upon an overturned basket of shot. (Washington Sculpture)

CUTTS-MADISON HOUSE (1820) Madison and H Streets, southeast corner

This house was originally owned by Richard Cutts, brother-in-law of Dolley Madison, who took up residence here after her husband’s death. The house was restored as part of the Federal Judicial Center in 1968.

Lafayette Square Personalities

Dolley Madison (1765-1849)

Daniel Webster’s assessment of Dolley at the end of her long career: “The only permanent power in Washington, all others are transient.”

Dolley, born in 1765, grew up in North Carolina and the moved with her family to Philadelphia. There she met and married fellow Quaker John Todd and bore him two sons. She lost both her husband and her younger child to a yellow fever epidemic in 1793. She married James Madison in 1794 and moved to Washington, D.C.

Dolley Madison's rescue of George Washington's portrait secured her place as a legendary figure in American history, although she had made a name for herself in many other ways. She arrived in Washington during President Thomas Jefferson's administration when her husband James Madison was appointed Secretary of State. Her impact was soon felt, as she became an unofficial hostess for the widowed president's small dinner parties. As first lady during her husband's presidency, Dolley Madison played a major role in the capital's social and political scenes.

With an astute sense of purpose and considerable charm, Dolley Madison navigated the waters of Washington society in an unprecedented way. She brought together disparate groups of politicians, diplomats, and local residents in a social setting. Weekly parties, called "Wednesday drawing rooms," or "Mrs. Madison's crush or squeeze," provided a relaxed atmosphere for politicking and mingling. With no invitation required, these parties sometimes attracted four hundred guests. Some individuals who rarely associated with one another found themselves together at the White House. Even a boycott by President Madison's opposition party, the Federalists, fizzled when members realized there was no political advantage to staying away.

Mrs. Madison's presence and personality were critical to the success of the events. Dressed vibrantly in rich colors and fabrics and often adorned by an unusual headpiece or turban, she greeted visitors as they enjoyed an evening of refreshments, music, and lively conversation. Mrs. Madison also presided over dinner parties, captivating her guests with unusual menu items, such as ice cream in warm pastry, and extraordinary conversation skills.

Dolley Madison continued entertaining at the White House until war virtually reached her doorstep. The dinner table was set for 40 guests the day she left the White House. She and a few servants had remained at the White House, packing up valuable documents, silver, and other items of importance. With limited space, she made choices about what to take and what to leave. Among the items that could not be left behind was the full-length portrait of George Washington by artist Gilbert Stuart. Purchased by the federal government for $800, the portrait was as much a symbol of the republic as any other object. Once the painting was safely on its way, Dolly Madison left the White House. Residents flooded the roads out of town. Even the soldiers assigned to protect the White House had fled before Mrs. Madison. The destruction was about to begin.

The War of 1812

The United States declared war against Great Britain on June 18, 1812. Although war had been avoided for several years, the continued harassment of U.S. ships and impressment of American sailors by the British pushed the nations to the brink. Despite protests from pro-English Federalists in Congress, President James Madison, at the time of his reelection, had determined that there was no other solution.

For the first two years of the war, the fighting was confined to Canada, the Great Lakes, and the high seas. The British were preoccupied with their simultaneous war against France and did not have the resources to devote attention to both fronts. The war was distant from the people of Washington. But once Great Britain overthrew Napoleon in April 1814, it consolidated its forces against the United States. The fighting moved down the Atlantic coast towards the Chesapeake Bay.

After a disastrous battle at Bladensburg, Maryland, which President Madison witnessed, American forces retreated. The British turned their sights on Washington. Although the Americans had outnumbered the British at Bladensburg, they were no match for the well-disciplined professional soldiers under the command of Major General Ross. The British troops then continued to Washington on August 24, 1814 and burned the major government buildings, including the White House and Capitol. Although burning the city was primarily in retaliation for the torching of the Canadian capitol, York (now Toronto), the British also hoped to disgrace President Madison and to divide the country once again. Fortunately, the fire did not have the desired effect. After several more months of war, including the needless but successful Battle of New Orleans, the United States declared victory, ratifying the Treaty of Ghent on February 17, 1815. (This treaty was signed at The Octagon, located just a few blocks from Lafayette Park. The Madisons rented the house after the White House was burned.)

The Madison White House

The White House has been an evolving structure since George Washington oversaw its design and construction. Early on, the house required considerable work to simply make it habitable. But by the time James and Dolley Madison moved in (1809) the exterior had remained mostly constant and the White House had begun to emerge as a symbol of U.S. leadership. At the same time, the interior of the President's House, as it was formally known, needed much attention. Working with architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Dolley

© Washington Walks 2018 3 Madison took responsibility for decorating and furnishing the White House with the enthusiasm and energy she applied to all her endeavors. Changes occurred quickly. Fresh plaster and paint appeared in the rooms and new upholstered furniture and draperies were designed and made. The new furniture featured fashionable Grecian or neo-classical influences but, never forgetting what the President's House represented, the pieces were made in America. Artwork depicted important Americans and American themes.

The enjoyment of the renovations was short-lived. British troops burned the White House on the night of August 24-25, 1814. Most historical accounts reveal that they took pleasure in setting fire to the structure that represented a former colony and upstart nation. Although Dolley Madison fled the White House only hours earlier, she had expected to serve dinner to 40 military and cabinet officers accompanied by her husband. Instead, the British troops consumed the meal. They looted the house and then set fire to it. The house that had been the site of so many happy occasions was in ruins. All that remained were the scorched sandstone walls. Dolley Madison was distraught when she first returned to view the destruction. Although the Madisons would never live in the White House again, they were committed to the reconstruction of the house and to the resurrection of it as a symbol of the republic.

The destruction of the White House was physical, emotional, and symbolic. There were rumblings that the nation's capital should be moved to a more secure location. But from the ruins the will emerged to keep the government in Washington, in temporary quarters, until the damaged public buildings could be restored and rebuilt. In 1817, after the Madisons had retired to their Virginia home, a new president, James Monroe, moved into the White House and restored its place in history.

Twenty years later, in recounting what had happened on August 24, 1814, Dolley wrote to her sister:

"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 George Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. This process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken, and the canvas taken out; it is done-and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen from New York, for safe keeping."

With the conclusion of his second term in 1817, James and Dolley retired to Montpelier, the Madison family estate in Virginia. Life on the plantation proved vibrant as Dolley continued to entertain guests as before. However, the prodigality of her son John, with whom both she and James were always too lenient, brought them financial problems. On June 28, 1836, James Madison died at the age of 85. Though childless, their 42- year marriage had been a remarkably blissful and happy one. Unfortunately, John Payne Todd's spending habits soon reduced his mother almost to poverty. This forced Dolley to sell both James's Continental Papers and Montpelier to pay the creditors. In 1837, Dolley returned to Washington and resumed her former status in the social life there. Dolley frequented numerous social and political events and was beloved by all. Her last public appearance was at a ball given for President Polk in 1848. On July 12, 1849, Dolley Madison died in Washington at age 81. She was buried in the Congressional Cemetery with all the Washington dignitaries attending. Later her remains were moved to Montpelier next to her husband's.

COSMOS CLUB BUILDING 23 Madison Place

In 1882, the Cosmos Club leased the house that stood on this site, an arrangement that would last 25 years, ending when the club finally purchased the property. The club had already begun negotiating to buy the Dolley Madison House in 1884; final purchase took place in 1886. A one-story assembly room was built on

© Washington Walks 2018 4 the lot south of the house facing Lafayette Square and, within a few years, two more stories were soon added to the assembly room. At the same time, the partial upper level of the Dolley Madison House was raised to a full story.

The National Geographic Society, established in 1888, grew out of the Cosmos Club membership. A separate entrance for the Society was added to the clubhouse in 1891 and numbered 1518 H Street, N.W. The Cosmos Club continued to use the Dolley Madison House address of 1520 H Street, N.W.

In 1909, the house between the Madison House and the Tayloe House were razed and a new Cosmos Club building was erected. In 1917, after the Cosmos Club purchased the Tayloe House from the Cameron estate, half of the Madison Place block belonged to the club. The Tayloe House was converted into a women’s annex to be used by the wives and daughters of the members. The Cameron Stable House, behind the Tayloe House, was remodeled as an assembly hall.

In 1939 the federal government offered the club $1 million for their Lafayette Square buildings. The club members felt that the offer was unreasonably low. However, knowing that the property could be taken by eminent domain if the club refused to sell, the offer was accepted.

When World War II began, the government leased the clubhouse buildings back to the Cosmos Club indefinitely. Finally, in 1950, Cosmos Club members purchased the Townsend House on Massachusetts Avenue for $364,365. Mathilda Townsend had once lived on Lafayette Square with her parents in the 1890s while their Massachusetts Avenue house was being built. The Townsend House was designed in 1898 by John Carrere, who was a former member of the Cosmos Club. Renovations were made the and Cosmos Club moved from Lafayette Square to Massachusetts Avenue in 1952. (Proximity to Power)

BENJAMIN OGLE TAYLOE HOUSE (1828) 21 Madison Place

Three-story yellow house marked by a plaque was built by Benjamin Ogle Tayloe. Tayloe's parents built The Octagon house, now a historic house museum at 1799 New York Avenue, NW.

Lafayette Square Personalities

Benjamin Tayloe

Tayloe was well educated and independently wealthy. Like his father, he loved racehorses which he bread at his country estate in Virginia. At the age of 28, Tayloe married Marie Dickinson, daughter of a former congressman from New York. Marie wanted to be involved in society and wished for a home in the city. In 1824, Tayloe purchased several lots on Lafayette Square and four years later their house was completed.

Henry Clay and Tayloe were great friends and their political views were similar. Tayloe was considered an important member of the Whig Party, supporting Clay in his several bids for the presidency. When the Democratic president Andrew Jackson moved into the White House in March 1829, Tayloe did not look forward to being his neighbor across Lafayette Square. In the last months of 1829, however, Tayloe and his wife finally moved into their new home. For the next forty years, Tayloe befriended, entertained, observed and kept a journal about the most important person of the day.

The Tayloes were collectors of antiques and fine art. They purchased furniture that had belonged to George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay. They traveled extensively, collecting precious items that had once belonged to European rulers. Maria Tayloe also collected autographs from the numerous acquaintances and visitors, which she kept in an autograph album. Among the many signers of the book, some of whom also added personal and original verses, were the Marquis de Lafayette, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, John Marshall, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Filmore.

In April 1841, President William Henry Harrison visited the Tayloes at their home. Tayloe recorded the event in his diary:

“Our estimable President Harrison, scarce seated in the chair of state one short month, was then dead. Mine was the last house he visited. The evening of the day of his visit to me, for a friendly object, he was taken ill, and in the course of a week, the Rev. Dr. Hawley announced to Mr. Webster that ‘he was sorry to inform him that President Harrison was in heaven.’”

In 1846, on the Fourth of July, Tayloe’s wife of twenty-two years, Julia died suddenly. The Tayloes have five children, two sons and three daughters, who were now left to the sole care of their father. Julia’s dear friend from Troy, New York, Miss Phoebe Warren, had known Benjamin Tayloe from the time he first met Julia and she had known their children since birth. Benjamin and Phoebe renewed their friendship, and within three years they were married.

For many years Tayloe experienced problems with some of the investment properties he had inherited from his father. Among the properties were seven two-and-a-half story row houses built in 1813 on Pennsylvania Avenue at 14th Street. Some buildings were connected in 1816 and converted to a hotel. Finding and keeping a good manager for the hotel had been difficult. While Phoebe was on a Hudson River cruise, she met a young steamboat steward named Henry Willard. He was an innovative host with good business sense. Phoebe introduced Willard to her then fiancé Tayloe, who offered him the challenge of managing his city hotel. Within a few years, Henry Willard transformed the run-down property into the premier hotel in Washington.

