15th and F Streets NW Revisited

The first postcard here shows the view as seen through one of the windows of the Treasury Department building along 15th Street NW, perhaps around 1910 to 1915. The back of the card states: "F Street from 15th, can be seen running east with the famous Café Republique on the corner. The New Willard and New Ebbitt Hotels are on the same street [the two large white buildings in the middle distance along the right hand side of the street], and below is Washington's Bon Ton Shopping District."

The large red building on the right hand side, which housed the Café Republique on its ground floor, is the Corcoran office building, built in 1875. The building became the art center of Washington in the 1880s, with many prominent artists keeping their studios there. It was replaced in 1917 by the Hotel Washington.

Directly opposite the Ebbitt Hotel on the left side, with flag flying, is the Westory Building on the northeast corner of 14th and F Streets. That office building was completed in 1907 and still stands—at least its outer walls do.

Our next view is from about 1940 and shows many changes in this neighborhood.  The Hotel Washington dominates the right hand side of this shot. Though it's hard to make out from this angle, the Willard has been extended further toward us with an annex built in 1925 on the site of the Union Trust and Storage Company building. Beyond the Willard Hotel, the old Ebbitt House has been replaced by the National Press Club Building, built in 1926 and housing offices and headquarters for many newspapers and journalists. The Ebbitt's bar, fixtures, and decorations were taken from the building before it was demolished and installed in the smaller building on the left side of this view (the one with the two brick chimneys), which became the Old Ebbitt Grill.

Also on the left side, we see a new, large building at the end of the block. This is Julius Garfinkel's specialty department store, built in 1929-30 and in prominent operation here for many years until it went bankrupt in 1990. The building now houses a Borders bookstore on the ground floor. At the near end of the block, on the northeast corner of 15th and H, we see the famous Rhodes Tavern. Rhodes Tavern had been the oldest commercial structure in downtown Washington, a typical Federal-style structure built around 1800. Its first tenant, William Rhodes, ran a tavern here, giving the building the name by which it would be known for almost two centuries. Seminal early city events, such as the first town hall meetings and the first election for a city council took place here in the early 1800s, when few other buildings as large or prominent as Rhodes Tavern had yet been built. The building had many occupants, including Barbara Suter, who ran a boardinghouse here. However, contrary to many people's long-held beliefs, Rhodes Tavern was not the place where the British stopped to celebrate and have dinner after burning the White House in August of 1814. Mrs. Suter had moved from Rhodes Tavern in June of that year and thus ended up reluctantly entertaining the British two blocks to the south, at 15th and Pennsylvania Avenue (more details on that here).

Many people are familiar with the long, valiant, and ultimately futile attempt to save the Rhodes Tavern from callous destruction in 1984 by the Oliver T. Carr company, which must have thought that the increased rent from those extra dozens of feet of office space was more valuable than the loss of goodwill from all the citizens of the city who voted in a referendum to save the historic building. Beginning in 1977, seven years of hard-fought legal and political battles took place, leading ultimately to a final appeals court ruling allowing the demolition of the building. One would certainly like to think that it would no longer be possible for such an historic building downtown to be completely demolished this way...

Here’s the same scene today, from street level. Almost none of the old buildings remain. The Hotel Washington (now “W” Hotel) is on the immediate right. The 1986 expansion of the Willard Hotel has taken up the middle part of the block behind it. On the right side, the Metropolitan Square office development, completed in 1986, has left no trace of Rhodes Tavern, other than a couple of historical markers, seen below.

By the way, an exhibit of photographs and memorabilia marking the 25th anniversary of the demolition of Rhodes Tavern is on display through January 29, 2010, in the Washingtoniana Division, Room 307, of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library.

