WHITE HOUSE HISTORY Quarterly
Presidential Sites The Journal of T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I A T I O N Number 50
Please note that the following is a digitized version of White House History Quarterly, Issue 50, originally released in print form in 2018. Single print copies of the full issue can be purchased online at Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All photographs contained in this journal unless otherwise noted are copyrighted by the White House Historical Association and may not be reproduced without permission. Requests for reprint permissions should be directed to rights@whha.org. Contact books@whha.org for more information. © 2018 White House Historical Association. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions.
PRESIDENT James Monroe’s I Street Residence Home of the Arts Club of Washington B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N
JUDITH VIGGERS NORDIN
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Arts Club of Washington since 1918, is the highlight for Washington visitors, especially with a child in the lead. But that day our guests’ enthusiasm was an inspiration for those of us who work diligently at preserving the legacy of this presidential property. In the world of presidential sites, one never knows when a young girl will knock on the door, or anyone else wondering about her favorite president.
THE BEGINNINGS OF A GRACIOUS HOUSE The house at 2017 I Street NW used to be the largest structure on the block between Twentieth and Twenty-First Streets in Washington City; now, in 2018, it has become the smallest, dwarfed by highrise buildings. In 1802, Timothy Caldwell, a builder from Philadelphia, purchased this parcel of land just to the east of Washington Circle, where the streets were barely defined. The swampy property was a part of a land grant that included the tract of farmland known as Widow’s Mite, originally part of
President James Monroe, below left in an 1819 portrait by Samuel F. B. Morse, lived in his own house on I Street during the rebuilding of the White House following the fire of 1814. Six months into the first year of his administration, he wrote impatiently to architect James Hoban, “I hope that you will soon finish the President’s House.” The letter (below) is now on display at the Arts Club, a gift of Albert H. Small.
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o n e d ay i n the summer of 2017 a 10-year-old girl, traveling from the Midwest, came to the door of the Monroe House at 2017 I Street NW. In tow, as her fellow travelers, were her parents, two grandmothers, and two siblings. She asked if she could see the inside of President James Monroe’s House for she knew he had lived here long ago. The rest of her family could wait for her, but since James Monroe was her “favorite president,” she “really needed to see where he lived.” Her favorite president? Really? Not George Washington of cherry tree fame or Honest Abe? Oh, no. Although she had learned about the Monroe Doctrine, it was the Louisiana Purchase that had made an impression on her in the just-finished fourth grade. Her whole family then trooped through the house while the girl seemed genuinely awed at actually being in her hero’s Washington, D.C., home. They all left with smiles and gratitude for the tour. It is not often that our 212-year-old structure on I Street, which has been owned by and served as the
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Montgomery County, Maryland. He paid $492.19.1 A “competent property owner and developer,” Caldwell set out to build “the most beautiful House in the new Capital City, and the most elegant south of his native Philadelphia.”2 Purchasing additional land, Caldwell added to his original structure finishing in 1806 a handsome twenty-room house with a two-storied facade with dormers on a third level. In 1877, Professor Cleveland Abbe, a later owner, further expanded the house by installing full rooms into the front third-level and dormers of the attic. Aside from the third level the exterior of the house looks much the same today as when it was built, boasting a wide frontage on I Street NW. The handsome Georgian-style, early nineteenth-century red brick is set in Flemish bond with a white belt course and a centered sandstone keystone and arch over the richly carved arched doorway of wood topped with a fan or lunette transom. The arch is repeated in the interior entrance hall and vestibule, partitioned later to provide a storm entrance. Four
window bays on the front facade with repeating splayed keystones complete the simple but elegant presentation of the southern-facing structure. Ironically, Caldwell never lived in his house of sociability and high fashion. He sold it in 1808 to Gideon Granger, postmaster general from 1801 to 1814, and bought it back in 1813. It would appear that Caldwell built it strictly for investment, gambling on the new hub of government attracting an affluent class of officials needing lodging.3 Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, interesting and prominent people lived in what is now known as the James Monroe House, including especially John Quincy Adams’s son, Senator Charles Francis Adams, and Cleveland Abbe, a physicist and astronomer who essentially started the first United States Weather Bureau with his prognostication methods. After renting for two years, The Arts Club purchased the property from the Abbe family in 1918, shortly after Professor Abbe’s death. It was Abbe,
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Once the largest house on the block, President Monroe’s elegant twenty-room house is now dwarfed by surrounding office buildings on I Street. The splendid doorway, handcarved in wood and surmounted by an arch of Aquia quarry sandstone, anchors the house defiantly on the site it has occupied for two centuries.
