Bodisco House
This distinguished Federal rowhouse, built between 1815 and 1818, is best known as the home of a Russian diplomat.
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Built by Clement Smith between 1815 and 1818, this large and distinguished Federal rowhouse is well known as the former site of the Russian Legation and for its time as the residence of Baron Alexander de Bodisco, Russian minister to the United States.
A Federal period house with a unique, early-twentieth-century first floor plan, the Bodisco House is included in virtually every book on Georgetown due to the mid-nineteenth-century romance and marriage of its fifty-four year old owner, the Russian ambassador, to sixteen-year-old schoolgirl. On a less sensational level, the early history of the house also reflects the speculative real estate market of late-eighteenth-/early-nineteenth-century Georgetown, and its architecture reflects the tastes of that period.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
Within Georgetown Historic District