Dupont Circle's Early Days

Dupont Circle (c. 1910)
Originally uploaded by StreetsofDC

Pierre L'Enfant's 1791 plan for Washington City included a number of special locations where major avenues crossed, and one of them was the intersection of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire Avenues. However, being in the farther northwestern reaches of the original city, little was built out there until the 1870s. The circle itself, originally called Pacific Circle, was constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers beginning in 1871, after the remains of an earlier brickyard were removed and the land graded and fenced. In 1882, Congress renamed it in honor of Samuel Francis Du Pont and authorized a statue of Du Pont to be erected in the circle to commemorate his service as a Rear Admiral during the Civil War. The statue, sculpted by Launt Thompson, was installed in 1884.

Construction of the circle was one of many lavish infrastructure improvements made by "Boss" Alexander Shepherd's Board of Public Works. Well-connected real estate developers were quick to buy up land around the circle and start creating a prestigious new residential enclave for the expanding city. Soon many grand mansions were built for the nouveau riche to flaunt their prosperity. In keeping with the posh residential theme, the circle itself was elaborately landscaped with 850 ornamental trees and flowering shrubs along with benches, water fountains, and exotic flower beds, as seen in this view from 1910.

In 1921, the current double-tiered white marble fountain, designed by noted sculptor Daniel Chester French, replaced the statue, which was moved to Rockford Park in Wilmington, Delaware.

Postcard Views of the Pension Building

Designed by Montgomery C. Meigs and completed in 1887, this building housed the government bureau that dispensed pensions to Union veterans of the Civil War. It is now the National Building Museum and is located on the block between F, G, 4th, and 5th Streets NW at Judiciary Square. Here are some postcard views of the building from the first two decades of the 20th century.

This view is from the southwest. Like many cards produced by Raphael Tuck & Sons, this one includes a variety of nattily-attired pedestrians who may or may not have actually been in the original photo.

This interior view shows the Pension Building richly festooned with decorations, including broad streamers across the ceiling. These decorations were for William McKinley's 1901 Inaugural Ball.

The Metropolitan, aka Brown's Marble Hotel

Down one block from the National Hotel, along the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue, stood another of the Washington's famous old-time hotels, the Metropolitan. A tavern or boardinghouse of some kind was kept at this site from the city's earliest days. John Davis, one of the first genuine hoteliers in the city, opened Davis's Hotel here in 1805 and hosted James Madison's second inaugural ball in 1813 as well as both of James Monroe's (1817 and 1821). Like many such early Washington establishments, the hotel at this site (under a variety of names) was gradually assembled over many years by combining, modifying, and extending a row of Federal-style townhouses.

Brown's Indian Queen Hotel c. 1832 (Library of Congress)

Jesse B. Brown of Alexandria, a protégé of John Gadsby (who would operate the rival National Hotel), bought the Davis Hotel in 1820, remodeled and enlarged it, then re-christened it Brown's Indian Queen Hotel. He hung a large sign out front with a "lurid" picture of Pocahontas brightly painted on it. Brown was a classic entrepreneur, styling himself "the prince of landlords." He was known for his large white apron, his officious and personal attention to every guest, and for the large decanters of brandy and whiskey that he would ensure were placed at every table setting.

The hotel became a political stage in 1841, when President William Henry Harrison died after only one month in office, having caught pneumonia at his own inauguration. Much confusion arose about how the presidency would transfer to the vice president, since this situation had never previously arisen. Vice President John Tyler wasn't even in town; he hurried up from Williamsburg, Virginia, and stayed at the Indian Queen, where he quietly took the oath of office as a sort of precaution, convinced that he was already president automatically. There was much dissent at the time (mostly from political opponents) about whether Tyler ("His Accidency") was legitimately president, but his stance was finally codified through passage of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution in 1967.

After Brown died in 1847, his two sons took over the hotel, and in 1850 they hired celebrated Philadelphia architect John Haviland (1792-1852), a major proponent of the Greek Revival style, to enlarge the structure to a full five stories and to add a grand, neoclassical façade made of white marble reportedly from the same quarry as had supplied the Capitol building. The beautiful, renovated building reopened as Brown's Marble Hotel in 1851. In 1865, the Brown family sold the hotel, and the new owners renamed it the Metropolitan, a moniker it would keep until it closed and was sold in 1932. The Washington Post remarked the following year that it "had been in continuous operation longer than any other hotel in America."

