Journalist Doris Fleeson lived at 3344 P Street NW from 1945 to 1959, giving this property its historical significance. Fleeson was a trailblazing female political journalist, and her time living and working at this Georgetown residence was particularly significant, both professionally and personally.
Fleeson was born in Sterling, Kansas, in 1901 and received a degree in journalism from the University of Kansas in 1923. She later moved to New York and eventually joined the staff of the New York Daily News, once the nation’s most widely-circulated newspaper. She married John O’Donnell, another Daily News reporter, in 1930, and they moved to Washington, DC, in 1932. That same year, Fleeson and O’Donnell started their column “Capital Stuff,” which ran in the Daily News until 1941.
Simultaneously, Fleeson was the only female reporter to permanently cover Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign. She had first met (then Governor) Roosevelt during her stint covering New York state politics. The following year, she cofounded the American Newspaper Guild. In 1937, Fleeson was elected president of the Women’s National Press Club. Over the years, Fleeson and her fellow female journalists would fight for admission to the National Press Club.
In 1942, Fleeson and O’Donnell divorced. While single, in 1945, she purchased the semi-detached residence in Georgetown. While living in Georgetown, Fleeson continued to report on presidential and congressional politics – notably, a series of articles on controversial Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. She became well-known through a syndicated Washington Evening Star column, which started in 1945 and was published in 120 newspapers by 1958.
Fleeson holds particular significance as America’s first woman with a syndicated national affairs column. In addition to her award-winning writing, she appeared on radio and television programs, such as Meet the Press and Face the Nation, and lectured extensively. In 1959, Fleeson and her second husband, Dan A. Kimball (whom she married in 1958), moved out and, in 1960, she sold the Georgetown residence. At that time, Fleeson and Kimball moved into their new home at 2120 S Street NW in Sheridan-Kalorama. Fleeson died in 1970.
The semi-detached residence is one of two buildings (1427 and 1429 34th Street; 1429 is now 3344 P Street) constructed in 1876 at the corner of 34th and P streets in Georgetown. The two residences have a continuous wood cornice with brackets, a common feature of the Italianate style, on the 34th Street elevation. Although the entrance for 1427 is still on 34th Street, the entrance for 1429 was moved to P Street during an early 1930s remodel, giving the historic landmark its current address (3344 P Street NW).
This remodel also resulted in new six-over-six windows, and the removal of the windows’ hood molds and their replacement with flat wood lintels (note the difference between the two residences’ windows and surrounds on 34th Street). These changes gave the residence a Colonial Revival update, a then popular style. The residence has a brick masonry foundation and is clad in wood German lap siding. The entrance is slightly elevated and reached via a short staircase.
DC Inventory: April 23, 2026
Within Georgetown Historic District
]]>Providence Hospital opened just six weeks after the start of the Civil War, and was one of the longest running hospitals in the city, operating from 1861 to 1961. Opening on the corner of Second and D streets SE, the hospital’s mission of serving its community would be put into action by the Sisters of Charity from Emmitsburg, Maryland. Providence Hospital was constructed on land owned by Major Augustus Nicholson of the U.S. Marine Corps. His widow, Mrs. Nicholson, would move across the street, and share a home with the daughters of Daniel Carroll of Duddington. Mrs. Nicholson rented the property to the Sisters of Charity, who would slowly buy it back from the widow over the next decade. As the military had confiscated Washington’s only other civilian hospital at the time, the Washington Infirmary, Providence Hospital would serve a unique role, especially amongst the 83 other military hospitals in the area, and the other nine that would eventually be built for civilians. The Sisters of Charity and Dr. Joseph M. Toner ran Providence Hospital and served both the Washington civilian population and the soldiers wounded in nearby Virginia. The hospital opened on June 10, 1861, just six weeks before the Battle of Bull Run. As the war raged on, Capitol Hill became “Bloody Hill,” as soldiers were brought back from combat. Hospital facilities stretched to the furthest reaches of the hospital’s property, creating an outdoor hospital. Medical tents spread across the landscape, and served soldiers from both the North and South. The hospital would be incorporated by Congress in 1864 and receive financial support several times thereafter, with thanks to Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, who was a patron of the institution. The