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HOLIDAY SHOPPING: LUXURY GIFTS + YOUR ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO CITYCENTERDC FASHION: BARE AND BEJEWELED SPORTS: WIZARDS JARED DUDLEY AND OTTO PORTER JR. TALK HOOPS BOOKS: WINTER READING ROUNDUP AND WASHINGTON’S GREATEST HOUSES BY ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN JAMES GOODE
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capital houses
Visionary Historian
James M. Goode’s monumental study of the area’s greatest houses paints a picture of private life, taste and changes in Washington from colonial times to the modern era. BY KEVIN CHAFFEE
J
ames M. Goode is a noted architectural historian of the nation’s capital but his work has not generally focused on the great public monuments James M. Goode and official buildings that command most attention from visitors and residents alike. The author of six previous books on Washington, D.C. history, including the best-selling “Capital Losses: A Cultural History of Washington’s Destroyed Buildings” (1979) and “Best Addresses: One Hundred Years of Washington’s Distinguished Apartment Houses” (1988), Goode recently turned his attention to a study of the metropolitan area’s most historic residences in a wide range of styles from George’s Washington’s Mount Vernon to modern residences designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and I.M. Pei. His justpublished seventh work, “Capital Houses: Historic Residences of Washington, D.C. and its Environs, 1735-1965” (Acanthus Press, $75), is a magnificently illustrated study that has already received critical acclaim for its attention to detail and insightful political, social and artistic commentary >>
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You are a leading expert on the architecture of the nation’s capital and have written numerous books on that subject. What makes “Capital Houses” your magnum opus? My other books took three to four years to research and write. This one took eight years. It was hard to get into a lot of the houses I wanted to include, so I had to talk to people who knew the owners to get introduced. Eight embassies had to check me out to make sure I wasn’t a terrorist! There are also 300 photos by Bruce M. White, my partner in the book, who works for the White House Historical Association and takes all their architectural and decorative arts photographs. I also got floor plans for every one of the 56 houses. The 16-page introduction was very important as well because I needed to spend a lot of time tracing the historic preservation movement in Washington from the 1930s to present times. How does the architecture here compare to that of other world capitals? This book disproves any idea that it is in some way less important. Mount Vernon, for example, has a very grand piazza, or veranda, supported by
eight pillars with a magnificent view of the Potomac. There are also a number of Georgian houses that are really extraordinary. Remember that Washington, D.C. was called the “winter Newport of America” between 1880 and the World War I era. That’s when the great Beaux Arts and Victorian mansions were all built. Heurich House near Dupont Circle is the best preserved Victorian house in the city and still has all of its original furniture. There are also three extraordinary modern houses, each designed by a nationally known architect: I.M. Pei (Slayton House), Philip Johnson (Kreeger House) and Frank Lloyd Wright (Marden House). Of all those you included, which houses are your favorites? Anderson House, now the headquarters of the Society of the Cincinnati, was designed by Little and Brown of Boston. It is a small palace that is very sophisticated and quite different from the other houses. There is an unusual staircase in the ballroom that goes up to the dining room on the second floor. The grand staircase to the right of the entrance has a magnificent painting on the landing. The original owner, Lars Anderson, was very proud of his membership in the Society, and many of
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C r e d i ts ( i n m ar g i n s) Jam e s M. G oo d e p h oto by A l e x Ja m i so n . A l l ot h e r p h otos by B r u c e M . W h i t e , c o u r t e s y Ac a n t h u s P r e s s a n d t h e N a t i o n a l G a l l e r y o f A r t
Mount Vernon enjoys a magnificent view of the Potomac River from its pillared veranda.
Clara Barton House
Anderson House grand staircase
Moundsey House
the walls are painted with murals depicting the Revolutionary War. Clara Barton House, now the Clara Barton National Historic Site in Glen Echo, Maryland, is the most unusual. It was built like a warehouse and has 50 closets where the Red Cross founder could store blankets, bandages and medicines. It is long and rectangular with an enormous open gallery in the middle that goes up two floors. Moundsey House in the District’s Palisades neighborhood is an Art Deco house that very few people know about or have ever seen. An African American art teacher at Dunbar High School designed it for his daughter, who was a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University. It is built in yellow brick with glass block windows and exterior walls that have rounded corners. If you had the space to do a few more, what else might you have included?There are so many that it would be hard to list them. There are at least 20 on Massachusetts Avenue NW (“Embassy Row”) alone. Washington has the best collection of Beaux Arts mansions in America. Around 200 were built, including 60
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The Cafritz House (1938), designed by Alvin Aubinoe and Harry L. Edwards. has a spacious rooms designed for large-scale entertaining.
that had ballrooms - the scale of entertaining back then was unbelievable but the income tax and Great Depression ended that! Only half of them are left because there was no preservation law until 1979. Of all the great houses that have been lost over the years, which do you most wish were still here today? Hitt House, designed by John Russell Pope, was on the north side of Dupont Circle at the corner of New Hampshire Avenue. I watched it come down in 1971. It was replaced by an over-scaled office building. Mary Foote Henderson’s Boundary Castle, sited perfectly on the corner of 16th Street and Florida Avenue NW, was built on a massive scale with a design that was very
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striking, including a tower and stone walls. It was demolished in 1949. Are there any notable structures that have arisen across the area in recent years that might merit inclusion in a future study? The Trump Hotel, formerly the Old Post Office Pavilion, will be wonderful to restore. New and old are mixed together. The East Wing of the National Gallery of Art, a landmark building by I.M. Pei, deserves mention but most of the others are not in context with their surrounding space. A good example of that is the United State Institute of Peace building at 23rd and Constitution Avenue NW.The roof is extremely modern and disruptive and does not fit in with the Beaux Arts buildings nearby.
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