Lost Opportunities: The Key Mansion Saga

In a breezy May 1981 article entitled, “The Case of the Lost Landmark,” the Washington Post relished what it took to be a highly amusing case of bureaucratic bungling.  “Misplacing a house key is one thing,” the article intoned, “Misplacing a Key house is quite another.” In interviews with officials from the National Park Service, the Post’s reporter found that the home of Francis Scott Key, writer of the Star-Spangled Banner, which used to stand on M Street in Georgetown close to the Key Bridge, was torn down in 1947 and its parts saved for possible reconstruction later. However, it seems that the Park Service had misplaced these parts and in 1981 could no longer find them. –Oops!

The real story of what happened to the house and how it was almost saved several times is much more complicated and probably offers richer lessons about how not to pursue historic preservation.

The house, seen in this postcard from about 1909, was originally built by a merchant named Thomas Clark in 1795, long before any bridges or the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal disrupted the local landscape. In those days, terraced gardens sloped down gracefully behind the house to the Potomac River. Francis Scott Key leased the house in late 1805 and was residing there in 1814, when he went on his mission of mercy to Baltimore to secure the release of Dr. William Beanes from the British. While detained on a British ship in Baltimore Harbor during the siege of Fort McHenry, he penned what would become our national anthem.

Boulder Bridge in Rock Creek Park

Boulder Bridge is one of the oldest bridges in Rock Creek Park—so many others from the park's early years have been washed out in floods and replaced with newer ones. This one, however, was clearly made to last. Built in 1902, it adheres to Romantic ideas that were in vogue with the Park Service at that time, that park fixtures should look "rustic" and take us back to a time and place far away. The bridge indeed does an outstanding job of both standing out architecturally and simultaneously blending in well with its surroundings. Technically, it is a Melan reinforced concrete bridge with a boulder facing; it spans 80 feet and rises 12 feet. The use of the large boulders on the bridge is quite unique.

The rounded boulders used in the bridge are similar to ones found in the area. Col. Lansing H. Beach of the Army Corps of Engineers, Secretary of the Board of Control of Rock Creek Park and namesake of Beach Drive, is credited with the idea that a bridge made from natural boulders would work well in this location. Supposedly the extra large boulders resulted from a misunderstanding by the contractor. The contract called for "man-sized" stone, which meant stone that could be easily handled by a stone mason. Instead, the contractor went and found life-sized boulders. When Beach arrived at the site and discovered the work underway with the large boulders, he liked the way they looked. Although gathered within several miles of the park, the boulders did not come from the immediate vicinity of the bridge or from within Rock Creek Park. The finally-crafted bridge cost a total of $17,635.77 to build and clearly has held up exceptionally well through the years.

A recent view of the bridge on a summer afternoon.

The Hamilton Hotel

The original four-story Hamilton Hotel, designed in the then-fashionable Second Empire style, was constructed on the northeast corner of 14th and K Streets NW in 1877, on the site of an old private boys' school (known, perhaps, as "Rutgres College" or the "Rugby School") and across the street from Franklin Square.

This first Hamilton was a genteel landmark at the end of the 19th century, noted for the easy leather chairs in its lobby and the sophistication of its residents. Many members of Congress stayed there and thus it was reportedly the “scene of much political gossip.” In 1907 the hotel was sold to its long-time manager, Irving O. Ball, for $125,000. The neighborhood at that time was a growing center of social life and commerce.

The Munsey Building (1905-1980) Remembered

Frank Munsey was a Gilded Age capitalist—robber baron, if you will—who had a major influence on the publishing business at the beginning of the twentieth century. He is credited with perfecting printing processes that could use extremely low-quality “pulp” paper to produce periodicals that were both dirt-cheap and filled with enough racy fare to be widely popular. Thus was born the era of pulp fiction. Munsey went on to buy, sell, and merge many newspapers throughout the country, often for his own profit but at the expense of the publication’s very existence.

One of Munsey’s newspaper acquisitions was the Washington Times, founded by a group of Washington printers in 1894 and acquired by Munsey in 1901 (note: there is no connection between the original Times and the current newspaper of the same name, which began in the 1980s). In 1905, Munsey built a grand new skyscraper of an office building at 1329 E Street, N.W., to house his newspaper. The structures on this block essentially faced Pennsylvania Avenue at the time. The new Munsey Building was just a few doors down from the Richardson-Romanesque Washington Post building and a couple of blocks west of the Evening Star building, so all the important journalists of the early 1900s were in close proximity along this stretch of the Avenue.

As seen in these postcards, the original building of 1905 (the tall building with the elaborate cornice) had a fairly ornate façade, which was redone and simplified sometime between 1910 and 1915. (The Historic American Buildings Survey description of the Munsey building, compiled in 1979, states that only one image was extant at that time of the building in its original configuration, but these postcards, from about 1908, also show the original configuration.) In 1915, an addition was built that more-or-less doubled the size of the building, extending it all the way to the gable-roofed Washington Post building on the left.