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JAMES MONROE, FIRST LESSEE, 1811 Appointed secretary of state by President James Madison in 1811, Monroe, with his wife Elizabeth, moved to the District of Columbia, where they rented 2017 I Street throughout his tenure in the cabinet. That included a period in which he assumed the duties of secretary of war, late in the War of 1812, following the British invasion.6 Before and during the war and for the first months of his presidency, Monroe held meetings in offices on the eastern side
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of the house, in rooms built for this purpose. The addition was removed after Monroe’s departure in October 1817 for the President’s House, which was finally habitable again following its burning during the war. Thus except for visits to their Albemarle and Loudoun County properties in Virginia, the Monroes lived at 2017 I Street for six years. This house was, of necessity, the center of Monroe’s inaugural activities on March 4, 1817. Invited guests attending the inauguration and members of the militia gathered at O’Neale’s Hotel on I Street between Twentieth and Twenty-First Streets to make their way to 2017 I Street and then accompany the president-elect to the Capitol, where he took the Oath of Office.7 The inaugural reception after the ceremony was held in the upstairs drawing room (now the parlor) of the I Street house. For the next six months Timothy Caldwell’s handsome brick house served as the nation’s temporary Executive Mansion. Entertainments at this temporary Executive Mansion reflected the Monroes’ French taste and style. Elizabeth Kortright Monroe was by all accounts beautiful, educated, and an extraordinary hostess. Her dinner invitations were sought after and coveted. As she assumed the role of first lady, her appearance and demeanor were often described as elegant and refined. Her graciousness
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James Monroe is depicted departing his house on I Street for his 1817 inauguration in this bronze basrelief made by sculptor Pam Foss in 1990. The 14-foot wide work is now appropriately displayed in the back garden of the Arts Club of Washington, Monroe’s former home.
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who, in addition to adding the top floor, redesigned the back garden. To honor him, the house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.4 Professor Abbe’s distinguished career inspired the National Public Radio science journalist and author David Baron who happened by the Monroe House in the summer of 2016. The journalist declared that while he was a respectful admirer of President Monroe, it was in fact Professor Cleveland Abbe’s house he came to visit. Abbe was an “eclipse chaser” in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and in anticipation of the rare solar eclipse of 2017, the journalist was writing a book about eclipses that would feature Abbe prominently.5 Again, historical curiosity, different levels of interest, and individual fascinations draw visitors to this unique dwelling. They are a reward for its preservation.
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One of many original architectural details remaining in the house, this Federal period carved wood and composition fireplace mantel is in the drawing room (above right), where President James Monroe’s inaugural reception was held in 1817.
may have contributed to setting a different tone for the sometimes rough-and-tumble capital city. That tone carried over farther into politics. The new administration’s reconciliation of partisan factions was characterized in a Boston newspaper as “The Era of Good Feelings.”8 For the rebuilt President’s House, the Monroes ordered fine French furniture like that they had admired during James Monroe’s two tenures as minister to France in 1794–96 and in 1803, when he helped negotiate the Louisiana Purchase.9 A few pieces remain in the White House to the current day, and others have been returned.9 Recently, on another historic adventure, a visitor to the Arts Club asked to see the Federal carved wood and “composition” (mortar mixed with plaster) fireplace mantel. Several of the same symmetrical, neoclassical fireplaces had been in the White House before the fire. This applied decoration, as in the White House, cast in composition in the Adamesque style, is attributed to the Baltimore ornament maker George Andrews, originally from Dublin.10
THE ARTS CLUB OF WASHINGTON, BEGINNING 1916 The Arts Club of Washington was founded on April 7, 1916, in the studio of the artist Henry Kirke BushBrown, on G Street NW. Its goals were appreciating
and perpetuating the arts, particularly painting, sculpture, and drama. Its ideals were lofty. “The art of right living is the one great fine art,” said Mitchell Carroll, in a report on the club’s activities in 1921. “The application of what is finest and best in art to our daily life is an essential element of culture.” At its founding meeting, Carroll explained, the club voted “to secure, if possible, a colonial house for the home of the Club. For this purpose the President named a special committee, who were so fortunate to secure the old Monroe residence on I Street.”11 The twenty-five founders included both men and women, highly unusual for its time, and, as the following description reveals, they were not always in agreement. I went to the first meeting which was in the spring of 1916, at 7:00 p.m. It was held in the front room right off the entrance, and fifteen or twenty people were present. The house was very shabby, dingy. It had no furnishings. The upstairs rooms were empty, and the whole place seemed spooky. A lot of folding chairs had been rented for the meeting, and Miss . . . and I sat in the last row, against the wall. The paper was peeling off the wall in strips, it was to be repapered. The lighting was so dim we couldn’t see very well; it may have been
