Townsend House
- Architect
- Carrère and Hastings
- Year
- 1901
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- Washington, DC
- Collection
- the city beautiful
Architects Carrere and Hastings, a major Gilded Age firm, designed this Beaux-Arts mansion in 1898 for Mary Scott Townsend, heiress to the William Lawrence Scott fortune, and her husband Richard H. Townsend; construction finished in 1901. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt lived briefly in the house in 1933 before his inauguration, echoing an earlier Townsend generation's rental of their previous home to Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. The Cosmos Club has owned the house since 1950.
the building
A house of two presidents. In 1902, the Townsends rented their previous Jackson Place home to Theodore Roosevelt during a White House renovation. Three decades later, in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt lived in this house on Embassy Row before moving into the White House himself.
Nearly an acre of garden. Set free-standing on almost an acre of grounds, the house outlived the couple who built it -- Richard Townsend died in 1902, Mary Scott Townsend in 1931 -- after which their daughter Mathilde and her husband, diplomat Sumner Welles, lived there until the Cosmos Club purchased it in 1950.
the style
The house was designed in the Beaux Arts French style favored by Gilded Age architects like Carrere and Hastings for grand Embassy Row residences.
More on Beaux-Artsthe architect
Carrere and Hastings were one of the major architectural firms of the Gilded Age; the Townsend House was among their Washington society commissions.
significance
The Townsend House is a National Register of Historic Places contributing and listed property.
nearby
- Anderson, Larz House (Society of the Cincinnati)
- Charles Evans Hughes House
- Codman-Davis House
- Embassy Gulf Service Station
- Dumbarton Bridge
- Barney Studio House (and Interiors)