Fraser Mansion
- Year
- 1890
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- Washington, DC
- Collection
- the city beautiful
The Fraser Mansion was built in 1890 as the private residence of merchant George S. Fraser, designed by the firm of Hornblower and Marshall in an early, eclectic take on the Beaux-Arts style. After five years as Fraser's home, the building cycled through lives as a restaurant, a boarding house, and the home of the newly founded Church of Scientology, whose National Affairs office still occupies it.
the building
Brick, granite, and turret. The three-story mansion, with two basement levels and an attic, is built of red brick and pink granite behind a colonnaded entrance porch with a balustraded deck, capped by a tiled hipped roof and turret.
the style
Hornblower and Marshall worked in an early, eclectic version of Beaux-Arts, mixing the school's formal massing with picturesque details like the mansion's turret rather than following its classical vocabulary strictly.
More on Beaux-Artssignificance
The Fraser Mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, following a run of uses after Fraser's ownership that included a restaurant, a boarding house, and the founding home of the Church of Scientology.
nearby
- Thomas T. Gaff House
- Whittemore, Sarah Adams, House (Weeks House; Woman's National Democratic Club)
- Belmont, Perry House (International Eastern Star Temple)
- Page, Thomas Nelson, House
- Blaine, James G., House
- Codman-Davis House