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As Carroll recounted, members donated pictures, books, and statuary, which were sold to fund the renovation and furnishing of the Monroe House and to create a garden in the backyard. The Monroe House proved attractive and congenial, and the site of great sociability. The club held concerts, lectures, exhibitions, receptions, poetry readings, dramatic presentations, and Thursday night dinners. Membership quickly grew to more than four hundred.13 Today a portrait of Bush-Brown, the club’s first president, hangs over the fireplace in the Monroe House’s first floor parlor. It was painted by his wife, Margaret Lesley Bush-Brown, a student of Thomas Eakins. Bush-Brown was a recognized sculptor who was commissioned to produce huge outdoor statuary in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington. He was frequently referred to as “The Father of American Sculpture.” His 1904 large bust of Abraham Lincoln sits in the Arts Club library. Bush-Brown was an instrumental force in the success of the Arts Club of Washington. His commitment to art as a means for the betterment of humankind influenced the club for many years.14 Another notable Arts Club member was Clifford K. Berryman, the Pulitzer Prize–winning political cartoonist who is best known for his depiction of President Theodore Roosevelt refusing to shoot a bear while on a hunting trip in Mississippi woodlands. The image became the “Teddy Bear,” portrayed in Berryman’s cartoons and re-created as a stuffed animal. Berryman drew for the Washington
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Post and the Washington Evening Star.15 His caricature likenesses of early club presidents also hang in the club library. Other prominent club members included the artists Ellen Day Hale and Mathilde Mueden Leisenring; the glass artist and jeweler Charles Comfort Tiffany; Duncan Phillips, founder of the Phillips Gallery; Alice Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt’s eldest daughter; First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; the cellist Hans Kindler, founder of the National Symphony Orchestra and president of the Arts Club; and broadcaster Fulton J. Lewis, another Arts Club president. The writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and the actress Tallulah Bankhead visited frequently. To accomodate the growth in its membership and activities, in 1929 the Arts Club purchased the adjoining house at 2015 I Street. Known as the MacFeely addition, it provided meeting rooms, a natural light painting studio, and, most important, a gallery and stage. It also made room for upstairs boarding rooms, some of which were occupied until the 1960s. During the height of the Great Depression, the rental income from boarders helped defray some of the cost of the newly acquired space. The MacFeely House has been recognized on the National Register of Historic Places since 1989.
This portrait of the first president of the Arts Club, Henry Kirke BushBrown, made by his wife Margaret Lesley Bush-Brown, hangs above the fireplace in the first floor parlor of the Monroe House.
THE MONROE HOUSE AND THE ARTS CLUB OF WASHINGTON TODAY Today the mission of the Arts Club remains much the same as it did when it was founded, just over a century ago, but its interests have expanded to include additional artistic disciplines, including music, dance, architecture, photography, cinematography, and the digital arts. One continuing and pertinent interest is historic preservation. The Arts Club is proud that the Preservation Roundtable has held its monthly meetings of information exchange and lunch at the Monroe House for fifty continuous years. Outreach programs have expanded as well. The Arts Club presents a national annual literary prize for nonfiction arts writing, the Marfield Prize. College-age students are honored with an annual scholarship program. Both of the programs have developed into master classes in two local secondary schools, the Duke Ellington School for the Arts and the School Without Walls. Programs available
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candles. . . . Mr. Bush-Brown, wearing the blue smock seen in his portrait on our library wall, (or one like it) was presiding. But there were two opposing groups, one led by . . . a fiery Irishman, and the other by Mr . . . They and their followers were convinced of the rightness of their respective ideas, and they shouted each other down, which irritated Mr. BushBrown, who hammered his gavel, bang, bang, bang, at frequent intervals. There was quite an uproar. Miss . . . , a very proper English woman, quite dismayed, said “Oh, dear, I don’t think I want to join this Club, they can’t agree on anything. . . . I was exhausted after two hours of this noise and combat and didn’t think any Club that started this way, would last. But we did join, and the Club has developed beautifully and I am very proud to be a member.12
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NOTES
A portrait of Arts Club member Clifford K. Berryman, the Pulitzer Prize–winning political cartoonist, hangs in the Arts Club library.
