Built by Thomas Beall in 1784, this was the home of his son in law Col. George Corbin Washington, who was also the great nephew of George Washington. The mansion was also the home of Eliah Riggs, and in the 20th century, Katharine Graham, who was the owner and publisher of the Washington Post from 1969 to 1979, as well as the chairman of the company from 1973 to 1991.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
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
]]>The Old Korean Legation, prominently located on the north side of Logan Circle, was initially a private residence designed by Thomas M. Plowman in the Second Empire style and constructed by Joseph Williams in 1877. Seth Ledyard Phelps, a veteran of the Civil War who also served as a DC Commissioner and Minister to Peru, resided here until 1885, when he passed away.
The United States and Korea established formal diplomatic relations that same decade, in 1882, with Korea sending its first permanent diplomatic envoy, Park Jeong-yang (Pak Chung Yang), to Washington five years later. Korea's presence in a growing, international city furthered its assertion of sovereign status, separate from China. After a short stint at a property that is no longer standing (located at 1513 O Street NW), the Korean Legation moved into the former Phelps Residence in 1889. Korea purchased the property two years later.
During its years of operation, the Korean Legation supported Korean students who enrolled at U.S. universities, including the George Washington University and Howard University in Washington. Additionally, a program for Korean students was established at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, where over 30 Korean students eventually attended, including Korean independence activist Kim Gyu-sik (Kimm Kiusic).
Other important individuals associated with the first diplomatic envoy in the 1880s and the Korean Legation between 1887 and 1905, include: Seo Gwang-beom, who, amongst many other accomplishments, helped document Korean music through wax cylinder recordings that can now be found at the Library of Congress; Seo Jae-Pil (Philip Jaisohn), who was the first Korean immigrant to gain American citizenship and the first Korean immigrant to obtain a medical degree from a U.S. university, and who also organized the first overseas Korean independence movement; and Syngman Rhee, who was also involved in the overseas independence movement and became the Republic of Korea's first president in 1948.
At the conclusion of the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), Korea's sovereignty from China was recognized. However, Korea soon found itself in the middle of Russian and Japanese conflict, which culminated in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05). Following Japan's victory, a treaty was forced on Korea in 1905, resulting in the closure of the Korean Legation that same year. By 1910, Japan had annexed Korea. That year, a Japanese minister sold the former legation building to a private American citizen. Over the following years, the closed legation inspired independence activists and the wider Korean diaspora.
After serving as a private residence, the building housed the Local 639 (Teamsters Union) headquarters and then served as an office for the National Council of Negro Women. Between 1977 and 2012, it was, once again, a private residence, at which time the Republic of Korea purchased the former legation – 107 years after its closure. From 2015 to 2018, Korea's Cultural Heritage Administration restored the property to its 1889 to 1905 appearance. It is now open as the Old Korean Legation Museum.
The three-story Old Korean Legation, clad in red brick masonry, is located on Logan Circle behind a short iron and steel fence. The primary facade, facing 13th Street NW, includes two projecting bays and a central tower with a pair of oval windows in its steep mansard roof. The tower is the location of the main entrance – a pair of wood and glass paneled doors located at the top of a staircase, just behind the porte-cochère. The south elevation along Logan Circle has a semi-circular projecing bay (and chimney) and double-story porch that is enclosed on the first floor and open on the second. Just north of the building's projecting bay is a small garden, recently completed. Its most prominent feature is a bullomon (a carved stone gate), which symbolizes Korean-American relations.
The building, in line with its Second Empire styling, has window hoods, decorative brackets supporting the cornice, and a mansard roof clad with slate and topped with cast-iron cresting. Both the exterior and interior exhibit details from the era's Eastlake Movement.
The building's metal and granite porte-cochère, accessed by a semicircular driveway from 13th Street, was added by the Korean government in 1891. Due to a street widening, it was demolished in 1950. During the 2015 to 2018 restoration, it was reconstructed – thanks in-part to guidance from an 1893 photograph. The porte-cochère pediment includes a symbol from the Korean flag (Taegeukgi).
DC Inventory: July 25, 2024
National Register: September 9, 2024
Within Logan Circle Historic District and Greater Fourteenth Street Historic District
This site is a part of the Finding Asian American History in Washington DC digital tour.
]]>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
]]>This row house is notable for its significance as the headquarters of the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) and as the DC residence of Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955), educator and civil rights leader. The row house transitioned from a single-family home for the upper-middle class in the late-nineteenth century to a boarding house and shop in the early twentieth century. The house was the headquarters of the NCNW from the 1940s to the 1960s. Comprised of fifteen rooms, one kitchen, and two bathrooms, the Council House served as the headquarters for NCNW, Mary McLeod Bethune’s residence until 1949, and guest accommodations for out-of-town visitors.