hospital would be a driving force in the continuous innovations toward higher standards in medical care. For example, Providence Hospital had the first surgical amphitheater in 1882, and the Sisters of Charity were committed to continuous social work and affordable care. There would be a soup kitchen for the unemployed housed in the basement of the hospital. Remarkably, this soup kitchen served the community through seven different economic depressions (during the hospital’s century of existence). A mixture of several different styles would be found at the hospital, following renovations in 1872 and 1904, as well as continuous expansions of the hospital’s campus. Large portions of the hospital were Italianate, as well as Second Empire in design. The hospital also included a 175-foot bell tower which referenced 18th century English Style. The Italianate influences were shown in the wide, bracketed eaves, and flat facade, while the French Second Empire influence showed itself in the mansard roof and lacy metal roof crests, as well as the structure of the building itself, consisting of three pavilions. Eventually, Providence Hospital would become a victim of overcrowding. This would lead to the construction of another location at 12th and Varnum streets NE to house more patients. The new, $8-million dollar complex was completed in 1956. The original Providence Hospital on Capitol Hill would eventually be purchased by the federal government for temporary use, until the building was demolished in 1964 What is left of the old Providence Hospital is the memory of nearly one hundred years of service to its community, as well as a park that bears the name “Providence Park” at the corner of 2nd and D streets SE.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
Demolished in 1964
]]>St. Elizabeths Hospital strived for self-sufficiency. Leaders of the hospital wanted it to be able to provide for itself and made it their mission to develop a range of services on-campus to address those needs. The Fire House was constructed in 1883 to support that initiative. The small, brick structure was designed in the Italianate style and housed the hospital’s firefighting engines. There was also a living space for the chief engineer. The defining characteristic of the Fire House is its clock tower. It told campus residents the time, but was also used to signal emergencies.
During the earlier decades of its operation, St. Elizabeths was plagued by a series of fatal fires. Its design made fires in the Center Building especially dangerous. Buildings designed in the cottage plan were more easily contained; however, as the campus grew, the hospital's officials realized that they needed a better firefighting system. Having a fire house on the campus was also important because St. Elizabeths was in a remote location and the closest fire department was more than two miles away.
By the 1930s, a lot of the maintenance taking place on the West Campus focused in upgrading and maintaining the older buildings. New development and construction continued to take place on the East Campus. The older buildings were more susceptible to fires and the those earlier decades of the 20th century, the hospital faces destructive fires. By the 1960s, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare stepped in to provide the hospital with more funding to improve fire suppression plans on the campus, This included an upgrade in the hospital's plumbing facilities, heating unites, and electrical systems. Some of the funding was also used to upgrade the Fire House's equipment.
]]>In 1871, over concerns of federal mismanagement, President Grant and Congress reorganized the government of the District of Columbia under a new Territorial Governorship. President Grant selected Henry D. Cooke as the first Governor of the District of Columbia. Years earlier, Cooke came to Washington to work alongside his brother, banker Jay Cooke. The two grew their bank to be one of the most important of the period in large part due to their financing of the Union effort in the American Civil War. Henry Cooke, who had aligned himself with the Republican political elite, such as Alexander Robey Shepherd (known as “Boss Shepherd”), put himself in a place to be given the powerful role of Governor after some of the dust of the war had settled.
Three years before he began his role as Governor, Cooke had a row of four semi-detached duplex villas built at 3007-3029 Q Street NW in Georgetown. These homes, around the corner from where Cooke himself lived in the Francis Dodge House at 1537 30th Street NW, were built by Cooke with the intention of being homes for his children, though no record of them ever living there exists. In the row of four structures, the two on the ends are in the French Second Empire style, and the two between them are in an Italianate Villa style. These two styles were common at the time as the picturesque “country house” was in vogue among wealthy home buyers. Cooke employed Starkweather & Plowman to design and build the eight villas in 1868.
