Belmont, Perry House (International Eastern Star Temple)
- Architects
- Horace Trumbauer Ernest Sanson
- Year
- 1906
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- Washington, DC
- Collection
- the city beautiful
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Perry Belmont, a politician, commissioned the French architect Ernest-Paul Sanson to design this Louis XVI-style Beaux-Arts mansion for himself and his wife, with Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer serving as associate architect. Completed in 1906 at 1618 New Hampshire Avenue NW in Dupont Circle, the house now serves as the international headquarters of the Order of the Eastern Star, an organization affiliated with Freemasonry.
the building
A free-standing French pavilion. The house takes the form of a free-standing pavilion in the French style: a single story articulated with slender Ionic pilasters over a channel-rusticated basement, its mansard attic story hidden behind a balustrade topped with stone urns.
Materials shipped from three countries. The interiors combine wrought-iron fixtures imported from France, wood from Germany, and marble from Italy, assembled for a private Washington mansion rather than a public building.
the style
The house is a Beaux-Arts design in a French Louis XVI idiom, designed by a French architect for an American client whose choice of imported French, German, and Italian materials underscores the pursuit of an authentically French mansion.
More on Beaux-Artsthe architect
Ernest-Paul Sanson was the French architect who designed the house for Perry Belmont; Horace Trumbauer, a Philadelphia-based architect, served as the associate architect who oversaw the project in Washington.
significance
The Belmont House is a designated contributing property in the Dupont Circle Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 8, 1973. In 2009 the property was valued at $7,475,100, equivalent to about $11.22 million in 2025.
nearby
- Page, Thomas Nelson, House
- Whittemore, Sarah Adams, House (Weeks House; Woman's National Democratic Club)
- Twelfth Street YMCA Building
- Patterson House (Washington Club)
- Fraser Mansion
- Wadsworth, Herbert House (Sulgrave Club)