In January 1966, a fire damaged the Council House. While the building’s core remained intact, extensive water and smoke damage forced the NCNW to relocate. For nearly eleven years, the house lay dormant. It was not until 1975, when the Council House was listed in the DC Inventory of Historic Sites, that the NCNW successfully raised funds needed to renovate and restore both the main and carriage houses. In the fall of 1977, the Bethune Historical Development Project began, and in November 1979, the home reopened to the public as a museum and archives for the collection, preservation, and interpretation of Black women’s history. Today, the headquarters still function as a museum and archive, administered by the National Park Service. Each transition exemplifies the shifting nature of the Logan Circle area. During the past century, this neighborhood changed from an affluent, nearly all-white community to an enclave of the Black elite, and finally, to a racially diverse district. Bethune’s association with the house made it a center of activity in the 1940s as a meeting place for the NCNW and prominent figures, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary Church Terrell.
DC Inventory: May 9, 1975
National Register: October 15, 1982
National Historic Site: December 11, 1991
Within Logan Circle and Greater Fourteenth Street Historic Districts
This site is included on the Women's Suffrage in Washington DC for its connection to the National Council of Negro Women and their efforts to make voting more accessible to Black women.
]]>The Mountjoy Bayly House (also known as the Bayly House, Hiram W. Johnson House, Chaplains Memorial Building, and Parkington) was built in 1822 for the second Sergeant at Arms of the Senate, General Mountjoy Bayly. A combination of Federal and Second Empire architecture, the house is among the earliest residences still standing in the Capitol Hill Historic District.
Since Bayly's time, the house has seen several notable tenants. From 1929 until 1947, it was the residence of Senator Hiram Johnson, former governor of California and a founder of the Progressive Party. In more recent decades, the building has served as the home of various nonprofits and other organizations, including the national DC office of the American Civil Liberties Union. The building is currently owned by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: July 20, 1973
National Historic Landmark: December 8, 1976
]]>Andrew Jackson Downing, who is among the most influential figures of 19th century American design, wrote in 1850 of the need for truth in domestic architecture. He wrote that a country home reflect its function, location, and owner. Built four years later on the edge of Georgetown Heights and designed by Adams & Haskins, the Dougall House exquisitely expressed Downing's precepts. And as Georgetown evolved and tastes in architecture changed, so did the Dougall House. The residence has a mansard roof with dormers — illustrative of the Second Empire style, a popular design choice of the mid-to-late 19th century.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
Within Georgetown Historic District
]]>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
]]>The Stevens-Billings Houses are a duplex that was constructed in 1873. The duplex was designed in the Second Empire style, which was incredibly popular in the United States in the 1870s. The architectural features of the residence are symmetrical in design, with a pair of winding staircases — with ornamental railings and lamp posts — meeting a pair of staircases that then extend up to the front entryways. The two paneled, arched doorways are located within a front bay below a stone (or terra-cotta) cornice. The building is clad in brick and has arched windows. The duplex has a cornice with brackets supporting a mansard roof with dormers.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
Within Georgetown Historic District
]]>Born into slavery in Prince Edward County, Virginia, Blanche Kelso Bruce (1841-1898) gained his freedom through the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. He dedicated much of the rest of his life to improving his country and his community, teaching at the first Black elementary school in Lawrence, Kansas, and helping to establish a school for Black children in Hannibal, Missouri. After relocating to Mississippi in 1868, Bruce purchased a plantation on the Delta and became a wealthy landowner. His involvement in politics began around this time. Bruce served as the conductor of elections for his area in 1869 and was elected to his first position as the Sergeant at Arms of the Mississippi State Senate. By the end of 1871, he was appointed the assessor of taxes and superintendent of education for Bolivar County, elected county sheriff, and chosen to serve on the Floreyville Board of Aldermen.
In 1872, Bruce attended the Republican National Convention with James Hill, an influential leader in Mississippi and another formerly enslaved person. Two years later, with the support of Hill and his network, Bruce became the representative of Mississippi to the US Senate. As a Senator, Bruce was known as a sharp and effective politician who earned respect from his colleagues. He fought for a more enlightened policy towards indigenous people, racial integration of the Army, and greater support for poor and recently freed African Americans, and he vocally opposed restrictions on Chinese immigration. When Bruce presided over the Senate in the absence of Vice President William Wheeler in 1879, and again in 1880, he became the first African American to do so.
The Democratic majority in Mississippi caused Bruce, a Republican, to lose his bid for reelection in 1880. Bruce remained in DC for the rest of his life and was appointed to several different positions by Presidents Garfield, Harrison, and McKinley, serving as Recorder of Deeds and Register of the Treasury. Bruce also served as Assistant Commissioner General of the 1884 World’s Fair in New Orleans and as a trustee of DC Public Schools and Howard University.
The historic designation of Bruce’s house recognizes his contributions to American history. Bruce lived in this Second Empire-style house built circa 1865, reflecting a popular style from that period, toward the end of his time in Congress.
DC Inventory: April 29, 1975
National Register: May 15, 1975
National Historic Landmark: May 15, 1975
Within Blagden Alley/Naylor Court Historic District and Shaw Historic District
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