Over the decades, since the villas’ erection, many of DC’s wealthy elite have called them home, including Cooke, Shepherd, and some of their descendants. More recently in the 1970s, famed author and Watergate investigator, Bob Woodward resided on Cooke’s Row, continuing the legacy of importance and prestige.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
Within Georgetown Historic District
]]>Built between 1878 and 1880, the Auditor’s Building was the first facility designed and constructed by the federal government for the U.S. Department of the Treasury Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The complex housed the necessary materials for the engraving and printing of the currency that was to replace sterling as the universal standard of exchange by the middle of the twentieth century.
Architect James G. Hill’s (1841-1913) design reflects the different stylistic trends of the period. The Auditors Building shows restraint in its Romanesque Revival style, mixing contemporary English influences and elements of the Italianate style. The restraint imposed on the normally exuberant Romanesque Revival is also more clearly understood in the light of the conservative architectural taste in DC at the time of the Auditors Building’s construction. The Italianate had enjoyed widespread popularity from the 1840s through the 1860s. While this style of building was waning in most parts of the country by the mid-seventies, its characterizing elements still manifested in new DC constructions. Thus, the symmetrical massing, the bracketed cornice and the shallow pavilions of the Auditors Building can be seen as the late presence of the Italianate. The connection between work in England and the work of the architect of the Auditors Building can be more firmly established by the specific motifs used. The Queen Anne style manifested in architecture the dictates of the Aesthetic Movement, a precursor of the Art Nouveau.
An addition to the complex was built in 1891 but demolished in 1988. Another addition was built between 1900 and 1901. The main building of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing was built in 1914.
DC Inventory: February 26, 1974
National Register: April 27, 1978
]]>The LeDroit Block was built after the completion of the large-scale municipal improvements undertaken by the Board of Public Works ibetween 1871 and 1874. It illustrates the renewed civic aspirations of the post-Civil War era with rich, animated facades that introduce a congenial human scale that enhances the monumentality of the L'Enfant Plan and the nearby General Post Office and Old Patent Office. The block includes one of the city's oldest office buildings and work by noted local architects; the buildings date from 1875 to 1892.
DC Inventory: August 28, 1973 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: April 2, 1974
Within Downtown Historic District and Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site
LeDroit Building (800-10 F Street)
This commercial office building was erected in 1875 by A.L. Barber & Co., builders of the suburban LeDroit Park. The building is a rare example of pre-elevator office building design and is a major work of noted local architect James McGill, who held an office in the building until 1882. Located on a corner site, the LeDroit Building features three stories with a raised basement of storefronts, as well as three main entrances. As a free Italianate adaptation of classical detail, the LeDroit Building has a bracketed cornice with alternating triangular and curved pediments, and applied lettering.
812 F Street
This is a commercial row building with the stories, a pressed brick facade, and a bracketed and pedimented cornice. The building was built 1875, probably by architect James McGill, and was occupied in 1877 by stationer J. Bradley Adams, a former tenant of the LeDroit Building.
Adams Building (814-16 F Street)
This is a commercial row building erected in 1878 by stationer J. Bradley Adams. It was used as store by Adams until 1888 and a residence until 1892. Like other buildings on the block, it was likely designed by James McGill.
818 F Street
Owner J. Bradley Adams erected this three-story commercial row building, possibly designed by James McGill, in 1881.
Warder Building (527 9th Street)
This early elevator building was erected in 1892 by B.H. Warder, a wealthy Ohio manufacturer of farm implements, who moved to Washington to invest in real estate. He intended to use the building as offices, apartments, and stores. The Warder Building was designed by architect Nicholas T. Haller and built in 1892. The building housed Haller's office in addition to those of several patent agents, labor unions, and the DC Communist Party during the 1940s.
