Constructed in 1857, Harewood Lodge was the porter’s lodge for the country estate and farm of American banker, William Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888) in rural Washington County. The building served a similar function as one of the several gatehouses of the US Soldiers’ Home (now the Armed Forces Retirement Home), which expanded with the acquisition of Harewood and another farm to the north. The lodge represents a transition among the earliest phases of development and use in the county, from farms to country estates and from country estates to institutions.
Of his rural tracts, the Harewood estate is the most closely identified with Corcoran, as he lavished considerable attention on the construction of its outbuildings and the shaping of the landscape. Harewood and its gatehouse were both well-known to Washingtonians during the second half of the nineteenth century, as the property was accessible to carriage-borne visitors, a practice that would continue under Soldier’s Home stewardship into the twentieth century. The lodge is representative of the appurtenances of elite country estates and of large institutions in the county, but it also served as the humbler home and post of Corcoran’s and the Home’s gatekeepers, porters, and groundskeepers.
The two-story stone structure is one of the first Second Empire style buildings erected in North America, and the first within DC. It was designed by one of the first American proponents of the style, James Renwick Jr., one of the most prominent American architects of the era. With the exception of today’s Renwick Gallery, Corcoran’s downtown buildings have been lost to redevelopment and his farms, too, disappeared beneath the suburbs; it was the institutional reuse of his Harewood estate that preserved his gatehouse alone.
In the early 2020s, following historic designation, the gatehouse underwent a complete restoration.
DC Inventory: May 24, 2018
National Register: May 20, 2019
]]>The Smithsonian Institution Building was designed by prominent New York architect James Renwick, Jr. and erected between 1847 and 1855 on the Mall. It was built to house the Smithsonian Institution, which had been chartered by Act of Congress in 1846. The Smithsonian was established following the generous bequest of approximately $500,000 by James Smithson, an English scientist and the illegitimate son of the Duke of North Cumberland.
By the terms of the will, Smithson's estate was to pass to his nephew following Smithson's death in 1829. If the nephew should die without direct heirs, the will ordered, the estate was then to become the property of the United States government. The United States acquired the funds when the contested bequest was settled in the British courts in London in 1838 after the death of Smithson's nephew, but disagreements over Smithson's intentions for the money—which he had merely stated was to be used for the "increase and diffusion of knowledge," with no indication as to how this was to be achieved—delayed the chartering of the institution until 1846.
As the first building created for the new institution, this structure—now known as the Castle—was designed to house many types of activities, including a large storage room on the first floor designed for the exchange of scientific publications with other institutions and museums, a suite of rooms for the family of the Institution's Secretary, various natural history research rooms and laboratories, a reading room, a library, and a large lecture room. Two small rooms saw use as a museum of scientific instruments and an art gallery. Both of these rooms were occasionally used as minor lecture rooms for meetings by scientific organizations.
The first story of the building consisted of an enormous room to be used as a museum, although it remained empty in 1855 due to lack of exhibit cases. Joseph Henry, the first Secretary of the Smithsonian, referred to this room in 1855 as "in appearance one of the most imposing rooms in this country." The floor of the middle part of this great hall was laid in cut stone, the remaining floor being of wood.
An 1865 fire destroyed much of the young Institution's collection and caused extensive damage to the upper floor of the building. Renovations were completed by Adolf Cluss. With the expansion of the Smithsonian Institution, the original building has come to be used primarily for administrative and visitor services.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: October 15, 1966
National Historic Landmark: January 12, 1965
]]>Formed in 1866-1867, St. Mary's Episcopal Church was founded by African American congregants wanting to create their own church from the Church of the Epiphany. After establishing their congregation, the church searched for a site to build their own chapel, and were able to do so with recycled materials from a chapel being demolished at a nearby hospital. The original church's construction was overseen by various parties, but by its completion included the chapel and a school building built behind it.
The current church was designed by the architecture firm Renwick, Aspinwall, and Russell in 1886. Renwick was a noted architect for his designs of the Smithsonian Castle, the Oak Hill Cemetery Chapel, and Renwick Gallery (Corcoran Gallery). The Gothic Revival style church allowed congregants to gather for services and maintained the school building also on the property.
DC Inventory: March 28, 1972 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: April 2, 1973
]]>The Old Corcoran Gallery, now the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, began construction in 1859 from designs by James Renwick Jr. and Robert Auchmutz. It was one of the first buildings in the United States erected exclusively as an art gallery, and is the oldest gallery in the District of Columbia. In the late 1890s, a new Corcoran Gallery of Art opened just south of its original location.
Conceived in the French Second Empire style, the Renwick Gallery is a deliberate emulation of the design of the then-new additions to the Louvre in Paris. The relatively modest scale of this building, the date of its construction, and the excellence of its architectural detail give this building a seminal position in the development of the Second Empire style in the United States. Originally constructed between 1859 and 1864, the Renwick was restored between 1967 and 1970 and again between 1985 and 1986.
From 2013 to 2015, the Renwick Gallery was rehabilitated and continues to serve as the Smithsonian Institution's museum for contemporary craft and decorative arts.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: March 24, 1969
National Historic Landmark: November 11, 1971
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