With J. Cleveland Cady as its architect, the Church of the Covenant (eventually named National Presbyterian Church) was the pinnacle of High Victorian taste. Cady’s design was based on Henry Hobson Richardson’s personal interpretation of the Romanesque style (termed Richardsonian Romanesque), having taken inspiration from one of Richardson’s greatest works, the Alleghany County Courthouse in Pittsburgh, as well as the Trinity Church in Boston. An architectural wonder when compared to its early beginnings as a small chapel, the Church of the Covenant’s cornerstone was laid in 1887 and consisted of a 150 foot tower that was carved with Romanesque details. It included monumental entrances, vaults inspired by imperial Roman buildings, carved angels with spandrels and tracery, and boasted Tiffany Glass and Booth Glass stained glass windows.
Established in 1883, the Church of the Covenant started as a small chapel erected on N Street NW in 1884, and saw attendance in its early days from the who’s who of Washington, DC. It was considered one of the most prestigious of all Presbyterian churches, and within the grand and substantial building was the grandeur of a 15 foot high brass, gas chandelier that was inspired by a similar, ancient fixture found in Saint Sophia in Constantinople, as well as an illustrated life of Christ on three sides of the nave, created by Tiffany Glass and Booth Glass. Those who witnessed its beauty would eventually lead to the church being referred to as the “Church of the Government,” due to the prominence with the famous figures who attended. Particularly important parishioners, such as President Benjamin Harrison and President Dwight D. Eisenhower (who would lay the cornerstone of the present National Presbyterian Church in 1967), attended throughout the church’s history. Not only did they participate in the services, but they also all sat in what was named the “President’s Pew.” Those in attendance throughout the years also included the likes of many US Secretaries of State, such as James G. Blaine (who served in the 1880s and 1890s) and John Foster Dulles (who served in the 1950s).
The Church of the Covenant went through many different iterations from when it was established in 1883 to its demolition in 1966. Beginning as the Church of the Covenant, it would be renamed the Covenant First Presbyterian Church (when it merged with the congregation of the First Presbyterian Church) in 1930, and would then become the National Presbyterian Church in 1947. During the 1950s, many Washingtonians moved into suburban Maryland and Virginia. The National Presbyterian Church responded by purchasing two different sites in DC’s Upper Northwest. The first site just off Massachusetts Avenue NW, was the home of Charles C. Glover, Sr. (known as Westover), and was sold in 1959 to be used as the potential home for the church. However, due to the increased real-estate value of the neighborhood and the fact that the grounds were unsuitable for building, the church looked more favorably upon the proposed second site on Nebraska Avenue NW that was purchased in 1967.
Its Nebraska Avenue address would become the site of the current National Presbyterian Church. The then pastor Reverend Edward L.R. Elson resisted the pleas of the church congregation who wanted to preserve the old Church of the Covenant, which had stood on Connecticut Avenue NW for almost eight decades, and it would be razed in 1966. The Tiffany Glass and Booth Glass windows, however, would find their new home in the present-day National Presbyterian Church.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
Demolished in 1966
]]>Completed in 1890, the George S. Fraser House was designed by Hornblower and Marshall, a prominent Washington architecture firm. The Fraser home is architecturally indicative of the firm’s stylistic originality in the 1880s and 1890s. Defined as an architecturally transitional building, the large structure combines elements of the Richardsonian Romanesque, Italian Renaissance, and English-American Colonial styles. Distinctive elements include the use of pink granite, a tiled and hipped roof, Palladian windows, and a pillared portico.
The home was originally built for George S. Fraser, a New York merchant who arrived in the District in 1888. His widow sold the home in 1901 to Miriam Douglas Thropp, daughter of Abraham Lincoln’s Assistant Secretary of War and president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Thomas Alexander Scott. After Miriam’s death in 1930, the home was sold and subsequently opened to the public as the Parrot Tea Room (with a boarding house upstairs) in 1932.
In 1950, the space was leased to John Goldstein who altered the space for restaurant service, operating The Golden Parrot Restaurant Inc. until 1974. It then housed the Sagittarius Nightclub.
Today, the former home, that went through a series of uses, is the National Affairs Office of the Church of Scientology.
DC Inventory: June 27, 1974
National Register: August 19, 1975
]]>The Warder-Totten House is the only structure designed by the firm of Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1866) remaining in DC. Commissioned in 1885 by American businessman Benjamin Warder (1824-1894) at 1509 K Street NW, the building was razed in 1923 to erect an office building. However, the Richardsonian Romanesque style house was reconstructed piece by piece at its present site in 1925 by architect George Oakley Totten Jr. (1866-1939). He converted the building into an apartment house.
Although the massing, heaviness, and fenestration are very Richardsonian in character, the detailing shows the influence of 16th century French and Byzantine motifs. Unlike many Richardsonian structures which are of rough granite, the Warder-Totten House is of smooth sandstone.
Eventually, the building housed the National Lutheran Council and the Antioch College of Law until 1986. The house was left vacant for years and placed on DC Preservation’s League’s “Most Endangered Places” list in 1996. Renovated in 2002, the Warder Mansion is now an apartment complex with 38-single and two-bedroom apartments.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: April 14, 1972
]]>Designed by the DC-based architectural firm of Hornblower & Marshall, the Tuckerman House featured red brick with smoothly cut red sandstone. The house was designed in a similar style to architect H.H. Richardson's (1838-1886) work; some of his commissions were within a block of the Tuckerman House.