Benjamin Tayloe helped form the Association of Oldest Inhabitants of Washington, founded in 1865 to preserve the memories of the city. (This organization remains active today.) Several times Tayloe was offered the nomination for the position of mayor of Washington and he always turned it down. During the Civil War he remained in his home and held strongly to his philosophy of strict neutrality. All the while, he was constantly writing his voluminous journals. After the war ended in 1867, Benjamin and Phoebe decided to travel to Europe. They visited England and Italy, and while in Rome, Benjamin Tayloe developed a sudden illness and died at age seventy-one.

Phoebe continued living in the house until her death in 1884. Tayloe’s remarkable collection of curios, ornaments, antiques, and art was transferred to the Corcoran Gallery of Art for display, with the provision that the collection would be kept together. When the Corcoran collection was moved to its new gallery building on 17th Street in 1898, no special space had been set aside for the Tayloes’ curious and art. Therefore, after the turn of the century, the trustees of the Corcoran Gallery honored the claims of the Tayloe heirs and the items were returned to the family and moved to Troy, New York, the birth place of Mrs. Tayloe and home of her descendants. (Proximity to Power)

Senator J. Donald Cameron of Pennsylvania purchased the Tayloe House in 1887 from the Tayloe heirs. His wife, Elizabeth Sherman Cameron, meticulously redecorated and restored the home’s beauty. “Lizzie” Cameron was the niece of General William Tecumseh Sherman. She was just twenty years old when she married the widower Don Cameron, who was then forty-nine years old and had five children, the oldest of whom was Lizzie’s age. Lizzie was tall and slim; Cameron was taller with sandy hair and a droopy mustache. “Beauty and the Beast” is what the gossip columnists called them. Lizzie married Don at the insistence of her relatives because the man she wanted to marry was suspected of being an alcoholic. She was horrified when she later discovered the Don Cameron could easily drink a fifth of bourbon in a day. However, Lizzie was dutybound and she tried not to show her disappointment in her marriage. Several years before moving to the Tayloe House, Lizzie developed a strong and long-lasting friendship with Henry and Clover Adams who had returned to live on Lafayette Square in 1881. The Adams’ tolerated Don Cameron for Lizzie’s sake.

The Tayloe House become known as the “Little White House” because President William McKinley spent so much time there conferring with Senator Marcus A. Hanna of Ohio, who had leased the house when the Camerons moved. Their early morning breakfasts were legendary. Hanna was personally well-liked and his wife was a skilled hostess. Because of the many dinner parties and receptions the Hannas hosted in the “Little White House,” it was also known as the “Little Court.” The Hannas moved to the Arlington Hotel after President McKinley’s assassination. In 1904, Hanna died at the hotel of typhoid fever that had been misdiagnosed as exhaustion. Cameron leased the Tayloe House to various other tenants for fifteen more years. (Proximity to Power)

TREASURY ANNEX (1919 (former site of Freedman’s Savings Bank) Pennsylvania Avenue and Madison Place, N.W. Cass Gilbert, architect

Freedman’s Savings Bank 1869—razed 1899 Starkweather & Plowman, architects

Freedman’s Bank was organized in 1865. It was a showcase of black economic achievement until massive mismanagement and fraud caused its collapse in 1874.

The creation of the bank stemmed from efforts during the Civil War to establish banking facilities on army posts to protect the paychecks of black soldiers and employees who were often targets of swindlers. It quickly established thirty-two branches throughout the South. Although General Oliver Otis Howard was its president, the bank had no connection with the Freedmen’s Bureau, which he headed. (Howard University was named for him in recognition of his service as one of the founders.)

In 1868 the bank transferred its headquarters to a magnificent Second Empire-style building across the street from the White House in Washington. One of the most costly commercial buildings at that time, the thrift institution was criticized by some for its elaborate trappings. It was built almost entirely by black artisans and laborers.

© Washington Walks 2018 7 Over extension of credit for real estate investments, neglectful New York (bank originally chartered in New York) trustees, racial opposition to the bank in the South, incompetent bank managers and cashiers, and the Panic of 1873 all contributed to its collapse. Although Congress had chartered the bank, the federal government did not cover its deposits, so when the bank folded, some depositors got only a portion of their money back. Others never tried to claim theirs. In March 1874 Frederick Douglas was named president. He knew very little about banking or the institution’s precarious financial position. He was at the helm when the bank closed in June 1873. Thousands of citizens lost their life savings. (Capital Losses)

Ex-Slaves' Bank Data Compiled on CD-ROM By Linda Wheeler Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, February 27, 2001; Page B03

The chaotic records of the short-lived Freedman's Bank, an institution created specifically for newly freed slaves after the Civil War, have been organized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints into a searchable database, making it easier and faster for African Americans and others to look for information about their ancestors.

The Mormon Church released a CD-ROM, containing detailed financial and family information of about 480,000 depositors, yesterday in Washington and several other cities. It sells for $6.50, the cost of producing the CD, according to church officials.

D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), who spoke at yesterday's program at the National Press Club, said she was given a copy early and found a great-great-grandfather, Richard Holmes, among the records.

Because depositors were required to identify their former owners, list the names of everyone in their family - - including children who died and members sold away from the plantation -- and give their current residence, the bank records are a valuable source for family research.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that families are eternal, and members are encouraged to identify ancestors. The church, which collects data on all peoples, not just Mormons, has created a genealogical database of more than 400 million names and posted it on the Internet.

Lafayette Square Personalities

The Murder of Philip Barton Key

In a front-page illustration, more than 150,000 subscribers of Harper's Weekly, plus uncounted tens of thousands of others who looked at the issue, saw New York City Congressman Daniel Edgar Sickles shooting an unarmed and prostrate Philip Barton Key, United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, while a witness, Samuel F. Butterworth, looked on.

Readers had already heard of "The Washington Tragedy," as Sickles' shooting of Key came to be called. The story flew across the telegraph lines almost as soon as it happened. The initial newspaper pieces, usually no more than a paragraph, already contained all the salient facts. Sickles had shot Key, his friend of several years, because he had just learned that Key had carried on a year-long affair with his wife, Teresa Bagioli Sickles.

Always a controversial figure, Sickles was born on October 20, 1819 in New York City. After attending New York University and studying law, he appraised his chances for advancement in various fields and quickly chose politics. He quickly made a reputation as a brilliant attorney. He also established strong connections to the city's Democratic Party organization, Tammany Hall. In fact, he was so successful that his father abandoned his own career in real estate to study law with his son and then become the junior partner in the firm of Sickles and Sickles.

As a Tammany Hall stalwart, he became the Corporate Consul of the City at the age of 28 but resigned the same year to be Secretary of the U.S. Legation in London. He then served as a New York State Senator and Representative in Congress from 1857 to 1861.

Teresa Bagioli was born and raised in New York City. Her parents were Italian. She had lived, prior to her marriage, in the household of Signor DaPonti, the noted music teacher who had worked as Mozart's librettist on such masterpieces as "The Marriage of Figaro."

DaPonti's son had befriended the teenaged Dan Sickles and had gotten him a scholarship to New York University where he was a professor. Young Sickles moved into the DaPonti home. He left after about a year when his mentor suddenly died, but he maintained close ties with the family. He had known Teresa since her infancy.

On September 27, 1852, Sickles, age 33, married Teresa, age 15, in a civil ceremony at City Hall in New York. They lived afterwards with Teresa’s parents. In March 1853, they had a church marriage at the house of Archbishop Huges, a powerful Catholic prelate. Teresa was visibly pregnant, and many anti-Sickles newspapers claimed the church marriage took place only out of necessity. It is difficult to know when Teresa’s pregnancy began because the baby’s birth was never officially recorded. (A girl, the Sickle’s only child, Laura, was born a few months later.)

Almost immediately thereafter came an invitation from James Buchanan to accompany him to London. At first Sickles turned the post down. He had just become Collector of the Port of New York, perhaps the most lucrative patronage job in the entire U.S. government. Something changed his mind, and he went off to England with Buchanan in 1853. A few months later Teresa and their daughter joined him. She found herself immersed in a world of social engagements, balls, and receptions.

Washington was just as much a whirl. In 1858 Sickles rented the former Stockton House, located on the site of what is now 722 Jackson Place. The Sickles gave a formal dinner every Thursday. Teresa was "at home" to other society ladies every Tuesday morning. With her husband she attended most of the major social events. Teresa Sickles, Harper's reported, quickly had become a fixture in Washington society. She was especially celebrated as a hostess who was capable of charming the most sophisticated while simultaneously making the most socially inexperienced feel at home.

Teresa was a skilled horsewoman. She could speak Italian, French and English. She had cultivated taste in music.

“There was something inexpressibly fascinating and delightful about her fresh girlish face, and her sweet amiable manner. She was a kind of raw boy just let loose on society as to its Secretary of State;

Harpers Weekly, March 12, 1859

Philip Barton Key

Philip Barton Key was the son of Francis Scott Key, best known as the author of "The Star-Spangled Banner." At the time Key was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, 39 years old and a widower with four children. (His wife Ellen died in 1855 not long after the birth of their youngest child.)

While in his twenties, Key earned a reputation as a ladies' man. Then he had married, apparently very happily, in 1843. After his wife’s death, Key returned to the social world of Washington as an eligible bachelor. "His ancient prestige" as a gallant returned, according to Harper's. "No man in Washington was more popular with the ladies." Naturally, the Weekly continued, there was "talk" when he "abandoned the company of the heiresses and belles of the capitol" to spend all his time with Mrs. Sickles. He was, according to most press reports, a talented lawyer but one who did not work very hard on his cases. Instead he devoted himself to horses, cards, and the ladies. Key was tall, he was handsome; there was a hint of melancholy in his manner, of sorrow over the death of his wife, which made him a romantic figure.

He first met Congressman Sickles in early 1857. Key's tenure as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia was very much in doubt. President-elect Buchanan was determined to turn out most officeholders and replace them with his own people. Sickles took a liking to Key and, as a close associate of Buchanan's, succeeded in keeping his new friend in his post. He also asked Key to escort to Teresa to social functions when he was out of town.

On Thursday, February 24, Sickles received the following letter:

Washington, February 24, 1859 Hon Daniel Sickles

Dear Sir,

With deep regret I enclosed to your address the few lines but an indispensable duty compels me to do so seeing that you are greatly imposed upon.

There is a fellow I may say for he is not a gentleman by any means by the [name] of Philip Barton Key and I believe the District Attorney who rents the house of a negro man by the name of Jon. A. Gray situated on 15th Street b’twn K and L streets for no other purpose than to meet your wife Mrs. Sickles. He hangs a string out of the window as a signal to her that he is in and leaves the door unfastened and she walks in and sir I do assure you he has as much use of your wife as you have.

With these few hints I leave the rest of you to imagine.

Most Respfly Your friend R.P.G.

© Washington Walks 2018 10 On Friday Sickles commissioned a friend to investigate. His report was conclusive. Neighbors informed him that a young woman whose general description fit Teresa Sickles had regularly met Key at this house (383 15th Street, N.W--note that the street numbers were different in the 19th century than in the 20th: this house was located on the block between K and L Streets, N.W.) Key normally went in through the front door, his lover through the rear. They had, as the letter charged, used a ribbon or string as a signal, hanging it from an upper-floor shutter, something many of the neighbors commented upon.

On Saturday evening Sickles confronted his wife. At first, she denied everything, but ultimately admitted the affair. Sickles demanded a written confession. His wife complied. Two women in the house witnessed her signature, the maid, Bridget Duffy and a visiting family friend, Octavia Ridgeley.

