t l^a 1_*<o<Lir P A Surprise Personalities In Georgetown, D. C. a**~ttt^(el f "T ki&* wo-ucj Hopkins, G. M. Surveys and Plats of Properties In The City of Washington, District of Columbia Printed in Philadelphia,Pa. 1887 Map Section Library Of Congress Stoddard St., [sic] (Stoddert) - Q Street iB\ ITI 1m1LJUis\-wdo . \ I + I ILI1 *M I 0e ju West St. - P Street 0' Katharine %_ a $ KATHERINE KNOX GEORGETOWN - Burial was held today at Union Cemetery for Katherine Knox, a descendant of the McCook family and a distinguished art historian, author and Washington hostess. Mrs. Knox died in her Georgetown home July 9 after a lengthy illness. She was 93. A memorial service will be held in the President's Chapel of the National Presbyterian Church . 4 p.m. July 17. Mrs. Knox, the daughter of Brig. Gen. Anson G. and Hettie BeaL-v McCook, was the author of the book, "The Sharpies - Their Portraits of George Washington and his Contemporles." For more than 40 years, she organized, chaired and acted as consultant for such exhibitions as the Corcoran Gallery's George Washington Bicentennial Commission's Exhibition of Portraits, the Corcoran's Loan Exhibition of Singers of the Declaration of Independence, the Smithsonian's Profiles of the Times of James Madison and the cataloging of White House art during the Hoover administration. Among her other accomplishments was getting Post- master General Arthur Summerfield to make a commemora- tive postage stamp of the "Beardless Lincoln," painted by George Healy in 1960, for the Lincoln Sesquicen- tennial. And he did. Awarded the Lincoln Medallion by the Lincoln Sesqui- centennial Commission in 1960, she received the Cor- coran's Medal of Merit six years later. Mrs. Knox took an active part in Republican politics. She was a vice chairman of the D.C. Republican Committee, a program chairman for the League of Republican Women, and an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention. Her Georgetown home was often a gathering place of congressional and governmental figures. She held membership in the Pittsburgh Golf Club, Chase Club, the Sulgrace, Capitol Hill, the City Tavern Association and New York's Colony Club. Surviving are her daughter, Mrs. Richard (Kathleen) Smith of Noank, Conn.; two grandchildren; and three grandchildren. Steubenville Herald Star July 14, 1983 Surprise Personalities In Georgetown, D. C Copyright © 1958 by Katharine McCook Knox Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-59553 Printed by W. Lynnwood Cook: Service Printing Company, Washington, D. C. Published by the author: 1958 Second Printing February 14, 1959 Printed in the United States of America 50 Cents INTRODUCTORY MEMORANDUM In the winter of 1958 Mr. William E. Shepherd, President of the Georgetown Citizens Association formed a Fine Arts Commit- tee to function for his Association. He appointed Mr. John Walker, Director of the National Gallery of Art, as Chairman. I was invited to become a member of that committee and I accepted. The first assignment I was given had to do with the twin brick house or houses on P Street (3033 - 3035) which, rumor had it, was (were) threatened with demolition. The Progressive Citizens Association of Georgetown (to which I also belong) had gone on record as wishing to save the above mentioned building, and thus I was able to start my study with the hope that my findings might be of historical value to the Georgetown com- munity as a whole. Not as soon as I had hoped, but as soon as I found it possible, I visited the house, which certainly on first view, presented a doleful appearance. All around it were active evidences and sounds of ripping and tearing and putting up new edifices and laying out new pavements. The solid earth touching upon its cellar had partially been dug away, and all I could think of was a suffering dental patient of giant proportions - so dismal, dark and huge did the gap appear. The whir and grind of ma- chinery added reality to my discomforting imagination. Weeds and vines near the front porch formed a veritable tanglewood. A door was wide open and the piazza steps looked safe, so, I used them and stepped inside the hall. All furniture had been removed except a bookshelf or two with some woe-begone vol- umes in pitiful array. A wide straight shaft of sunlight showed me to the old stairway, and then seemed to guide me around to windows and fireplaces where the woodwork was simple but good. I walked upstairs, in fact I wandered everywhere and I gradually and quietly began to absorb from the atmosphere a nice feeling. I did not hurry; I did not want to, but even if I had wanted to, I think that something would have detained me. No wonder some happy ghost was with me that day, for when, in the following months I terminated my research, I had