The letter from James Monroe to James Madison, May 18, 1803, concerning the Louisiana Purchase, is published in Quotations of James Monroe, comp. Daniel Preston and Heidi Stello, (Fredericksburg, Va., Ash Lawn–Highland, 2010) 66.
right
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The boot scraper to the left of the Monroe House front door may have been used by President Monroe when this area of the city was known as “The Mud Hole.”
to the public include Friday noon concerts, piano jazz concerts, literary evenings, and the multidisciplinary “Evenings with Extraordinary Artists.” First Friday art openings (with complementary wine) are always open to the public and free of charge. Today, as in years past, the club offers a respite from politics in a very political city. It draws much of its character, tradition, and spirit from the importance of its historic connection to James and Elizabeth Monroe. We like to think that we carry forward some of their gracious poise and that we entertain with their charm. While providing wide-ranging access to the great satisfaction afforded by the arts, at the same time, we inhabit this historic property responsibly. The Washington journalist Hope Ridings Miller has stated that “no other organization has headquarters with a more conspicuous link to history than the Arts Club.”16 Today the United States Department of State, The George Washington University, and the World Bank are our neighbors in an area of the Federal City was once derided as “The Mud Hole” by certain congressmen.17 It might be no accident that just to the left of Monroe House’s front door is a boot scraper. The fifth president of the United States used this very scraper two hundred years ago. For us it serves as a reminder of the storied past of our presidential house.
1.
Maud Burr Morris, “An Old Washington Mansion,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 21 (1918): 116.
2.
William Carmichael, foreword, Archives of Arts Club of Washington (Washington, D.C.: American Federation of the Arts, 1916).
3.
Morris, “An Old Washington Mansion,” 117.
4.
Truman Abbe, Professor Abbe and the Isobars (New York: Vantage Press, 1955).
5.
David Baron, American Eclipse (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017), 150–74.
6.
Daniel Preston, James Monroe, 2nd ed. (Charlottesville, Va.: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2011), 2–3; Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity, pbk. ed. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 1990), 289–379.
7.
Article in Washington Star, 1917. The Franklin Hotel was owned and run by William O’Neale and later by John Gadsby, previously the tavern-keeper in Alexandria and Baltimore. The Marquis de Lafayette stayed at the Franklin during his American tour of 1824–25.
8.
The term was coined by the Boston Columbian Centinel on July 12, 1817, during Monroe’s goodwill tour.
9.
Ulrich Leben, “Furnishings in Paris: From the Directory to the Coronation of Napoleon,” White House History, no. 44 (Winter 2017): 16–27; Leslie B. Jones, “James Monroe’s White House State Furniture à la Française,” ibid., 28–39. See also Elizabeth Dinschel, “First Lady Lou Henry Hoover and the First White House Catalog,” White House History, no. 45 (Spring 2017): 31–39, and especially pages 25–39 of “White House Furnishings,” the inventory prepared for First Lady Lou Hoover by Dare Stark McMullin in 1932 and reproduced therein.
10.
David J. Black, “An Infusion of Scotch: The Scottish Neoclassical Mantel and Its Federal American Cousin” (lecture, Historic Charleston Foundation, Charleston, S.C., October 2016), online at digital.nls.uk. On “composition,” see William Seale, The President’s House, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008), 76.
11.
Mitchell Carroll, “Activities of the Arts Club of Washington,” Art and Archaeology 12, no. 2 (1921): 86.
12.
Helen Wharton, “Memory of the First Organizational Meeting of the Arts Club,” Archives of the Arts Club of Washington.
13.
Carroll, “Activities of the Arts Club of Washington,” 86. See also George Julian Zolnay, “Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Arts Club,” Art and Archaeology 12, no. 2 (1921): 89.
14.
See also the entry for Henry Kirke Bush-Brown in the Dictionary of American Biography, copy in Archives of Arts Club of Washington.
15.
Jessie Kratz, “Clifford K. Berryman: The Dean of American Cartoonists,” White House History, no. 48 (Winter 2018): 14–29.
16.
Hope Ridings Miller, Great Houses of Washington, D.C. (New York: C. N. Potter, 1929).
17.
Morris, “An Old Washington Mansion,” 119.
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