Text of Teresa’s confession:

I have been in a house in Fifteenth Street, with Mr. Key. How many times I don't know. I believe the house belongs to a colored man. The house is unoccupied. Commenced going there the latter part of January. Have been in alone and with Mr. Key. Usually stayed an hour or more. There was a bed in the second story. I did what is usual for a wicked woman to do. The intimacy commenced this winter, when I came from New York, in that house -- an intimacy of an improper kind. Have met half a dozen times or more, at different hours of the day. On Monday of this week, and Wednesday also. Would arrange meetings when we met in the street and at parties. Never would speak to him when Mr. Sickles was at home, because I knew he did not like me to speak to him; did not see Mr. Key for some days after I got here. He then told me he had hired the house as a place where he and I could meet. I agreed to it. Had nothing to eat or drink there. The room is warmed by a wood fire. Mr. Key generally goes first. Have walked there together say four times -- I do not think more; was there Wednesday last, between two and three. I went there alone. Laura [the Sickles' daughter] was at Mrs. Hoover's. Mr. Key took and left her there at my request. From there I went to Fifteenth Street to meet Mr. Key; from there to the milk woman's. Immediately after Mr. Key left Laura at Mrs. Hoover's, I met him in Fifteenth Street. Went in by the back gate. Went in the same bedroom, and there an improper interview was had. I undressed myself. Mr. Key undressed also. this occurred on Wednesday, 23d of February, 1859.

Mr. Key had kissed me in this house a number of times. I do not deny that we have had connection in this house [i.e., the Sickles' residence], last Spring, a year ago, in the parlor, on the sofa. Mr. Sickles was sometimes out of town, and sometimes in the Capitol. I think the intimacy commenced in April or May, 1858. I did not think it safe to meet him in this house, because there are servants who might suspect something.

As a general thing, have worn a black and while woolen plaid dress, and a beaver hat trimmed with black velvet. Have worn a black silk dress there also, also a plaid silk dress, black velvet cloak trimmed with lace, and black velvet shawl trimmed with fringe. On Wednesday I either had on my brown dress or black and white woolen dress, beaver hat and velvet shawl. I arranged with Mr. Key to go in the back way, after leaving Laura at Mrs. Hoover's. He met me at Mr. Douglas'. The arrangement to go in the back way was either made in the street or at Mr. Douglas', as we would be less likely to be seen.

The house is in Fifteenth Street between K and L streets, on the left hand side of the way; arranged the interview for Wednesday in the street, I think, on Monday. I went in the front door, it was open, occupied the same room, undressed myself, and he also; went to bed together. Mr. Key has ridden in

© Washington Walks 2018 11 Mr. Sickles' carriage, and has called at his house without Mr. Sickles' knowledge, and after my being told not to invite him to do so, and against Mr. Sickles' repeated request.

TERESA BAGIOLI.

This is a true statement, written by myself, without any inducement held out by Mr. Sickles of forgiveness or reward, and without any menace from him. This I have written with my bed-room door open, and my maid and child in the adjoining room, at half past eight o'clock in the evening. Miss Ridgely is in the house, within call.

TERESA BAGIOLI

Lafayette Square, Washington, D.C., Feb. 26, 1859.

Mr. and Mrs. Pendelton dined here two weeks ago last Thursday, with a large party. Mr. Key was also here, her brother, and at my suggestion he was invited because he lived in the same house, and also because he had invited Mr. Sickles to dine with him, and Mr. Sickles wished to invite all those from whom he had received invitations; and Mr. Sickles said "do as you choose."

TERESA BAGIOLI

Written and signed in the presence of C.M. Ridgeley and Bridget Duffy. Feb. 26, 1859

The next morning, Sunday, Philip Barton Key arrived in Lafayette Square, having learned that Sickles probably knew about the affair from a coded letter he received. He nonetheless was determined to make contact with Teresa. He was sighted by many people as he reconnoitered the Sickles home and prowled the square, retreating occasionally into the Washington Club, for well over two hours. He received no sign from Teresa. He had been signaling her with his wife handkerchief.

Daniel Sickles spied Key from an upstairs window. In frenzy, he rushed downstairs to the library. “That villain has just passed my house,” he cried to his friend Samuel Butterworth, “My God, this is horrible!”

At this point accounts diverge. According to Butterworth's sworn statement, he left Sickles' house of his own volition, ran into Key without planning to, stopped merely to discuss the health of a mutual friend who happened to be a club member, and so witnessed the homicide as an innocent bystander. Early newspaper accounts had suggested Butterworth went out, at Sickles' behest, expressly for the purpose of detaining Key so that Sickles would have time to arm himself.

There were numerous other witnesses to the shooting. It was a mild day and the Square was a favored area for walks. Reports were that two men, Butterworth and Key, were talking. A third man, Congressman Sickles, rushed toward them and shouted something on the order of (in Butterworth's words): "Key, you scoundrel, you have dishonored my house -- you must die!" Sickles then drew a revolver and fired, glazing Key’s hand. Key rushed toward Sickles and attempted to wrestle him to the ground. Sickles pulled away, took out a second pistol, and raised it. Key backed away, crying “Don’t murder me!” He drew something out of his pocket and threw it at Sickles—his opera glasses. They hit the congressman. Sickles advanced upon Key and fired again. The second shot struck Key in the upper leg. “I’m shot,” Key announced, staggering toward the

© Washington Walks 2018 12 sidewalk. He asked Sickles not to fire again. Dan still shouted, calling him a villain, ranting about his dishonored marriage. Barton leaned against a tree, but he could not hold on to it and slid to the pavement, where he lay on his right side, with his hand over the hole hear his groin.

When Sickles pulled the trigger again, the gun merely made a snapping noise and did not fire. He cocked the weapon again, placed the barrel close to Key, and fired.

This time the bullet entered beneath Key’s heart, passing between the eleventh and twelfth ribs. The bullet entered the large lobe of the liver, punctured the right cavity of the chest, and hit the ribs at Barton’s back, lodging under the skin. Immediately, the left side of his chest began to fill with blood.

Sickles now moved close to Key’s body for the coup de grace. The gun, its barrel close to Key’s head, again misfired. A witness put his hand on Sickle’s shoulders and begged him not to fire again.

Butterworth, stepped up, took Sickles by the arm, and led him away toward the corner of H Street and Madison Place. A few of the witnesses carried Barton Key to the Washington Club. They placed him on the floor in one of the first rooms inside the door; he died almost immediately.

After the slaying Sickles turned himself in to Attorney General Jeremiah Black’s house a few blocks away on Franklin Square. He was initially placed in a dark, filthy, vermin-infested cell at the Washington jail but Fourth and G Streets, but soon was transferred to the jailer’s own office.

The trial was a national sensation when Mrs. Sickles’ written confession, with all its racy details, was made public.

Sickles was acquitted after a 20-day trial on the grounds of temporary insanity, the first successful use of that defense in the United States.

Sickles eventually reconciled with Teresa. The press, which had championed his acquittal, criticized him for forgiving her.

Sickles served as a controversial Union general during the Civil War. At Gettysburg, his men were supposed to cover the Federal left in the vicinity of the Round Tops. Not liking the position and in defiance of direct orders to the contrary, he advanced the Corps into the famous Peach Orchard, creating a salient which was subsequently overrun by General James Longstreet's assault. The end results were the virtual destruction and disappearance of the Corps, termination of his command in the field by virtue of a serious wound which cost him his right leg, and controversy with his superior, General George Gordon Meade. He was, however, subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor for his services at Gettysburg.

After his recovery President Lincoln dispatched him on a tour of Union-held Southern territory for an appraisal of the effect of amnesty, Negro progress, and Reconstruction.

Teresa died in 1867 at age of 31 of tuberculosis.

Sickles next performed a diplomatic mission to Colombia; served as Military Governor of South Carolina; and in 1869 retired from the Army with the rank of Major General in the Regular Army. At that time, President Grant appointed him Minister to Spain, where he was chiefly distinguished diplomatically by becoming the intimate friend of Isabella, the former Queen of Spain. He served again in Congress from New York, 1893-95;

© Washington Walks 2018 13 and for many years was the Chairman of the New York State Monuments Commission, a position from which he was removed in 1912 by reason of alleged misuse of funds. However, while in that position, he did much to bring about the National Battlefield Park at Gettysburg, a site he often visited during his life.

An octogenarian relic of a bygone age, he became separated not only from family but from reality and died irresponsible on May 3, 1914 at his home in New York City. He is now buried in Section 2 of Arlington National Cemetery

THE LEG

The most telling story about Sickle’s gritty character stems from the time his leg was struck by a 12-pound cannonball at Gettysburg. With a cigar clenched in his teeth, he told his men to bring him to the field hospital. Chloroform was administered, and Dr. Thomas Sim, the corps medical director, using a new method of rounded amputation, cut off the leg at a third of the way up the thigh. He had just read that the Army Medical Museum in Washington was advertising for samples, and so, instead of throwing the limb into a heap, he had it wrapped in a wet blanket and placed in a small coffin for shipment to Washington. Sickle’s shattered leg lived on as a museum exhibit and remains on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. For many years he visited the leg bone on the anniversary of the amputation.

ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM

The Museum was started in the basement of Ford’s Theater and was moved to a site on the National Mall in 1887.

For nearly eighty years the Army Museum housed some of the most popular—and bizarre—exhibits in Washington. The most famous collection consisted of Civil War material. Included in this major exhibit were the bullet, probe, and fragments of bone from President Lincoln’s skull wound. Assassinated President James Garfield’s pierced vertebrae were on display, as were color photographs of the bodies of suicide victims who had died by gunshot wounds.

Even though the structure had been listed on the National Register of Historic Buildings, the Interior Department redefined its status, claiming the collection of medical specimens within constituted the building’s importance. At the personal urging of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, the Smithsonian officials agreed to accept the site for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The razing of the building was undertaken in order to keep the Hirshhorn gift in Washington, since one of the conditions was that the valuable collection be located on the Mall, where few if any other sites remained available for new buildings. The Army Museum was moved to the Walter Reed Hospital campus, where it remained until that campus was de-accessioned. The museum, now known as the National Museum of Health and Medicine, is located in Silver Spring, MD.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY HEADQUARTERS (1836-1869) 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Robert Mills, original architect

The present Treasury Building was built over a period of 33 years between 1836 and 1869. The east and center wings, designed by Robert Mills, architect of the Washington Monument and the Patent Office Building, comprise the first part of the building constructed between 1836 and 1842. The most architecturally impressive feature of the Mills design is the east colonnade running the length of the building. Each of the 30

© Washington Walks 2018 14 columns is 36 feet tall and is carved out of a single piece of granite. The interior design of the east and center wings is classically austere, in keeping with the Greek Revival style.

Later additions were made to the original wings, beginning with the construction of the south wing from 1855 to 1860 and the west wing from 1855- 1864. The preliminary design of the wings was provided by Thomas Ustick Walter, architect of the Capitol dome, but architects Ammi B. Young and Isaiah Rogers refined the plans, designed the interior details, and supervised construction. While the exterior of the building was executed along the lines of the original Mills wings, the interiors of the later wings reflect changes in both building technology and aesthetic tastes. Iron columns and beams reinforced the building's brick vaults; the architectural detailing became much more ornate, following mid-nineteenth century fashion. The final addition to the Treasury Building was the north wing, built from 1867 to 1869. Its architect was Alfred B. Mullett. Similar in construction and decor to the south and west wings, the north wing is unique as the site of the Cash Room -- a two-story marble hall in which the daily financial business of the U.S. Government was transacted. The room opened in 1869 as the site of President Grant's inaugural reception.

The Treasury Building is the oldest departmental building in Washington and has had a great impact on the design of other governmental buildings. At the time of its completion, it was one of the largest office buildings in the world. It served as a barracks for soldiers during the Civil War and as the temporary White House for President Andrew Johnson following the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865. The Treasury Building is unquestionably a monument of continuing architectural and historical significance. In acknowledgment of the building's significance, Treasury was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1972. (www.nps.gov)

MEMORIAL SCULPTURE TO LAFAYETTE (1891) Sculptors: Jean Alexander Joseph Falquiere and Marius Jean Antonin Mercie Architect: Paul Pujol Medium: bronze

The name Lafayette Square does not come from this statue (The Andrew Jackson statue had stood alone since its dedication in 1853), but from the day in 1824 when the gallant Frenchman visited Washington and people overflowed the park to get a glimpse of him. His “triumphal return” to America tour lasted one year.

