Warder Mansion
- Architect
- Henry Hobson Richardson
- City
- Washington, DC
Built in 1888 at 1515 K Street NW for farm-machinery magnate Benjamin H. Warder, this mansion is the only building in Washington, D.C. designed by Henry Hobson Richardson. Warder ran Warder, Bushnell & Glessner Company, one of five manufacturers merged in 1902 to form International Harvester, and hired Richardson in 1885; Richardson died the following year, and his firm finished the house in 1888. When developers threatened to demolish it for an office building in 1923, the entire structure was disassembled and moved 1.5 miles north to its current site at 2633 16th Street NW, where it now stands as an apartment complex.
the building
Moved to survive. In 1923, with the original K Street site slated for an office building, architect George Oakley Totten had the mansion disassembled and reconstructed 1.5 miles north at 2633 16th Street NW — an early and dramatic act of building preservation in the capital. Its survival looked uncertain again in the 1990s, but the building was saved a second time. It later housed the Antioch School of Law from 1972 to 1988.
the architect
Henry Hobson Richardson was a Boston architect hired by Warder in 1885 to design this mansion; Richardson died in 1886, and his firm completed the house two years later, in 1888. It is the only building in Washington, D.C. designed by Richardson, a nationally significant American architect.
More on Henry Hobson Richardsonsignificance
The Warder-Totten House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is the only surviving Richardson-designed building in Washington, D.C. It survived two brushes with demolition — moved wholesale in the 1920s and nearly lost again in the 1990s.
more by Henry Hobson Richardson
nearby
- Pink Palace
- Embassy of Mexico-MacVeagh House
- Josephine Butler Parks Center
- Meridian Hall
- Congressional Club
- Mary Ann Shadd Cary House