Great Falls of the Potomac

One of the most sublime and majestic natural scenes in the Washington, D.C., area is undoubtedly Great Falls, particularly as seen from the Virginia side of the Potomac River. Located just north of the city, the area around the Falls has been a recreational attraction for at least a hundred years.

The Great Falls and Old Dominion Railroad (GF&OD), originally founded in 1900, was a trolley line that began in Georgetown and provided service into nearby Virginia via the Aqueduct Bridge, predecessor to the current Key Bridge. In 1906, the trolley line was extended to Great Falls. For a round-trip fare of 35 cents, you could board the trolley, which ran every half hour, at the Aqueduct bridge station and go out to Great Falls to take in some beautiful scenery (going out on a platform to view the falls would set you back another nickel) or perhaps enjoy the picnic grounds, dance pavilion, and carousel. The railway and its successor went out of business during the Great Depression, and the park became a state park until it was turned over to the National Park Service in 1966.

The following postcard views all date to around 1910, when the falls were being served by the GF&OD.

Chevy Chase Ice Palace

It was supposedly “one of the largest parking and shopping units in the country” when the Chevy Chase Ice Palace and Sports Center opened in 1938 on upper Connecticut Avenue. As strip malls go, the building, which still stands in the 4400 block of Connecticut Avenue just north of the Van Ness Metro stop, now looks quite tiny, which says something either for the exaggeration of the Washington Post article of November 20, 1938, the growth of shopping malls since then,—or both.

(Author's collection.)

In 1938, this part of the city was well on its way to transitioning from a lightly populated “suburb” within the District to an urban residential zone. The avenue had been zoned in 1920 such that most of it was to be lined with medium-density apartment buildings. At regular intervals, single blocks were designated for commercial development. The 4400 block was one such commercial zone.

Developer Garfield I. Kass (1890–1975) saw a great opportunity at this location, despite the difficult site that sloped steeply from street level down to a tributary of Rock Creek in the valley below. There was pent-up demand for shopping from local residents that did not have other options in their neighborhood. Beyond that, “park and shop” centers like this one were hot commodities in the 1930s, after the successful development in 1930 of the Park and Shop center just down the street in Cleveland Park. Kass had already developed park and shop centers in the Rosslyn and Clarendon neighborhoods of Arlington County, Virginia, and another at Georgia Avenue and Rittenhouse Street, NW, in Shepherd Park. Situating such centers along main commuting arteries—on the same side of the street as the evening, homeward-bound traffic—was sure to make for substantial profits.

When the complex opened, it had everything: Washington’s first indoor ice-skating rink, 41 bowling alleys, and an assortment of retail stores including F.W. Woolworth’s, an A&P grocery store, Best & Co., and a People’s Drug store. The ice skating rink was the jewel in the crown. “Realizing that ice skating in the United States is attaining a popularity never before realized, the builders of this center decided to include provision for this sport in their project. It is a natural pastime for the youth of the country and now, in many schools, it is being considered good form and part of one’s general training to be able to skate,” the Post solemnly pronounced. It certainly seemed true at the beginning. On opening day, 2,200 people hit the rink, raking in $4,000 in profits for Kass Realty.

Skaters at the Chevy Chase Ice Palace, November 1942 (Source: Library of Congress)

Ponying up to the soda fountain, November 1942 (Source: Library of Congress)

In addition to the signature skating rink, the building had a number of below-grade floors, since it was built on a steep hillside descending into Rock Creek Park. The lower floors held the bowling lanes, as well as pool tables and ping pong tables. In fact, the center became a venue for regional championship table tennis in the 1940s. In the end, however, the indoor sports gravy train did not last long on Connecticut Avenue. In 1950, the Evening Star Broadcasting Company, operators of WMAL-TV, leased the second-floor ice-skating rink space for use as a broadcasting center. Three TV studios were constructed in the space formerly occupied by the rink. Over the years, the WMAL studios were used for a number of historic broadcasts, including Ruth Crane’s pioneering series The Modern Woman and the much-loved children’s show Claire and Coco, as well as Town and Country Time, a variety show hosted by young country/western singer Jimmy Dean (1928–2010), who gained fame for his singing in the 1950s and for his pure pork sausages in the decades following. On March 23, 1956, Dean had as a guest on his show a nervous young singer named Elvis Presley, then just coming into his own. Presley was one of many entertainment personalities who made stops at the Connecticut Avenue broadcasting complex.

WMAL, the predecessor of WJLA-TV, broadcasted on Channel 7, and as a child, I remember a large flashing neon sign on the building at night that would read 7…7…7…Good Looking! The sign was especially noticeable as you came out of the Hot Shoppes restaurant across the street, perhaps after enjoying some delicious Pappy Parker’s fried chicken.