Gilbert Lafayette came from French nobility. His formal title became Major General, the Marquis de Lafayette. Close friends called him Gilbert.

At 16, Lafayette entered the French army. At 19, enthused over the Declaration of Independence, he set out to aid the Americans in 1777. He was appointed a major general in the Continental Army and served General Washington as aide-de-camp at Valley Forge. In October 1778, he returned to France to plead the Americans' cause. Though he had hoped to command the French forces himself, he gracefully accepted the appointment of the more experienced de Rochambeau. At Yorktown, Virginia, as Washington and de Rochambeau advanced from the north and the Comtes de Barras and de Grasse took command of the coast, Lafayette skillfully maneuvered the British forces, under Cornwallis, into a position from which they could not escape. When Cornwallis surrendered he wished to do so to the French, and, although this was not allowed, it was a tribute to the role Lafayette had played in the war. After the surrender, Lafayette returned to France. He revisited America on two later occasions, in 1784 and in 1824, when he was enthusiastically acclaimed. Lafayette had invested more than $200,000 of his own money in the American Revolution. In

© Washington Walks 2018 15 appreciation, Congress later granted him $200,000 and a township of land. Although several individual states conferred an honorary citizenship upon him, he was never made an honorary citizen of the United States, that title have been granted by Congress only to Sir Winston Churchill. When Lafayette died in France on May 20, 1834, his grave was covered with earth from Bunker Hill.

The sculpture:

A heroic bronze portrays Lafayette petitioning the French National Assembly for assistance to the Americans in their fight for independence. He stands on a marble pedestal, facing south, wearing civilian dress but carrying a sword. On the east face are bronzes of the Comte d'Estaing and the Comte de Grasse, discoursing. An anchor indicates their command of the French naval forces sent to American as a result of Lafayette's plea. On the west are similar bronzes of the Comte de Rochambeau and the Chavalier du Portail. A canon indicates their command of the French army in America. On the north face are two cherubs, proclaimed "the delight of the populace" in the 1890s, holding hands and pointing to the cartouche bearing the inscription: "By the Congress, in commemoration of the services rendered by General Lafayette and his compatriots during the struggle for the independence of the United States of America." (Washington Sculpture)

A statue with a joke to tell?

Lafayette is holding clothes and pistol near a bare-breasted Columbia who appears to be offering him a sword. Should Columbia be saying, “Give me back my clothes and I’ll give you the sword?” (On this Spot)

THE WHITE HOUSE (1800) 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. James Hoban, original architect

The White House, one of the most recognizable buildings in Washington, DC, was designed by James Hoban, an Irish-born and-trained architect who won a competition organized by President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in 1792. The competitions were held to determine who would design the nation's two most important buildings, the President's House and the Capitol. It is believed that Jefferson, competing under a pseudonym, submitted designs and lost both competitions. Hoban's inspiration for the house was drawn from an Anglo-Irish villa called the Leinster House in Dublin. Although President Washington oversaw construction, he never lived in the house. President John Adams, elected in 1796 as the second President, was the first resident of the White House. Abigail Adams, President Adams' wife, was known to have complained about the largely unfinished new residence. President Thomas Jefferson, upon moving to the house in 1801, was also not impressed, and dismissed the house as being too big. Jefferson made several structural changes under architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe such as the addition of terrace- pavilions on either side of the main building and single-story wings for storage. In addition to replacing the slate roof with one of sheet iron, Jefferson further improved the grounds by landscaping them in a picturesque manner. While James Madison was President from 1809 to 1817, the White House was torched by the British in the War of 1812. Although the fire was put out by a summer thunderstorm, all that remained were the outside, charred walls and the interior brick walls. Madison brought Hoban back to restore the mansion, which took three years. It was during this construction that the house was painted white. Hoban later added the South and North Porticos, using a slightly altered design by Latrobe.

Expansion and further alterations were made when President Theodore Roosevelt declared the house unsafe to inhabit. He had the original building remodeled. By making the third-story attic into habitable rooms and

© Washington Walks 2018 16 adding the Executive Office wing and the East Gallery, Roosevelt separated his work space from his family life. In 1909, architect Nathan C. Wyeth extended the office wing adding the well-known oval office. Although used informally for some time, it was President Theodore Roosevelt who gave the White House its official name. Finally, the last major renovation took place when President Harry Truman decided that again the building was unsafe and had to be gutted. Steel replaced the original frame and paneling, and a balcony was added to the South Portico.

By the numbers:

• How many doors are there inside The White House? (412) • How many windows are there inside The White House? (147) • How many fireplaces are there inside The White House? (28 working; 12 chimneys) • How many bathrooms are there inside The White House? (31) • How many bedrooms are there inside The White House? (16 family or guest bedrooms ) • How many kitchens are there inside The White House? (5 main, family, diet, staff, pantry) • Can you guess how many rooms, total, there are in The White House? (132)

Lafayette Square Personalities

First Families and Their Contributions to The White House:

A bowling alley was added by Richard M. Nixon 37th president) A swimming pool was added in 1933 by Franklin D. Roosevelt (32nd) A movie theatre was added by Ronald Reagan (40th) Running water was added by (1833) Andrew Jackson (7th) Gas lights (1848 or 1849) by James K Polk (11th)

Electric lights (1891) Benjamin Harrison (23rd) His family was afraid they would get electrocuted so they refused to touch the new lights. Instead, they made staff turn them on and off.

Telephones (1878) Rutherford B. Hayes (19th) They were useless because there was hardly anyone to call.

Heat (1837-1841) Martin Van Buren (9th) “Bathing room” (1833) Andrew Jackson

A huge bathtub (1909) William Howard Taft (27th) He weighed 350 pounds!

A china collection Mrs. Benjamin Harrison (23rd)

She started gathering all the china used by previous presidents into a collection. Her hobby was painting china.

The First Ladies’ portrait collection (1869) Mrs. Julia Tyler (10th) She donated her own portrait. Before long both the Presidents and the

A library Mrs. Abigail Fillmore (13th) Air conditioning Herbert Hoover (31st)

Hot line to Moscow (1963) John F. Kennedy (35th) It was not a telephone, as usually reported, but rather a teletype machine.

The first TV Harry Truman (33rd) A fitness center Bill Clinton (42nd)

“Hail To the Chief” James K Polk (11th) He was a small man and people often could not see him when he walked into a room. His wife had the idea of playing music when he entered so he could be seen. Hail to the Chief was chosen and it stuck.

Official naming “The White House” (1901) Theodore Roosevelt (26th) It had been called the President’s House and the Executive Mansion but then later most people called it The White House. TR put it on the official letterhead.

Prevented the military from painting the White House in camouflage (1942) Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Fun Facts About the White House’s Largest Room: The East Room

• The first family’s laundry was dried there on clothes lines. (John Adams) (2nd) • Teddy Roosevelt had boxing matches there. Once when Secretary of War Taft entered, a Japanese expert was teaching the President jiu jitsu. After watching for a time, the future President ventured the opinion that the Japanese could not throw so heavy a man as himself. On Roosevelt’s suggestion, Taft undertook to prove his point; suddenly he was flat on the floor! • TR’s children roller-skated here on the new parquet floors. • President Lincoln (16th) briefly housed Union troops there during the Civil War. • Woodrow Wilson (28th) showed movies there. • John Quincy Adams (6th) had one of the most unusual uses for this room: a pet alligator lived there. It belonged to the Marquis de Lafayette. • A famous portrait of President Washington painted by Gilbert Stuart hangs in the East Room. It's one of several replicas the artist painted and the only known object to have remained in the White House since 1800. • The funeral for President Abraham Lincoln was held in the East Room.

NAVY YARD URNS (1872) south side of the park near peace protestors sculpted by members of the Ordnance Department, U.S. Navy medium: bronze

© Washington Walks 2018 18 Little is known about the creation of these ornamental bronze urns. They were placed in Lafayette Park in 1872 by order of the secretary of the navy. The location of the urns was indicated by Andrew Jackson Downing in his park plan of 1852; it is possible that they may have been designed by Downing or his partner, Calvert Vaux. They are similar in general form, but not in the detail of the relief work, to the Andrew Jackson Downing Urn, on the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution.

ANDREW JACKSON STATUE (1853) Sculptor: Clark Mills Architect: Clark Mills Medium: bronze

In 1851, as plans were being made for the installation of Clark Mill's equestrian statue of General Andrew Jackson, a prominent landscape gardener named Andrew Jackson Downing was commissioned by Congress to design the grounds. He planned meandering gravel paths leading among trees and flowers to the statue of General Jackson, located in the elliptical area at the center of the square. Downing’s death on July 28, 1852, prevented his carrying out the scheme, and the Civil War further delayed matters. Finally, in 1872, as Alexander Robey Shepherd and the Board of Public Works were transforming Washington with their civic improvements, the federal government began to implement the Downing plan.

Lafayette Square Personalities

Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)

Seventh president of the United States (1829-1837) and the first Westerner to be elected president. His election marked the end of a political era dominated by the planter aristocracy of Virginia and the commercial aristocracy of New England. Jackson himself was an aristocrat, but from a rougher mold than his predecessors. He fought his way to leadership and wealth in a frontier society, and his success established a bond between him and the common people that was never broken. Small farmers, laborers, mechanics, and many other Americans struggling to better themselves looked to Jackson for leadership.

Old Hickory

Early in 1813 (during the War of 1812) the governor of Tennessee, Willie Blount, ordered Jackson to New Orleans, Louisiana. Jackson got as far as Natchez, Mississippi, when the War Department nullified the order. Jackson was stranded without food, supplies, or equipment for his 2500 soldiers. Instead of disbanding his command as ordered, Jackson personally led his troops back to Tennessee. The men admired their leader's concern for their welfare. They said he was as tough as hickory. And so Jackson became known as Old Hickory

Battle of New Orleans

In May 1814 Jackson was made a major general in the regular (federal) army. He was ordered to New Orleans to defend the city against a British attack. Before going, Jackson decided to march on the British military base at Pensacola, Florida. Before the War Department could send the necessary orders, Jackson had captured the base and had arrived in New Orleans.

© Washington Walks 2018 19 The Battle of New Orleans actually came after the war, which had been ended two weeks earlier with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent. Because of the slow communications of the time, neither side in the battle knew that. However, Andrew Jackson was now a national hero. His military exploits had captured the imagination of the nation.

Inauguration

Thousands of people thronged the capital for the inauguration. Some came seeking jobs and favors; most came to cheer their president. After the speech the crowd swarmed into the White House for a reception. They mixed freely with government officials, broke china and glass, and roamed through the mansion as if it were their own home. Jackson had to flee through a rear door, and the crowd left only when the refreshments were placed on the lawn outside.

Jackson’s last public reception was on George Washington’s birthday in 1837. The citizens of New York sent a 1,400-pound cheese, which local citizens were invited to sample. This event turned into another fiasco. Historian George Bancroft observed those in the White House to be “apprentices, boys of all ages, men not civilized enough to walk about the room with their hats off—starvelings, and fellows with dirty faces and dirty manners.”

Van Buren-Calhoun Rivalry

Both Martin Van Buren and Vice President Calhoun wanted to succeed Jackson as president. The conflict between them crystallized over Margaret (Peggy O'Neill) Eaton, the wife of Senator Eaton. Peggy was the daughter of a popular Washington innkeeper, with whom Eaton and Jackson had boarded on earlier trips to Washington. At that time, Peggy was married to a naval officer, John B. Timberlake. The gossip of Washington was that her relationship with Eaton had begun before Timberlake died in 1828. After his death, she and Eaton were quickly married.

The Cabinet members' wives, led by Mrs. Calhoun, snubbed Mrs. Eaton in society. Jackson, who himself had once been the victim of gossip, defended Mrs. Eaton's reputation. Of the entire Cabinet, however, only Martin Van Buren came to the Eatons' defense.