The Tuckerman House was home to New York iron manufacturer Lucius Tuckerman (1818-1890), who moved to DC for a milder climate due to his failing health. Following the passing of his wife, Elizabeth Tuckerman (1819-1906), the house became the residence of Pennsylvania Congressman Henry Kirke Porter (1840-1921) in 1909. Upon Porter's daughter's passing in 1939, his descendants left the house to the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution.
The two institutions sold the Tuckerman House in 1945 to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA), which used the building as their headquarters. When the MPA considered replacing the Tuckerman House with a new headquarters building, preservationists (along with the National Capital Planning Commission) protested the plan. Despite its designation by the Joint Committee on Landmarks in 1964, the MPA demolished the house to construct an eight-story, Brutalist style office building. The new building was completed in 1968, and further renovations took place in 2019.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
]]>Strivers' Section is a predominantly residential area with longstanding associations with leading individuals and institutions in Washington's African American community. It is characterized by late 19th and early-20th century row houses, generally of relatively simple, rhythmically repeating speculative designs. The district also includes small apartment houses and early-20th century neighborhood commercial structures, in addition to occasional individually-designed row houses. The architectural styles represented include Italianate, Second Empire, Richardsonian Romanesque, and Queen Anne. The historic district includes approximately 450 contributing buildings, dating from about 1875 to 1925.
This historic district represents an historically important and architecturally rich period in the development of the nation's capital, as it was the center of the city's early Black middle class. Social, political, and religious leaders made their homes in the area, and what is now the Strivers' Section Historic District developed strong associations with the history of DC's Black population.
The buildings within the historic district were designed by many of the city's important architects. Developers of residential properties made names for themselves with their rows of houses in this area, such as noted developer Harry Wardman, who built a number of his early apartment buildings within the boundaries of this district.
DC Inventory: June 30, 1983 (effective January 4, 1985)
National Register: February 6, 1985
]]>The Sixteenth Street Historic District is characterized by the linear experience of the street itself, one of the most important numbered streets in the Federal City, and a major element of the L'Enfant Plan. The physical aspect of 16th Street NW, combined with the architectural quality of the buildings within the district boundaries and the historical importance of the area, constitute the essence of the historic district.
The buildings in the Sixteenth Street Historic District are varied in type and style but related in conception, scale, materials, and quality of design. Structures range from small office buildings to three- and four-story rowhouses, large detached houses, churches, and institutional buildings. Most contributing buildings date from about 1875 to the 1920s, and the eclectic variety of styles on display reflect the multifarious character of American architecture during that period.
Some of Washington's most prominent architects are represented in the buildings of the historic district, which contains approximately 147 contributing buildings, dating from 1815 to 1959.
DC Inventory: preliminary identification November 8, designated March 9, 1977; expanded January 18, 2007 (effective March 11, 2007)
National Register: August 25, 1978 (expanded July 11, 2007)
]]>In the years after the Civil War, Washington experienced a population and building boom, and as more and more people poured into the city, the need for housing increased. Development moved west and north from the center of the city and speculative building flourished.
Architect and builder Thomas F. Schneider designed and built the 22 rowhouses in the Schneider Triangle for John W. Paine, on a speculative basis, in 1889. Schneider, one of Washington's most important late-19th/early-20th century architects, designed the rowhouses in his personal interpretation of the popular Queen Anne and Richardsonian Romanesque styles.
This type of speculative residential building preceded the turn-of-the-century development of areas like Mount Pleasant and Cleveland Park. The houses in the Schneider Triangle were designed to appeal to professionals and civil servants requiring spacious dwellings both reflective of their social position and convenient to urban amenities such as fire protection, water and sewer services, paved streets, and street lights, as well as to their places of employment.
The 22 houses (21 remain) stand as a virtually unaltered example of an imaginative and successful adaptation of Victorian era residential architecture to the 1791 L'Enfant plan for the Federal City. Every house within the complex was individually designed to be distinctive, while at the same time containing elements that contributed to a unified whole. The resulting group of houses stands as a reminder of the once-residential character of Washington Circle.
DC Inventory: November 21, 1978
National Register: December 13, 1982
]]>The National Bank of Washington was organized under the name “Bank of Washington” in 1809. It was the first Washington bank of purely local origin and interest, being preceded only by a branch bank of the First Bank of the United States. Throughout its long history, the bank has proved itself an institution of exceptional strength and stability, playing a leading role in the growth of the city. Noteworthy early depositors include James Monroe, Bushrod Washington, Chief Justice John Marshall, Francis Scott Key, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, Eli Whitney, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and Davy Crockett. A permanent bank was erected in 1810 on the east side of New Jersey Avenue between B and C Streets SE. In 1829, the bank, following the northwesterly development of the city, moved to offices in the National Hotel at Sixth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. A decade later, the Bank of Washington purchased the present site near the intersection of Indiana Avenue, Seventh and C Streets NW. A three and a half story gable-roofed brick building located here served as offices for the bank until it was demolished and the present marble and granite banking house erected. Built in 1889, following the designs of architect James G. Hill (1841-1914), the National Bank of Washington remains one of the finest examples of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture in DC. The Bank of Washington later renamed themselves as The National Bank of Washington. After suffering from bank failure in 1990, the bank was acquired by Riggs Bank. DC Inventory: July 24, 1968 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: May 8, 1974]]>