Most of the building was razed in 1935, but a small fragment, seen here, managed to survive up until the early 1980s, housing, among other businesses, Barney's Restaurant.

Barney's Restaurant in 1979 (Historic American Buildings Survey).

 These last two forlorn window bays from the old marble hotel also are now gone. The various architectural odds and ends in the middle of this block were cleared away in 1984 to make room for the present 601 Pennsylvania Avenue, seen below, which was completed in 1985. Its design is intended to recall the look of the old Metropolitan.

Crossroads of America: Hotels at 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW

It’s now open parkland, but through much of Washington’s early history the southeast corner of 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW was a prime resting spot for visitors to the nation’s capital. The corner in question is at the very western end of the grand, wide stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue that leads from the Capitol to the Treasury Department grounds. Staying here put you in the center of things, close to the commercial centers along F Street and Pennsylvania Avenue as well as the White House, Lafayette Square, and government buildings.

This view of Pennsylvania Avenue from the Treasury grounds shows the hotel property on the right hand side, at the corner of 15th and Pennsylvania.

In June 1814, Mrs. Barbara Suter moved her hotel (really, boardinghouse) business from the Rhodes Tavern, two blocks north, to the elongated Federal-style townhouse then located on this corner. Two months later the British army arrived, bent on vengeance for the burning of Toronto by the Americans.

As recounted by Anthony Pitch in The Burning of Washington (1998), it was late in the evening of August 24, 1814, that General Robert Ross, commander of British land forces, stopped at Mrs. Suter’s boardinghouse and announced that he had “come, madam, to sup with you.” The frightened Mrs. Suter tried to steer him to another hotel, but he said he preferred her house because of the view it had of the public buildings. He said he’d be back with his officers and then set off the short distance to wreak havoc on the White House. After torching both the White House and the Treasury building, Ross returned with his men to Mrs. Suter’s, which indeed would have had a great view of the fires consuming both of these buildings. Admiral George Cockburn, the overall commander of British forces, joined them there, riding through the low front door on his mule. While dining, the soldiers talked about what to do next, including what to burn next, and Ross asked Mrs. Suter whether the Bank of the Metropolis was a private or public bank. In fact, the bank in question had bought the Rhodes tavern building from Mrs. Suter just two months previously when she moved out. Mrs. Suter said she thought it was a private bank, and perhaps her opinion helped save the building from destruction (instead, it would be destroyed 170 years later by a callous developer—but that’s another story). Pitch notes that there is no record of whether Mrs. Suter was recompensed in any way when the soldiers left her house after eating their fill.

Suter's townhouse was still standing when this photograph was taken, although it is mostly out of view on the right.

Suter’s townhouse remained standing, along with its Federal-style neighbors, for many years. In the 1870s, Pennsylvania Avenue (as well as many other downtown streets) was graded and paved, and the surface of the street was raised six feet in this area, leaving these buildings looking like they were growing out of a hole. The strategic location meant that some kind of commercial development was inevitable. The historic boardinghouse was razed and replaced by a larger building that opened for business as the Hotel Randall in April 1889.

The Hotel Randall had a rather short career, lasting only until 1895. Despite some apparently lavish improvements, such as building an “iron bridge” in 1894 connecting the dining room of the hotel with the lobby of the vaudeville theater next door, the hotel was seized by U.S. marshals for unpaid debts, and the furniture and fixtures sold off. It soon reopened as the Hotel Regent.