Native American Removal

Jackson supported Georgia in its effort to deprive the Cherokee nation of its land. Jackson claimed that he had “no power to oppose the exercise of sovereignty of any state over all who may be within its limits.” The Cherokee appealed to the Supreme Court, and in Worcester v. Georgia, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled against Georgia. Marshall stated that the federal government had exclusive jurisdiction over Native American lands. To this Jackson is said to have replied, “John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it.” Of course the court had no enforcement power of its own, so the decision was ignored. Within a few years most of the Cherokee were removed in a 1285-km (800-mi) forced march, during which thousands of them died.

In 1834 the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) was created as a permanent homeland for the Native Americans who lived east of the Mississippi River. By the end of Jackson's second administration the army had forcefully moved most of these eastern tribes to their new “home.” The Black Hawk War of 1832 and the Seminole War that was renewed in 1835 represented the last efforts of the eastern Native Americans to retain their ancestral lands.

Henry Clay called Jackson's Native American policy a stain on the nation's honor. Jackson's antipathy toward these peoples was typical of the frontier settler, and because this policy opened more land to settlement, most Westerners supported it with enthusiasm.

The sculpture

Portrays Andrew Jackson as he appeared while reviewing his troops at the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. His spirited mount rears, ready to charge, but is restrained with a steady hand, as Jackson raises his hat in acknowledgement of the salute of his troops. This last battle of the War of 1812, actually fought two weeks after peace has been signed, was a major victory of the American army over the British forces. At first an attempt was made to cast the statue from bronze cannon captured by Jackson as Pensacola, Florida. When this attempt failed, the Navy Department provided the sculptor with surplus brass and copper for casting in 1850. Jackson stands on a simple granite pedestal. Grouped around the base are four of the cannon captured by Jackson at Pensacola. They each weight 870 pounds.

The bronze statue was the first equestrian statute cast in the United States. The sculptor, Clark Mills, was self-taught, and, when commissioned by the Jackson Monument Committee to execute the monument, had never even seen an equestrian statue. With characteristically American inventiveness and dauntless self- confidence, which Andrew Jackson himself would have relished, Mills attacked and solved the problem which had baffled Leonardo da Vinci. He erected a furnace and studio near the square in 1849 at 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, just south of the Treasury Department Building where the statute of General William T. Sherman now stands. Mill had to make six castings of the horse before the final casting was completed in December 1852. The entire work was cast in ten pieces, four of the horse and six of Jackson--a total of 15 tons of bronze. The statue was dedicated on January 8, 1853, the 38th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans. 15,000 people attended the unveiling.

Two replicas of the statue were cast for the city of New Orleans and for Nashville, Tennessee, which is near the Jackson home, the Hermitage. (Washington Sculpture)

BERNARD BARUCH BENCH OF INSPRIRATION (1960)

Eleven paces northwest of the Jackson monument is the Bernard Baruch Bench of Inspiration. It was on this bench that the famous financier and philanthropist would take a break from running the War Industries Board during WWI and dispensing advice to Presidents from Woodrow Wilson through John F. Kennedy. The bench was dedicated to Baruch in 1960 on his 90th birthday. (On This Spot)

Lafayette Square Personalities

Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870-1965)

Baruch was an American financier and presidential adviser. It is a common misconception that Baruch coined the term "Cold War" in a speech made on April 16, 1947. While this is widely received as true, it is in fact false; it was coined by author George Orwell.

Bernard Baruch advised American presidents on economic matters for over 40 years. These ranged from Woodrow Wilson to John F. Kennedy and in his later years Baruch was highly regarded as an elder statesman.

Bernard Baruch was born in Camden, South Carolina on Friday August 19, 1870 to Simon and Belle Baruch, the second of four sons, his father was a German immigrant who came to America in 1855 to avoid conscription in the Prussian army and became a field surgeon on the staff of Robert E. Lee for the Confederate army during the Civil War.

In 1881 the family moved to New York City and in 1889 he graduated from the City College of New York. His first job was as an office boy earning $3.00 a week.

He eventually became a broker and then a partner in the firm of A. Housman and Company. With his earnings and commissions he was eventually able to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

He amassed a fortune in stock market speculation before the age of 30.

In 1903 he had his own brokerage firm and gained the reputation of "The Lone Wolf on Wall Street" because of his refusal to join any other financial house.

By 1910 he had become one of Wall Street's financial leaders.

During World War I he advised President Woodrow Wilson on national defense and in 1918 he became the chairman of the War Industries Board.

After the war he was with President Wilson at the Versailles Peace Conference.

Baruch owned a tungsten (Wolfram) mining community named Atolia in California's Mojave desert. During the years 1906 to 1926 Baruch spent one month a year at Atolia. The once thriving community of 4000 individuals became a ghost town when after World War I tungsten was no longer considered a strategic material and lower cost sources were developed.

He was a member of the "Brain Trust" in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" As the "Storm Clouds" of World War II approached he proposed a number of economic measures including:

. A pay-as-you-go tax plan . Rent ceilings . Stockpiling of Rubber and Tin . A synthetic Rubber program

After the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor he was called upon by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to help with the United States war effort.

He was offered the post of Treasury Secretary by President Franklin Roosevelt but he declined in favor of remaining in the role of an unofficial adviser.

In 1946 he was appointed the United States representative to the United Nations Energy Commission by President Harry S. Truman. On Friday June 14, 1946 he Presented the Baruch Plan to the UNAEC. This plan proposed international control of Atomic Energy.

He was an adviser on international issues until his death on Sunday June 20, 1965 in New York City at the age of 94.

ST. JOHN’S CHURCH LAFAYETTE SQUARE (1816) 16th and H Street, N.W. 1816 Benjamin Henry Latrobe 1881-1890 James Renwick 1919 McKim, Mead and White

St. John’s stood in its original form as a Greek cross church for only four years before its west transept arm was lengthened in 1820, turning it into a Latin cross. Although plans for enlarging the church were solicited from Charles Bulfinch, then architect of the Capitol, it was George Bomford, chief of the Army Ordnance Department, who directed the alterations, allegedly following Latrobe’s own plan for its extension by extending it with a Roman Doric portico. Contrary to Latrobe’s plan, a 40-foot triple-tiered steeple by an unknown designer was erected above the west transept in 1822, creating the exterior form essentially as it exists today.

Originally there were two entrances, the liturgically mandated west door facing 16th Street and a secondary one facing Lafayette Square and the White House on the south (closed off in 1836). Latrobe’s furnishings were organized in a complex series of interlocking circles. He circumscribed a circular aisle within the Greek cross Box pews were to be located in the arms, within two semicircles in the circular central aisle, and on a gallery on the second level. The wine-glass pulpit sat on an iron rail (so that it could be moved) within a circle that projected into the circle of pews under the dome. The gallery was carried by twelve columns. In 1842 they were replaced by more slender ones when a wooden floor was built on top of the original bricks. At the same time the box pews were replaced by low-backed rows of pews.

Suggestions for enlarging the church by rebuilding it in a Victorian style were made by Montgomery Meigs in 1867 and T.S. Chevill in 1874. James Renwick, Jr.’s plan was actually carried out in 1883. The original east end wall was replaced by marble Ionic columns carry a shallow arch, as this end was lengthened and a Palladian window over the altar was added. One- and two-story appendages on the north and south provided space for a robbing room, study, furnace room, and other necessities. Larger windows were cut for the installation of stained glass portraying the life of Christ and images from the Apocalypse designed by N.H. Eggleston of New York and made by the Lorin firm in Chartes, Francesl. The interior was painted with colorful stenciled designs, and exterior sculptural elements, such as the columns and new window frames, were painted a dark color in contrast to the lighter walls.

In 1919, the firm of McKim, Mead and White was engaged to renovate St. John’s. Among the changes made was enclosing the 16th Street vestibule and paneling it in a Colonial Revival style and replacing the Ionic capitals of the chancel screen with marble as well as lining the chancel with gray Siena marble. The Victorian stenciling was covered with off-white paint. (Buildings of DC)

One can sense the original plan within it one sits in a pew beneath the saucered dome’s lantern. The church served the District’s second Episcopal parish. (The first was housed in Christ Church on Capitol Hill.) Latrobe, who had been in Pittsburgh, returned to the capital in June 1815; he met with members of the St. John’s vestry, made some sketches, and posted an ad in the July 22, 1815 edition of the National Intelligencer newspaper calling for bids from “all mechanics” who wished to work “agreeably” on the building, “to the plan and specifications, which will be shown by B. Henry Latrobe, Esq. the Architect, at his office at the Capital.” The cornerstone was laid September 14 and work was completed the following June.

The results much pleased Latrobe, a not uncommon sensation for an architect, but few architects would—or could—do what he did, namely write a hymn of praise to the structure and then play the tune on the organ at the celebratory opening.

© Washington Walks 2018 23 Every president since Madison has attended services at St. John’s, and Latrobe wrote his son, Henry, “I have just completed a church that made many Washingtonians religious who had not been religious before.” By tradition, Pew 54 is set aside for the current chief executive and family. (AIA Guide)

A faded entry in the minutes of the vestry states that on December 7, 1816, a committee was formed to “wait on the President of the United States [James Madison] and offer him a pew in this church, without his being obliged to purchase same.” Madison chose pew 54, but insisted on paying the customary annual rental. The next five Presidents in succession—Monroe, Adams, Jackson, Van Buren and Harrison—occupied this pew during their terms of office, and since then, by tradition, pew 54 has been set aside for Presidents of the United States.

St. John’s has played its part in our Presidential annals in other ways. James Madison’s vivacious Quaker wife, Dolley, was baptized and confirmed an Episcopalian in this church. Presidents William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor were buried from it. (Washington City and Capital)

St. John’s Church Parish House (Ashburton House) 1525 H Street, N.W. 1836, unknown. 1854, Thomas U. Walter

The original house, of which the present structure is a rebuilding, was erected in 1836 by Matthew St. Clair Clarke, former clerk of the House of Representatives. It was devoid of surface decoration and other than two central tripartite windows and an elegantly simple marble Ionic porch, never installed, which is now on the Enoch Pratt House in Baltimore.

In 1854, Thomas U. Walter transformed the house into an Italianate palace for a new owner. The exterior was stuccoed and was scored to resemble ashlar, and the elaborate sandstone window and door frames were added. The proportions were also altered by raising the roof and adding a cast-iron bracketed cornice; the present mansard roof was added in an 1877 renovation, as was the front door. The entrance lamps date from Walter’s time. (Buildings of DC)

Lord Alexander Ashburton, a mid-19th century British minister to America, took up residence here in 1842. He and Daniel Webster negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. (The treaty settled the burning issue of the Maine-New Brunswick boundary.) (AIA Guide)

HAY-ADAMS HOTEL (1927) (former site of the Hay-Adams House) 16th and H Streets, NW Mirhan Mesrobian, architect

Hay-Adams House 1884--razed 1927 Henry Hobson Richardson, architect

The Hays and the Adams commissioned Henry Hobson Richardson to design a home for them on the square. Adams had known Richardson at Harvard.

H. H. Richardson transformed the course of American architecture—indeed, some historians have acclaimed him America’s greatest 19th-century architect—and then died at the height of his career. His influence as immense: His buildings were the basis for a decade of Romanesque Revival architecture in America; his best

© Washington Walks 2018 24 designs were the inspiration for the innovative architects of the Chicago School; and his assistants included many of the leaders of the next generation of American architects, including Charles McKim, Stanford White, George Shepley and John Galen Howard.

The most important houses he designed were the Hay-Adams Houses and the J.J. Glessner House in Chicago. His career culminated in the design of the Allegheny County Courthouse and Jail in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the Marshall Field Wholesale Store in Chicago, Illinois. Richardson weighed 345 pounds and died an agonizing death from Bright’s disease at age 48. (Capital Losses)

Lafayette Square Personalities

Henry and Marian “Clover” Adams

Henry Brooks Adams was born in Boston, February 16, 1838, and died in Washington, March 27, 1918.

