Emma S. Fitzhugh House
- Architect
- Waddy Butler Wood
- Year
- 1904
- Style
- Spanish Colonial Revival
- City
- Washington, DC
William Lipscombs & Co. built this mansion in 1904 for Charles L. Fitzhugh and his wife Emma S. Fitzhugh, to a design by Waddy B. Wood of the firm Wood, Donn and Dunning. It passed through a string of tenants over the following decades, including Clarence M. Wooley, Sherman Flint, the Czechoslovak Legation, and Illinois Congressman Frederick Britten, who bought the house from Emma Fitzhugh in 1941, before the Philippine government acquired it in 1949 and made it the official residence of its ambassador to the United States.
the building
A future president's visit. In 1913, Manuel L. Quezon, then the Philippines' Resident Commissioner to the US Congress and later President of the Philippine Commonwealth, visited the house, decades before it became Philippine government property.
the style
The house is designed in the Spanish Renaissance style.
More on Spanish Colonial Revivalthe architect
Waddy Butler Wood designed the house through his firm Wood, Donn and Dunning, one of his Washington residential commissions in the early 1900s.
significance
Joaquin Elizalde, the first Philippine ambassador to the United States, acquired the house privately in 1946. Three years later, in 1949, the Philippine government bought it from the Elizalde family and designated it the ambassador's official residence, the role it still serves.
nearby
- Beale, Joseph House (Egyptian Embassy)
- Charles Evans Hughes House
- Barney Studio House (and Interiors)
- Wilson, Woodrow House
- Dumbarton Bridge
- Codman-Davis House