come across nothing but real appreciation of this house as a home lived in by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lanman and their bright young Japanese ward Umeko Tsuda. Also in No. 3033 where lived Mrs. Patten, high ideals had similarly prevailed. My attitude is one of liking for the former 120 West Street, and attachment to the memory of the Lanmans and Ume Tsuda. I am not an architect, builder or interior decorator and there- fore my opinion may have little weight. I still think, however that with careful and thoughtful, albeit costly restoration, P Street would be enhanced by the preservation of this unadorned old dwelling and furthermore that some family would be fort- unate to live in such a house permeated by happy and distin- guished memories. K. McC. K. written on October 2nd. 1958 POSTCRIPT This beautiful autumn morning I passed by P Street. No. 3035 was entirely demolished. A few piles of rubble and brick were mere vestiges of the early 19th. Century building. No. 3033 was almost down. Two walls, only, were standing like battered and weary sentinels. and by sunset I presume they will be gone for- ever. K. McC. K. written on October 24th. 1958 o;^ ga)48 O +0 4 r- - Qceg *D Q Qo ~ H L4 3c 1 ^"* C CZ M500o 8 0 u c ) ° o . Byn (< ''* C4 cdS S^.d E-Oo 0 ®0 . Surprise Personalities In Georgetown, D. C. To this writer has been given the pleasant task of bringing out in the light of today some of the truly important people and events connect- ed with the twin brick houses (built circa 1810), 3033 and 3035 P Street, N. W., Washington 7, D. C. During the Eighteen-seventies the house now numbered 3035 was list- ed in the Directories as 120 West Street, Georgetown. The P Street location has recently become the hub of a real estate development which has necessitated the razing of certain old houses in order that new ones may be built. A petition to save the above mentioned P Street houses was circulated and over two hundred signatures were obtained. Both the Georgetown Cit- izens Association and the Progressive Citizens Association of Georgetown are in accord on this particular effort of preservation. In the winter of 1958 Colonel W. E. Shepherd, President of the Georgetown Citizens Association appointed a Fine Arts and Historic Buildings Committee to function for his Association. Mr. John Walker, Di- rector of the National Gallery of Art, was made the chairman. I was asked to serve as a member of the committee and I accepted. Although I have had innumerable fascinating experiences in research, I have never had one with more surprise elements. Also, I never before had one where I did not have to travel for considerable distances by motor, railroad or boat, but in the quest for this material my physical activities were compactly bounded as follows: North, by the Peabody Room in the Georgetown Public Library; South, by the Corcoran Gallery of Art; East, by the Library of Congress and its Annex; and West, by my own house in Georgetown where at the end of a hectic day I could study in my own library. Let no one think, however, that I did not burn up taxicab and street car mileage. I rushed hither and thither, sometimes reminding my- self of one of those erratic water-flies darting forward, backward and across in the swirl of a summer stream. On the other hand, this research has carried me, in flights of imagina- tion, farther afield than ever before. Over the reaches of the Pacific to Japan and back to San Francisco. speeding through the plains to Salt Lake -I - Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lanman and their house 120 West Street, Georgetown, D. C. (3035 P Street) Photographs courtesy of "Biography of Umeko Tsuda" written in Japanese by Riichi Yoshikawa. Mrs. Lanman was Adeline Dodge the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Francis Dodge. Mr. Dodge built the houses and gave them to his daughter as a wedding gift, to live in one and rent the other, which is what she did. Note the white painted picket fence the same as in photograph facing page one and the brick and stone wall the same as in photograph on page six. City, Chicago and into the heart and center of Washington, D. C. and the quaint lazy streets of Georgetown, down to a wharf on the bank of the Potomac and a ship setting sail to the West Indies. Through the New England states peopled by Daniel Webster, Longfellow, Whittier and Wil- liam Cullen Bryant, through New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland and Michigan; to Washington Irving's "Sunnyside" on the Hudson, and Charles Dickens' house in England; Bryn Mawr College on the Main Line and Tsuda College in Tokyo, and then at the end to two quiet graves, one in Oak Hill Cemetery, Georgetown and the other in Kitatama-gun in dis- tant Japan.