The most profound influence in his life and character was that of his heritage. His great grandfather was John Adams, revolutionary hero, Commissioner to negotiate peace with England in 1783, first Minister to England, and second President of the United States. His grandfather was John Quincy Adams, Commissioner to negotiate peace with England after the War of 1812, Minister to England, and subsequently President of the United States. His father was Charles Francis Adams, Minister to England during the Civil War, and one of the ablest diplomats America has produced.

After graduation from Harvard and two years travel in Europe, he accompanied his father as secretary when the appointment as Minister to England suddenly took the latter to London a few weeks after Fort Sumter had been fired upon. They lived in London for eight years. During the Civil War, Henry served as his father’s secretary, feeling a little guilty at not coming home to fight for the Union, but thoroughly enjoying the ways and charm of the British ruling class.

Returning to America following the war, he acted as special correspondent in Washington, with his eye on an editorial chair from which he might influence opinion. When Ulysses Grant was elected President, he accepted a chair in history at Harvard and the editorship of the North American Review.

In 1872, while teaching history at Harvard, he married Marian Hooper, known as “Clover,” another proper Bostonian, whose brother Edward Hooper had been a Harvard contemporary of his.

In 1912 Adams suffered a disabling stroke; in 1918 he died at his home in Washington, D.C.

As a historian, Adams is considered to have been the first (in 1874 -1876) to conduct historical seminary work in the United States. His magnum opus is his History of the United States (1801 to 1817) (9 vols. 1889-1891). It is particularly notable for its account of the diplomatic relations of the United States during this period, and for its essential impartiality. Adams also published Life of Albert Gallatin (1879), John Randolph (1882), and Historical Essays (1891), besides editing The Writings of Albert Gallatin (3 volumes, 1879) and, in collaboration with H. C. Lodge, Ernest Young and J. L. Laughlin, Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law (1876). (Life of Augustus Saint Gaudens)

© Washington Walks 2018 25 Marian Hooper “Clover” Adams, was born September 13, 1843, Boston, and died December 6, 1885, Washington, D.C.) She was an American social arbiter who was widely acknowledged for her wit, as an accomplished photographer in the early 1880s, and as the wife of historian Henry Adams.

Marian Hooper—called Clover by family and friends—was the youngest child of Boston Brahmins. Her mother, Ellen Sturgis Hooper, a published poet and a friend of the author Margaret Fuller, died of tuberculosis when Clover was five years old. Her father, Robert Hooper, was a part-time oculist and independently wealthy; he never remarried and dedicated himself to the care and education of his three children. He and Clover were devoted to one another, keeping up an extensive correspondence.

After her 1872 marriage to Henry Adams, great-grandson and grandson of American presidents, Clover presided over a social salon in Boston’s Back Bay while Henry taught history at Harvard University. In 1877 the couple moved to Washington, D.C., so that Henry could begin work on his monumental histories of early America. Their home on H Street, across from Lafayette Park and the White House, became a centre for the intellectual, artistic, and political elite of the city. Their close circle of friends, known as the “Five of Hearts,” included John Hay, who later served as secretary of state for Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, and Clarence King, the first director of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Known for her quick wit, Clover was athletic, fluent in French, enjoyed reading the ancient classics in the original Greek, and was fascinated by the visual arts, especially painting. She was devoted to animals, and her preferred way to travel was on the back of her horse. The novelist Henry James memorably called her a “perfect Voltaire in petticoats.” Not having children, she and her husband lived, as he said, “very much together.” In the last years of her life, she also became a gifted photographer, taking portraits of her friends, including the historians George Bancroft and Francis Parkman, the architect H.H. Richardson, and the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. She also took pictures of Washington, D.C., and the rural scenery on Boston’s North Shore; her portraits of children and of her women friends are particularly notable.

After the death of her father in 1885, Clover’s life began to unravel, and she sank into a deep intractable depression. On December 6, 1885, she committed suicide by drinking potassium cyanide, a chemical she used to develop her photographs. In the months that followed, Henry Adams commissioned their friend the American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to create a memorial to her. The bronze seated figure that marks her grave in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.—a work of art sometimes called Grief—is widely acknowledged to be one of the sculptor’s masterpieces, and it drew a wide range of responses and visitors, including Mark Twain, Henry James, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Henry Adams, who does not mention his wife in his most famous work, The Education of Henry Adams, never remarried and was buried next to Clover in 1918. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

STEPHEN DECATUR HOUSE (1819) 748 Jackson Place, N.W. Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect

Lafayette Square Personalities

Commodore Stephen Decatur (1779-1820)

Stephen Decatur was born in Sinepuxent, Maryland, on 5 January 1779. He joined the Navy in 1798, as a Midshipman, and was active during the undeclared war with France over the next two years. He was

© Washington Walks 2018 26 promoted to the rank of Lieutenant in 1799. Given command of the brig Argus in 1803, he took to the Mediterranean for war service against Tripoli. Once in the combat zone, Lieutenant Decatur commanded the schooner Enterprise and, on 23 December 1803, captured the enemy ketch Mastico. That vessel, taken into the U.S. Navy under the name Intrepid, was used by Decatur on 16 February 1804 to execute a night raid into Tripoli harbor to destroy the former U.S. frigate Philadelphia, which had been captured after running aground at the end of October 1803.

This daring and extremely successful operation made Lieutenant Decatur an immediate national hero, a status that was enhanced by his courageous conduct during the 3 August 1804 bombardment of Tripoli. In that action, he led his men in hand-to-hand fighting while boarding and capturing an enemy gunboat. Decatur was subsequently promoted to the rank of Captain at age 25, and over the next eight years had command of several frigates. On 25 October 1812, while in command of USS United States, he engaged and captured the British frigate Macedonian, an action that gained him further acclaim. The strong British blockade kept Decatur in port for most of the rest of the War of 1812, but he was able to break out of New York in the frigate President on 15 January 1815. Captain Decatur was wounded when his ship was captured the next day by a superior enemy force, but he soon recovered and was given command of a powerful squadron.

With the war with Great Britain at an end, the United States had decided to deal once and for all with the North African Barbary powers' threat to American commerce. Commodore Decatur sailed his squadron to the Mediterranean Sea in May 1815 and, with the assistance of overwhelming force, persuaded Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli to sign treaties of peace. After returning home, he became a member of the Board of Navy Commissioners in Washington, D.C. In April 1816 he made a toast that would become a standard expression of American patriotism: "Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong."

In 1819, Decatur and his wife Susan moved into their new home on Lafayette Square. While they enjoyed celebrity status during their residence in Washington, the dark clouds of conflict were beginning to gather. One of Decatur's colleagues, Commodore James Barron had been the subject of scandal in 1807 when he commanded the frigate Chesapeake and failed to prepare it for battle to British warship Leopold. Barron's disgraceful defeat led to his court martial in 1808. One of Decatur's naval duties was to sit on the trial of Barron's court martial. Although Decatur and Barron had been friends, Decatur agreed to a verdict that expelled Barron from the Navy for five years. This event began the thirteen-year dispute that would end on the dueling grounds in Maryland.

Barron was overseas at the end of his five-year expulsion from the Navy and did not return to help defend his country during the War of 1812. Upon Barron's return to the United States in December 1818, Decatur challenged his absence during the war. In his defense, Barron claimed he had no money, and therefore could not get back to his country. Back and forth over four years, letters were written and both men stood their ground. Eventually, the quarrel became a fatal battle of honor.

Although dueling was illegal in the city of Washington, it was still common for naval officers to challenge one another. On March 22, 1820, Commodore Stephen Decatur and Commodore James Barron met on the dueling ground in Bladensburg, Maryland. The duel could have been called off if reconciliation could be made between the two men. It would have been up to one of the seconds to intervene, but none did. The duel proceeded. The men fired. Barron crumpled to the ground, wounded in the right thigh. Decatur stood for a moment before collapsing; he clutched his right side with one hand. Barron’s bullet had glanced upward into his abdomen, severing large blood vessels.

Decatur was carried back to Lafayette Square. He gave orders that his wife was not to see him because he could not bear to see her suffering. Twelve hours later, he was dead. Ten thousand people attended his funeral in Washington, D.C. Later, towns in Georgia, Illinois and Alabama would be named for him.

The Decaturs had only lived in the house 14 months

Though wounded, Barron recovered and went on to have a long career ashore, where his commands included the Philadelphia Navy Yard. When Commodore James Barron died at Norfolk, Virginia, on 21 April 1851, he was the Navy's most senior officer.

MAJOR GENERAL FRIEDRICH WILHELM VON STEUBEN (1910) northwest corner of the park Albert Jaegers, sculptor Architect unknown Medium: bronze

Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (1730-1794)

Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben arrived in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania on February 23, 1778, with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin. He had served as general staff officer and aide-de-camp to Frederick the Great during the Seven Years’ War and possessed an invaluable knowledge of Prussian techniques of military training, organization, and administration. Though he spoke no English he was able, in a matter of weeks, to mold the raw American recruits into a force equal in training and discipline to the best British regulars—a feat which has been called “the most remarkable achievement in rapid military training in the history of the world.” After his discharge from the army on March 24, 1784, he became an American citizen and was granted 16,000 acres of land in the Mohawk country by the state of New York, plus a pension of $2,500 a year by Congress. He died November 28, 1794.

This memorial portrays Steuben as he inspected American troops as the great maneuvers of 1778. A heroic bronze portrait figure, 8 feet high, he is attired in the uniform of a major general of the Continental Army, heavily cloaked against the rigors of winter at Valley Forge. Below an American eagle, on the front face of the pedestal, an extensive memorial inscription is lettered in bronze. On the northeast face of the pedestal a bronze group, Military Instruction, symbolizes Steuben’s contribution to the American fight for independence. On the southwest face another bronze group, Commemoration, symbolizes a grateful America honoring Steuben. A woman, assisted by a child, grafts his foreign stock in the tree of American national life as she recounts his heroic deeds. On the southeast face of the pedestal, a bronze plaque in relief honors Steuben’s aides-de-camp, Colonel William North and Major Benjamin Walker.

The sculptural group was dedicated by President William Howard Taft on December 7, 1910, and was unveiled by his daughter Helen. IT was enthusiastically received by critics, and a replica was presented to the Emperor of Germany in partial acknowledgement of a gift by the emperor to the United States of a statue of Frederick the Great. (Washington Sculpture)

722 JACKSON PLACE (FORMER EWELL HOUSE)

The National Women’s Party

Between 1918 and 1921, the Ewell House was rented by Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party (NWP). Alice Paul authored the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923. She founded the NWP, which was a militant group of women to working achieve women’s suffrage. The NWP members brought attention to their cause by staging a suffrage parade in Washington on the day before Woodrow Wilson’s first inaugural. They wanted to have an amendment added to the Constitution giving women the right to vote, rather than trying to work through the individual states.

Before moving to the Ewell House, the NWP rented the Tayloe House on Madison Place. The location across from the White House was crucial to their cause. The women held the first “Silent Sentinels” in front of the White House in January 1917. Five months later, police began arresting these women. Newspaper stories written about the arrests revealed how inhumanely the women were treated in jail.

The NWP members started a “watchfire of freedom” on New Year’s Day, 1919, lighting an urn and burning the president’s speeches. A bell, which hung in the balcony of the Ewell House, rang hourly. Finally, the Wilson administration reluctantly agreed to support the women’s right to vote, but many members of Congress would not commit themselves on the controversial issue. The demonstrations and arrests continued until Congress called a special session. On May 19, 1919, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment (the 19th Amendment, first introduced in Congress in 1878) passed by a majority vote in the House of Representatives. Three weeks later, the amendment passed in the Senate. Wisconsin was the first state to ratify the 19th amendment.

Two bulletins were placed in front of the Ewell House to keep count of the states as they ratified the suffrage amendment. A flag had been sewn with stars for each state that ratified the nineteenth amendment. When the three-fourths of the states ratified the amendment on August 26, 1920, Alice Paul unfurled the thirty-six- star flag from the balcony of the Ewell House.