The Regent suffered a fire in its boiler room in 1905 that sent thick smoke through the building. Although no one seems to have been hurt and damage was minor, the Washington Times milked it for all it was worth, and then some:

Panic-stricken guests of the Regent Hotel, awakened from their slumbers by the clanging of fire apparatus bells, or dense volumes of smoke rolling into their apartments, ran helter-skelter through the lobby of the hostelry about 3:45 this morning with armfuls of clothing and boxes containing jewelry. Many of them rushed into the streets wearing only bath robes, pajamas, or kimonos…. Great confusion was witnessed on all sides at the entrance of the hotel. Men walked around with undershorts and trousers on and in their bare feet. They carried their shoes and other clothing in their hands. Women, hugging large bundles of clothes walked around with their hair falling down over their shoulders and a wild, vacant stare in their eyes. Many of them were highly excited and pulled and hauled and shouted at their relatives to run to a place of safety… (The Washington Times, May 9, 1905)

Despite such dramas, the hotel did very well. “The Regent is considered to be one of the best pieces of hotel property in the city,” the Washington Post noted the same year as the fire. It was especially popular with theater professionals, being close to several important venues, including the National. The hotel changed ownership a few times, ending up in the hands of Col. O. G. Staples, who also owned the National Hotel and the Riggs House. Col. Staples was reported in 1907 to have grand plans to raze the Regent and replace it with a large new hotel to compete with the Willard (1901, 1904) and Raleigh (1898, 1905, 1911) on the other side of the Avenue. But it was not to be; the Regent was still on the “wrong” side of Pennsylvania Avenue. The blocks directly south of Pennsylvania Avenue, extending to Ohio Avenue (known as Hooker’s Division) and from thence to the Mall (known as Murder Bay), had had a bad reputation since the Civil War for their assortment of tawdry, ramshackle buildings, many of them saloons or houses of prostitution. In 1902, the McMillan Commission had come out with its sweeping plans to remake the Mall in an Imperial Roman fantasy of wide open spaces and large, intimidating neoclassical buildings. One of the commission’s recommendations was that the entire triangle of land between Pennsylvania Avenue and the Mall, from 15th Street to 6th Street, be bought up, cleared of existing structures, and devoted to government buildings. This meant that the Hotel Regent and all of its neighbors were doomed.

As early as 1904, the Washington Post conceded that a “tacit understanding” had been reached that this transformation would take place; it was merely a question of when and how. The same article noted that the block containing the Hotel Regent was the most valuable in the entire triangle, with land and property worth more than $600,000. Congress approved legislation to either buy the properties directly from their owners or seize them through condemnation proceedings, and the lengthy process of government takeover began in 1908. Naturally, the owners of the Regent and the other commercial establishments along the Avenue insisted their properties were worth far more than the government was willing to pay, and condemnation became inevitable.

At some point, for reasons I haven’t been able to track down, the Hotel Regent was rechristened the New Oxford Hotel, a title it would keep until 1930. Perhaps the hotel was renamed after it was taken over by the government in expectation that it would be torn down. The New Oxford Hotel postcard seen here states on the back that it is “the only hotel property owned by the United States Government.” The property was finally cleared for parkland in 1930 after it was determined that the Commerce Department building didn’t need to extend all the way up to Pennsylvania Avenue. During World War II temporary buildings were erected here for the Office of War Information, but those were removed in 1955. The space was dedicated as a park to World War I General John J. Pershing in September 1960, although it remained an empty grassy lot for years. Finally, along with the adjacent development of Freedom Plaza in 1981, Pershing Park was landscaped and gained its present appearance.

Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park

Emancipation Memorial in Lincoln Park
Originally uploaded by StreetsofDC

The Emancipation Memorial, in Lincoln Park on Capitol Hill, was designed by Thomas Ball and erected in 1876 as a monument to Abraham Lincoln. (It wasn't the first memorial to Lincoln in D.C.; that one is discussed here: Old DC City Hall and Courthouse). It was supposedly paid for entirely by contributions from freed slaves, but since the beginning it has been controversial. An interesting article about it is at The Washington City Paper