In 1988, WJLA moved from the old ice palace building to the Intelsat Building several blocks south. The owners of the old building then embarked on an extensive renovation and remodeling of the space, extensively compromising its historic fabric. The entire rear facade of the building was removed and the interior largely gutted. The cavernous second floor, which originally held the ice skating rink and had been subsequently used for broadcast studios, was divided horizontally to create an extra floor of office space. The former parking lot in front of the building was excavated, and a new garage was wedged into the underground space beneath it. The building's facade was altered with the removal of the old second-floor windows and the addition of two bulky central towers to house elevator shafts as well as a new arcade at street level. When the renovations were complete, little was left of the old building other than sections of the original brick facade.

Since 1990 the structure has been operated as a mixed office and retail complex known as Van Ness Square. Retailers Office Depot, Pier One Imports, and other shops moved in in the early 1990s. Meanwhile, the building's remaining historic elements have stood as notable examples of the Streamline Moderne architectural style, as seen in this close-up of brickwork on the facade. Owner B.F. Saul Company plans to demolish the building in 2013 and replace it with a new apartment house.

For more about the Ice Palace in its heyday, including more photos, check out Forest Hills, by Margery L. Elfin, Paul K. Williams, and the Forest Hills Neighborhood Alliance (Arcadia Publishing, 2006).

Washington Circle

The area that is now Washington Circle was one of the original major squares in L'Enfant's plan for Washington City. In the 19th century is was originally a large open area that over time became very run-down and unsightly. In 1855, a government official charged with overseeing the public grounds in Washington decided to enclose the central area as a circular park and route the roads around it, thus forming the first traffic circle in the city. In 1860, the statue of George Washington, sculpted by Clark Mills, who had done the statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square, was installed in the center of the park. The area around the circle began to improve in the latter part of the 19th century, and more attention was put into maintaining a well-manicured park. In fact, by the 1880s, a full-time watchman was assigned to maintain the park. A 1905 inventory listed 48 different species of trees in the park, many of them imported and non-native. This postcard view dates to perhaps 1910 and shows the park in its salad days (shall we say) of profuse natural diversity.

A lot has happened in the last hundred years, of course. K Street was tunneled all the way under the circle; there is no longer a full-time caretaker; and the profuse flora has been severely thinned out. In 1932, the curving 19th century footpaths around the circle were replaced with a more straightforward arrangement of circular sidewalks. As seen in the current view below, the statue of George Washington remains the same as ever, although he was been removed and restored at least once in the intervening years.

The Old Shoreham Hotel at 15th and H Streets NW

Built in 1887 by then-Vice President Levi P. Morton, the original Shoreham Hotel stood at 15th and H Streets NW and was designed by the New York firm of Hubert Pirsson and Company. It was named after Morton’s birthplace, Shoreham, Vermont. Morton had made his fortune in the department store business, and decided to build a hotel on this property as an investment. Expanded in 1890, it was a very fashionable and elegant hotel in turn-of-the-last-century Washington, especially with congressmen from New York and New England.

Much effort was spent to keep the hotel stylishly up-to-date, including a major renovation in 1902, which included a dining room with yellow and green paneled walls, onyx wainscoting, and an elaborately plastered and gilded ceiling. The hotel was completely remodeled once again in 1913 by Waddy B. Wood, in the then-popular neoclassical style. On the first floor, a heavy brick wall was dismantled, opening up an old hallway and two adjoining rooms to create a large new lobby graced with white pillars and painted a muted brown with golden accents. The main dining room adjoining it was "finished in French gray, with carpets and hangings of old rose," as recounted by The Washington Post. The renovation, completed in January, was ready in time for President-Elect Woodrow Wilson to stay there for his first inauguration in March. These years represented the pinnacle of the old Shoreham's prestige.

Postcard from the collection of Sally Berk.

Despite these efforts, the Shoreham remained an odd building of mixed architectural styles that undoubtedly kept making it seem out of date. By 1927, the hotel was bankrupt, and it was sold at auction to developer Harry Wardman. Originally a new neoclassical hotel was going to be built to replace it, but instead a modern office building, also called the Shoreham and designed by noted Washington architect Mihran Mesrobian, went up after the hotel was torn down in 1929. Shortly thereafter construction began on the current Omni Shoreham Hotel at Connecticut Avenue and Calvert Street, NW, in Woodley Park.

The old Shoreham Hotel is the large tan building on the left in this postcard view of 15th Street seen from Vermont Avenue, N.W., around 1914. The white building behind it is the Southern Building, designed by Daniel Burnham and built in 1911, which still stands today, sporting an additional two floors added in 1987. On the right side, the First American Bank building with the large classical Corinthian columns, designed by Waddy Wood’s firm and constructed in 1906, also still stands, as does the twin-towered Woodward Building behind it, from 1911, which has just been recently renovated. Below is a current view from more-or-less the same location.