By 1922, the NWP moved to Capitol Hill, directly across the street from the Capitol. In 1929 they purchased the Sewall Belmont House at 144 Maryland Avenue, N.E., where they are still located today. (Proximity to Power)

The Brookings Institute

In 1932 the Ewell House was raised and nine-story, limestone faced building was erected on the site for the expanded Brookings Institute. The new headquarters building housed the administrative offices of the Institute that were formerly located in the leased office space in another high rise at 740-44 Jackson Place.

Robert Brookings, a self-made man who started working when he was 17 years old for $25 a week, was a millionaire by the time he was thirty. At age forty-six, he retired and devoted his time and his money to research and education in the fields of government and economics. He was 77 years old when he married Isabel Vale January, who also was independently wealthy. When Brookings died in 1932, at age 82, he and Isabel gave an endowment of $3 million to the Brookings Institute. (Proximity to Power)

712 JACKSON PLACE

© Washington Walks 2018 29 Major Henry Rathbone was a brilliant and successful 28-year old officer when he moved into Number 8 Jackson Place (712 Jackson Place today). He and his fiancée Clara Harris were invited by President and Mrs. Lincoln to accompany them to Ford's Theater the evening of April 14, 1865, after General Grant and his wife cancelled their plans to attend.

Rathbone was the only man, besides the president, sitting in the presidential box at Ford's Theater when John Wilkes Booth entered the box and fired the single, fatal shot at Lincoln's head. Rathbone grabbed Booth's coattails to prevent him from jumping off the rail on to the stage twelve feet below, but Booth had a dagger with which he stabbed Rathbone, inflicting a deep wound to his arm and preventing him from detaining Booth.

Major Rathbone responded to treatment and physically recovered from his wounds. But his mind was never quite the same. He was distracted and moody. He was plagued by regret that he had not been able to stop Booth from killing Lincoln. He married Clara Harris and the two moved with their family to Hanover, Germany on a diplomatic mission. Another country, a new life proved no panacea. He became even more despondent. As his wife and children prepared for the coming 1883 Christmas holidays, Rathbone seemed to lose touch with reality altogether. He took a gun, shot his wife to death and would have killed his children had a nurse not intervened. He then shot himself. Doctors were able to save him, yet he spent the rest of his life in an insane asylum. He died there in 1911. (Proximity to Power)

THE MAJOR GENERAL COMTE JEAN de ROCHABEAU (1902) Southwest corner of park J.J. Fernand Hamar, sculptor Architect unknown Medium: bronze

This sculptural group memorializes the arrival of the Comte Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vineur de Rochambeau (1725-1807) in America in 1780, as the commander of the 5,500-man Royal French Expeditionary Force. A heroic bronze of the Comte de Rochambeau, atop a granite pedestal, shows him in the uniform of a major general of the Continental Army, directing his forces. He faces south, pointing decisively with his right hand, a plan of battle unfurled in his left. At his feet, on the south pedestal face, a bronze group symbolizes France coming to the aid of America. A female figure, Liberty, grasps two flags in her hand, symbolizing the unity of France and America, while, with a drawn sword in her right hand, she prepares to defend an embattled eagle symbolizing America. She has just disembarked from a boat whose prow is visible behind her, and waves break at her feet. The group is placed on a ledge like extension of the pedestal, enhancing its defensive posture. The eagle grasps with his right claw a shield with thirteen stars symbolizing the thirteen colonies, while with his left he fends off aggressors; a sheaf of laurel lies upon the pedestal at his feet. On the west face of the pedestal is the coat of arms of the de Rochambeau family, and on the east face, that of France.

The monument is a copy of one at de Rochambeau’s birthplace in Vendome, France. It was erected by Congress, dedicated by President Theodore Roosevelt, and unveiled by the Comtesse de Rochambeau on May 24, 1902, in the presence of the de Rochambeau of Lafayette families, who attended as guests of the American people. (Washington Sculpture)

THE BLAIR HOUSE (1824) 1651-1653 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

© Washington Walks 2018 30 Built in 1824 for Dr. Joseph Lovell, first Surgeon General of the United States who organized the Army Corps of Engineers, this National Historic Landmark serves as the official guest house of the President of the United States. In 1836, Francis Preston Blair, Sr., a member of Andrew Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet" and co-publisher of the Globe, the influential mouthpiece of the administration, purchased the Blair House. Moving for a time in the 1840s to a country house in Maryland, the Blairs rented the property to a succession of notable tenants, including the first Secretary of the Interior, Thomas Ewing, whose daughter married William Tecumseh Sherman at the house in 1850.

In 1852, the Blairs moved back to the residence and constructed a house next door for Elizabeth Preston Blair, the only daughter of Francis Preston Blair. The two houses began to be used as one, almost as they are today. Montgomery Blair, son of Francis Preston Blair, resided in the house as well, and was a trusted advisor to President Lincoln before and during the Civil War. The Blairs opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and threw their weight to the free soil movement and the newly forming Republican Party. Montgomery Blair advised Lincoln on important matters such as the reinforcing of Fort Sumter and was instrumental from holding Maryland out of the Confederacy. At a conference at the Blair House in 1861, it was decided that Admiral Farragut would command the assault on New Orleans. (www.nps.gov)

In 1942 the administration of Franklin Roosevelt bought the original portion of the mansion. An oft-told story of the impulse for buying the house was that the idea came from Eleanor Roosevelt: She was up at 6:30 am striding through the White House living quarters when she encountered a corpulent figure, dressed in a nightgown, pacing the hall. In one hand he held a cigar, in the other a snifter of what looked like brandy. “Winston, where are you going at this time of morning?” “To see Franklin,” he answered. “Oh no you’re not. You’ve kept him up half the night as it is. Now please just go back to your room and let him rest.”

A visiting dignitary was leaving Blair House to see the president. Instead of walking toward the White House, she started toward the Old Executive Office Building. After her aide directed her in the right direction she asked, “Why does the President live in that cottage?”

President Truman lived at Blair House from 1948 until 1951, while the White House underwent its most extensive remodeling since it had been burnt by the British and rebuilt. During this time, two Puerto Rican nationalists tried unsuccessfully to shoot their way through the front door attempting to assassinate Truman. (On This Spot)

No every visiting foreign dignitary may use the Blair House. Only those on State Visits or Official Visits stay at the invitation of the president. President Kennedy’s Office of Protocol defined “State Visit” as a full-scale visit by a chief of state (president, king, queen, emperor) at the official invitation of the president of the United States, lasting three days, and the guests stay at Blair House. An “Official Visit” is a ful- scale visit by a head of the government (prime minister, premier, chancellor) at the official invitation of the president, lasting three days, and the guests stay at the Blair House. An “Informal Working Visit” is one in which the foreign visitors stay in their government’s quarters. A “Private Visit” is one in which the foreign visitors stay their country’s embassy. (Proximity to Power)

LESLIE W. COFFELT AND THE PUERTO RICAN ASSASSINS

In the basement of Blair House, the president's elegant guest quarters, is the rather plain day room of the Secret Service Uniformed Division. It is called the Leslie W. Coffelt Memorial Room, honoring the White House police private who on November 1, 1950, died saving the life of Harry Truman.

© Washington Walks 2018 31 Truman was living in Blair House while the White House was being remodeled and repaired. White House police officer Floyd Boring, now retired, was on duty that day, standing guard at the front door. "The president was upstairs, having a nap before he was due to go to Arlington to lay a wreath," Boring said. “We were standing on the steps when two gentlemen came up and one pulled out a gun and aimed it at me. I heard it snap, and I pulled out my gun and shot back. Then everybody was shooting. I saw Officer Coffelt fall, but first he shot and killed one of the men. It was all over in 20 seconds. It was thrilling. I realized later that the man aiming at me had forgotten to cock his Luger pistol. Mr. Truman was never in any real danger, because he was to leave by the back door--they wouldn't have a chance at him."

Two other guards, Donald T. Birdzell and Joseph H. Downs, were shot but recovered. The 40-year-old Coffelt died that night at Emergency Hospital (now demolished) a few blocks away.

Coffelt's sister, Mildred Good, heard the news of her brother's death on the radio in Strasburg, Virginia, their hometown. "I thought of the day years before when he saved up his money and bought a shotgun," she said yesterday. He loved that gun, kept it polished and cleaned. I warned him guns would be his death. But you know he loved his job; he wouldn't have chosen any other way to go. I am sure he had no regrets." Coffelt's stepdaughter said she was 19, working at the Veterans Administration, when they called her. "I always rode to work and then home again with him. But not that day," she said. "

Officer Coffelt's seriously ill wife was scheduled to have a kidney removed only four days after the tragedy. Although she was still in shock from the death of her husband, presidential aides persuaded her to postpone the surgery and go to Puerto Rico. For three days she received expressions of sorrow from various Puerto Rican leaders and crowds, to whom she dutifully responded with a simple speech absolving the island's people of blame for the acts of two fanatics. Puerto Rican school children contributed almost two hundred dollars, most of it in pennies, to their own special fund for her welfare. Observers believed that her visit helped to ease the tensions created by the earlier attempted coup of the Nationalists.

In May 1952, President Truman dedicated a plaque to Leslie Coffelt in front of Blair House. The fortunate president spoke from the heart and with wisdom gained from experience that day when he vowed to cooperate with his guards in every way possible. He did so, he said, not because he was personally afraid, but because he had learned the hard way the extent of his own responsibility for the safety of the men assigned to protect him

Officer Coffelt is buried in Section 15 of Arlington National Cemetery.

THE ASSASSINS

The would-be assassins were members of the small, volatile Puerto Rican Nationalist Party headed by Pedro Albizu Campos, a Harvard graduate whose exposure to racism in the American Army during World War I had left him an embittered advocate of the Caribbean island's independence through violent revolution. Although the Nationalist Party had failed miserably at the polls and fielded no candidates after 1932, its members had remained convinced that their cause would triumph.

While most Puerto Ricans rejected Albizu Campos's extremist policies, many shared his feelings toward the United States. For years a wide gulf had existed between the poor majority of the island's population and the wealthy minority. Successful American efforts to eradicate various diseases had spurred a population explosion that often erased economic gains as fast as they occurred. Simultaneously, because the United States had granted the island no real self-government until the 1940s, Washington could be held at least

© Washington Walks 2018 32 partly responsible for difficulties within Puerto Rico. American missionaries, teachers, and physicians worked unselfishly to aid Puerto Rican citizens, but they could not solve all the problems, and the goodwill they created was often offset by unfortunate incidents.

Although the Nationalists were weakened after 1932 by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal efforts to help the Puerto Rican people, Albizu Campos announced a new government on the island with him at its head and organized a black-shirted army of liberation. During the next two decades the party's tactics included bombings, assassinations, and pitched battles with the police. Its violent methods did not win it popular support but did intensify the dedication of the faithful. Ironically, the Nationalists received financial aid from several wealthy Puerto Rican landowners who were chafing under the reforms of the New Deal.

Among the Nationalist Party's true believers in 1950 was 36-year-old Oscar Collazo. In 1932, at the age of 18, Collazo had traveled to his native Puerto Rico after several unhappy months working at the Army and Navy Club in New York City. Soon after hearing an impassioned speech by Albizu Campos, Collazo dedicated his life to the Nationalist Party. He returned to New York, where he married Rosa Mercado, a divorcée with two daughters, who was herself a devoted nationalist.

In 1941, the Collazo family moved into a Puerto Rican neighborhood in New York whose residents suffered from homesickness, ethnic discrimination, and economic exploitation. By then Collazo had become a skilled metal polisher with an excellent reputation. On Sundays he would serve as an interpreter and guide to new immigrants, and he represented the workers on his union's negotiating committee. Meanwhile, he was a model husband and father who paid his bills on time and did not smoke or drink. Collazo, in short, led a useful and reasonably successful life that might have satisfied a less complicated and confused personality.