]]>Located in the Brightwood neighborhood, the Jost-Kuhn House was constructed in 1859 on a 24-acre tract. The Jost-Kuhn House is a two-story brick house and is an excellent and intact example of a mid-19th century country villa constructed outside the City of Washington before the Civil War. This Italianate style villa is a rare survivor of the pre-Civil War landscape of rural Washington, DC. A double-story wood porch with scroll-sawn detailing and a single-story wood porch are located on the northeast and northwest elevations of the house, both facing Madison Street NW.
DC Inventory: January 28, 2016
National Register: April 5, 2016
]]>John Mercer Langston School was built in 1902 to handle the overflow of students from neighboring John Fox Slater School. Named for John Mercer Langston (1829-1897), the first African American congressman from Virginia, who also had a distinguished career in DC, the school was one of several schools for African American children along the North Capitol Street corridor.
In the late 1910s, it merged with Slater School to become Slater-Langston and, in 1951, became an independent school once again. The red brick two-story Italianate style building was designed by influential architect Appleton P. Clark. The eight classroom school has two towers on the front elevation marking the girls’ and boys’ entrances.
DC Inventory: October 27, 2011
National Register: April 9, 2013
]]>From 1907 until her death, this was the home and studio of Alma Thomas (1892‑1978), a nationally recognized artist whose career reached its height in the 1960s. Thomas is significant not only for her artistic contributions, but also for her dedication to educating and introducing both young and adult African Americans to the world of art during the time of segregation in the nation’s capital.
In 1924, Thomas graduated as the first art major at Howard University, and probably the first black female fine arts graduate in the nation. From 1925 to 1960, Thomas taught at Shaw Junior High School while continuing her painting and studies.
Her mostly abstract work is sometimes associated with the Washington Color School. She took inspiration from this house and the natural world she viewed from it—both the holly tree in this house's front yard and crape myrtle in the back garden figure in her painting.
Her work is included in the collections of the National Museum of American Art, Corcoran Gallery, Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum, and others. The two-story Italianate row house was built about 1875.
DC Inventory: November 13, 1985
National Register: July 28, 1987
]]>Built in 1828, this home served as Benjamin Ogle Tayloe's residence and a social, intellectual, and cultural center for the political elite. Described as a "salon" for scholarly discourse and a space for high-society gatherings, the Federal style home exemplified early Washingtonian power.
As a member of one of Washington's wealthiest slaveholding families, Benjamin Ogle Tayloe almost certainly utilized enslaved labor in the construction and management of the home. Much of his personal wealth stemmed from the inheritance and control of cotton plantations run through enslaved labor in Virginia and Alabama.
Following Tayloe's death and subsequent shifts of home ownership, the space was sold to Senator J. Donald Cameron (R-PA). The home continued to play host to a variety of political icons and offered a convenient space for important diplomatic meetings. It was referred to as the "Little White House" during the time of Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, who often had breakfast in the home over complex discussions of contemporary issues. An addition, designed by the architectural firm of Hornblower & Marshall, was completed in 1893.
From 1915 to 1917, the home served as the headquarters of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (National Woman's Party), led by activist Alice Paul. During these years — shortly before the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 — marches and demonstrations, including picketing at the nearby White House by the "silent sentinels," were planned and led by the organization. Infamously, many women's suffrage activists were arrested and sent to the Occoquan workhouse in Lorton, Virginia, where they were subjected to brutal treatment.
From 1917 to 1952, the Cosmos Club would occupy the home. The building then served briefly as NASA's headquarters during the space agency's early years. The building avoided demolition in the 1960s, thanks to support for preservation from Jackie Kennedy — an early advocate in the historic preservation movement. The building is a notable landmark of Lafayette Square and is sometimes referred to as the "Cameron" or "Tayloe-Cameron House." Today, the space is a part of the National Courts Building Complex.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: November 2, 2023
Within Lafayette Square Historic District
This site is included in the Capital City Slavery Tour as a site of enslavement for five to seven individuals and likely construction through enslaved labor. For further information on slavery in the District, view DC Preservation League's Capital City Slavery Digital Exhibit.
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