Paris on the Potomac: The French Influence on the Architecture and Art of Washington, D.C.

Private Homes, Public Lives: Francophilia among Government Officers and the Washington Elite

Private Homes, Public Lives Francophilia among Government Officers and the Washington Elite g Liana Paredes A fter the Civil War, Washington, D.C., experienced an economic expansion that triggered a period of feverish building and configured the small urban center as a residential city par excellence. A concerted effort on the part of the territorial and federal governments made the city primarily the seat of government, a meeting place for captains of industry and politicians, and a center for sightseeing. Inherently, this decision kept Washington outside the fields of commerce and industry. This economic expansion led to a public improvement program of the urban landscape . In 1871, Congress approved an urban development program—explained at length in Cynthia Field’s chapter—to repave streets, build new sidewalks, implement a system of street lighting, and plant more than six thousand trees. The plan was carried out almost overnight (bankrupting the city and bringing an end to territorial government in the district), but Washington was clearly on its way to becoming a grand capital city. By the 1880s, Washington had become a desirable place of seasonal residence for the wealthy and the powerful. The residential character of the city was quite apparent to visitors in those years. As the Reverend S. Reynolds Hole observed, “Washington, although it is full of commotion and energy, is a city of rest and peace.”1 Another Englishman spoke of its “air of comfort, of leisure, of space to spare, of stateliness you 77 1 S. Reynolds Hole, A Little Tour in America (London, 1895), pp. 309–10. Fig. 1. Staircase, Perry Belmont House, 1618 New Hampshire Avenue, currently the International Temple of the Order of the Eastern Star. (Courtesy Order of the Eastern Star.) hardly expected in America. It looks a sort of place where nobody has to work for his living, or, at any rate, not hard.”2 Joseph West Moore in Picturesque Washington described the city in the following terms: “It is on this spacious plain, but a few years ago an almost valueless area of swamps, that those palatial mansions, the pride and boast of the capital, are erected. Here are the residences of the wealthiest citizens, and those of the millionaires from sections of the U.S. who make Washington their winter home. . . . Here are the foreign legation buildings, and here the leaders of society. . . . On every side is a dazzling spectacle of luxury and grandeur, . . . a realization of the enormous wealth that is centering in Washington at the present time.”3 The residential growth of Washington as a fashionable watering hole attracted public officials to build houses in the city. Industrial tycoons from around the country, armed with the power of money, also flocked to the city with the aspiration of acquiring national political power and social prestige. Building great structures enhanced the presence and social status of this moneyed class. Prior to the Civil War, most public officials and people who came to hold governmental offices had rented homes or lived in hotels and boardinghouses, since their stay was merely seasonal. After the Civil War, some men holding important public office, who could afford to, made a point of owning their houses, and scores of other temporary residents hastened to build or buy. The number of public officials building homes in Washington, however, was still few at the turn of the century. In the words of Julia B. Foraker, whose husband was a senator from Ohio, “Of the 90 senators in Congress then, only about seven or eight had large houses and entertained on an important scale. (A number of senators were there without their wives).”4 Washington became a place to see and to be seen. Joining ranks with the new wealthy residents were “those senators and representatives who have built, bought or leased within the precincts of the moneyed zone habitations far more costly than would be justified by their federal salaries.”5 Even with their political prestige, only a small number of government officials could join in these high ranks of society. Henry James ranked nine-tenths of senators, including their wives and daughters, at the fringe of the social structure.6 Those who could afford lavish entertainment saw it as their fiduciary duty to do so. For example , Mrs. Florence Lowden, wife of Congressman Frank Lowden from Illinois and Private Homes, Public Lives 79 2...