Twenty-five-year-old Griselio Torresola's radicalism was almost inbred, as his family had participated in every Puerto Rican revolution for a century. He and his brother, Elio, and two sisters, Angelina and Doris, were devoted to Albizu Campos almost from childhood. In August 1948, Griselio got a job in a New York stationery and perfume store, but he was let go when a divorce caused him to become despondent and unreliable. For the remainder of his life, Torresola, with a new wife and one of his two young daughters, lived on a relief stipend of $125 a month. He longed to do something important, and he had one talent that Collazo lacked; he was deadly with a pistol, while Collazo had never fired a handgun.

Torresola spent much of 1950 purchasing arms for a planned October 28 revolt in Puerto Rico. On September 21 of that year, Albizu Campos directed that, should it become necessary, Torresola was to "assume the leadership of the movement in the United States without hesitation," and that he should "collect the funds...necessary to take care of the supreme necessities of the cause." The U.S. Secret Service later considered these letters proof that the subsequent actions of Collazo and Torresola were part of a larger conspiracy. However, the agency concluded that the poor planning evidenced by Collazo and Torresola indicated that they had acted on their own when they tried to kill the president.

An attempted coup of October 28 in San Juan was a fiasco, and efforts to assassinate Governor Muñoz Marín failed. Torresola's sister was wounded, and his brother was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing a policeman. In New York, Collazo and Torresola were frustrated and angered by their inability either to assist in the coup or die for the cause. Collazo then decided that the assassination of President Truman might lead to an American revolution that would provide the Nationalists with an opportunity to lead Puerto Rico to independence. The absurdity of such hopes was lost on the two zealots, who not only suffered from vengeful anger and martyr complexes, but remained under the powerful influence of Albizu Campos.

© Washington Walks 2018 33 On Tuesday, October 31, Collazo and Torresola bought new suits and handbags, said fond farewells to their families, and purchased one-way train tickets to Washington. On the morning following their arrival in the nation's capital, they went sightseeing, bought some postcards, and took a taxi to Blair House, President Truman's temporary residence, where they carefully studied the security arrangements.

If Collazo and Torresola had planned more carefully, they might have succeeded in their mission, as no president in modern times has been more vulnerable to attack than Truman was during his years at Blair House.

In 1948, when inspectors discovered dangerous structural flaws in the White House, the decision was made to move the First Family to the Blair-Lee mansion across Pennsylvania Avenue, until repairs could be completed. This solution had seemed ideal to everyone, except those charged with ensuring Truman's safety.

Unlike the White House, which stood protected behind iron fences that enclosed an enormous expanse of lawn, Blair House was separated from the sidewalk--where hundreds of people passed every hour--by only a five-foot-wide front yard, a low hedge, and a shoulder-high iron fence. Moreover, the doors to Blair House were not always locked, and the logistics involved in getting President Truman back and forth to the White House were a daily problem. Frequently, the gregarious president, who loved to walk and greet people, had to be escorted on foot. Truman was informal and friendly with his guards, but their resulting affection for him did not make their job any easier.

The canopy-covered front stairs to the east, or Blair House, front door were used by the president and his guests, and a guard was always stationed at the bottom step. Just inside this door another guard stood with a machine gun within reach. All the guards carried pistols and were expert marksmen. Six of the usual seven- man detail actually stood guard; the seventh handled other duties that arose. Three men guarded the three entrances to the building; another was stationed just inside the front door, and two, including the officer-in- charge, moved around wherever needed. On November 1, 1950, the main front door was open because of the warm weather, but its screen door was locked.

Having planned their simple strategy, Collazo and Torresola ate lunch and returned to their hotel, where Torresola taught his cohort how to handle his gun. After cleaning and oiling their weapons, the men took a taxi cab back to Blair House, carrying 69 rounds of ammunition between them. Appearing unperturbed as he left the hotel, Collazo calmly asked the clerk about the posted check-out time and was assured that leaving an hour or so late was fine.

By this time, President Truman, having been driven home for lunch with Mrs. Truman, was taking a nap. His schedule called for him to leave Blair House at 2:50 p.m. to be driven to Arlington National Cemetery for the unveiling of a statue. Had the assassins looked at a Washington newspaper and learned something of the president's schedule, they would have known that there would be ample opportunities to strike as the president walked to his car or from among the trees and monuments at Arlington. Fortunately, however, they were ignorant of his timetable; they were not even certain that he was at home.

At his trial in 1951, Oscar Collazo, scorning his attorney's advice that he plead insanity, delivered an impassioned oration from the witness stand decrying the brutal exploitation of Puerto Rico by the United States. Many of his facts were dated or inaccurate, and neither the American public nor the people of Puerto Rico paid much attention. The United States had already offered full political autonomy to Puerto Rico the year before, and in 1952, the island became a self-governing commonwealth. Truman himself had named the

© Washington Walks 2018 34 first native Puerto Rican governor of the island and had extended social security to its people. Mrs. Coffelt's reception in Puerto Rico was a far more accurate indication of the mindset of the island's people than were the actions of Oscar Collazo.

The jury found Collazo guilty of murder, attempted assassination, and assault with intent to kill. Since his collaboration with Torresola made him a principal in the death of Coffelt, Judge T. Alan Goldsborough sentenced Collazo to death. A higher court upheld the conviction, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The execution was set for August 1, 1952. On July 24, however, President Truman denied Collazo martyrdom by commuting the sentence to life imprisonment. Nearly thirty years later, President Jimmy Carter had the now-elderly Collazo released. Returning to Puerto Rico, Collazo lived quietly until his death in 1994. (The Washington Post)

RENWICK GALLERY (1859) 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. (former Corcoran Gallery and U.S. Court of Claims) James Renwick, architect

The Renwick Gallery was built in 1859 to house the American and European art collection of Washington banker and philanthropist William Wilson Corcoran (1798–1888). Corcoran engaged the noted architect James Renwick Jr. (1818–1895), who had earlier designed the Smithsonian's Castle in Washington, D.C., and St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Renwick modeled the gallery on the French Second Empire style that was popular at the time, inspired by the Louvre's Tuileries addition in Paris.

Completed in 1861, it was the city's first art museum. Shortly thereafter, the Quartermaster General's Corps of the Union Army occupied the building to store records and uniforms, and eventually set up offices for the duration of the Civil War. The building was returned to Corcoran in 1869. He hosted a lavish ball February 20, 1871, to celebrate the building and to raise money for the long-stalled Washington Monument. The event, called "the most magnificent reception ever given in the United States," was attended by President Ulysses S. Grant and included a special balcony for musicians who were accompanied by canaries singing from cages suspended from the ceiling. After extensive renovations, the building finally opened as his art gallery in 1873.

By 1897, Corcoran's collection had outgrown the building. The trustees of the gallery purchased land at 17th Street and New York Avenue N.W. and hired Ernest Flagg of New York to design a new, larger building—the present-day Corcoran Gallery of Art.

The U.S. Court of Claims took over the building in 1899. In need of larger space by the 1950s, the Court of Claims proposed that the historic building be torn down. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy led the effort to save this architectural gem, and in 1965, S. Dillon Ripley, then secretary of the Smithsonian, met with President Lyndon Johnson to request that the gallery be turned over to the Smithsonian. The Renwick was subsequently dedicated "for use as a gallery of art, crafts, and design."

The architectural firm John Carl Warnecke and Associates of San Francisco, in conjunction with Universal Restorations, Inc. of Washington, D.C., was hired to complete extensive exterior restorations. Washington, D.C.-based architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen was hired to lead the interior renovation. The extraordinary Grand Salon—which had been converted into office space for Court of Claims judges—was restored to its original glory. The building, named the Renwick Gallery in honor of its architect, reopened in 1972 as the home of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's contemporary craft program. (www.nps.org)

EISENHOWER EXECUTIVE OFFICE BUILDING (1871-1888) Pennsylvania Avenue and 17th Street, N.W. Alfred Mullett, architect

The Old Executive Office Building, a National Historic Landmark, was built between 1871 and 1888. Designed by Alfred B. Mullet in the Second Empire Style, the building housed the Departments of State, War, and Navy. Much of the interior was designed by Richard Von Ezdorf using fireproof cast-iron structural and decorative elements. The building became seen as inefficient and was nearly demolished in 1957. Since 1981, major renovations have been carried out including the development of a comprehensive preservation program and the formulation of a master plan for the building's continued adaptive use. The building continues to house various agencies that comprise the Executive Office of the President, such as the Office of the Vice President, the Office of Management and Budget and the National Security Council.

Many celebrated national figures have participated in the historical events that have taken place within the Old Executive Office Building's granite walls. Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, and George Bush all had offices in this building before becoming President. It has housed 16 Secretaries of the Navy, 21 Secretaries of War, and 24 Secretaries of State. Winston Churchill once walked its corridors and Japanese emissaries met here with Secretary of State Cordell Hull after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. President Herbert Hoover occupied the Secretary of Navy's office for a few months following a fire in the Oval Office on Christmas Eve, 1929. In recent history Richard Nixon had a private office here during his presidency. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was the first in a succession of Vice Presidents to the present day that have had offices in the building.

A love-hate relationship with one of Washington’s largest buildings:

“Reviled at its inception, when Henry Adams dismissed it as “Mr. Mullett’s architectural infant asylum,” and still unloved 70 years later when Harry Truman shuddered at “the greatest monstrosity in America,” the ten- acre building’s gray Virginia granite exterior, with its 900 projecting and superimposed Doric columns, bewilders many passers-by even today. Those who find their way inside are greeted with still more surprises: a spiraling cantilevered stairway at each corner and, buried within the vastness of the interior, a pair of libraries that have been well described as perforated fantasies of cast iron.

The building’s unpopularity—architect Mullett committee suicide in 1890—spawned several plots to have its exterior remodeled to match the critically sanctioned Treasury Building nearby. The latest such scheme came in 1929: that year, President Hoover groaned that Mullett’s “architectural orgy” was, of all the buildings in town, the one “we regret most.” He asserted, “For a comparatively modest sum we can strip it of its function to represent the different types of architecture known to man and bring it back to the sound classic lines of the Treasury.” Congress went so far as to hire architect Waddy Wood to do the deed, but the Depression intervened, making the expenditure of even a Hoover-esque “modest sum” politically impossible. While one deeply rejoices that such plans got aborted, the concept is not all that far-fetched, since the original early 19th-century matched and since the present buildings, Treasury and Executive Office Building so have strikingly similar floor plans beneath their totally dissimilar facades.”

The AIA Guide to Architecture of Washington, D.C. Third edition, 1994

AMERICAN SCOUNDREL: THE LIFE OF THE NOTORIOUS CIVIL WAR GENERAL DANIEL SICKLES Thomas Keneally (Nan A. Talese Doubleday, 2002)

BUILDINGS OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Pamela Scott, Antoinette Lee (Oxford University Press, 1993)

CAPITAL LOSSES—A HISTORY OF WASHINGTON’S DESTORYED BUILDINGS James M. Goode (Smithsonian Institute, 1987)

ON THIS SPOT WASHINGTON, D.C. Douglas Evelyn, Paul Dickson (National Geographic Press, 1999)

OUTDOOR SCULPTURE OF WASHINGTON, D.C. James M. Goode (Smithsonian Institute, 1974)

PARLOR POLITICS IN WHICH THE LADIES OF WASHINGTON HELP BUILD A CITY AND A GOVERNMENT Catherine Allgor (University of Virginia, 2000)

PROXIMITY TO POWER NEIGHBORS TO THE PRESIDENTS NEAR LAFAYETTE SQUARE Jeanne Fogle (A Tour de Force Publications, 1999)

WEB SITES CONSULTED:

Answers.com [Columbia Encyclopedia On-Line] www.answers.com

Library of Congress www.loc.gov

National Park Service www.nps.gov

Stephen Decatur House Museum www.decaturhouse.org

Washington Post Online www.washingtonpost.com

White House www.whitehouse.gov