The building on the northeast corner of 17th and R streets NW had an unusual construction perched on top: a unique structure that is hard to describe, like a little palace. I have no idea why it was there, but it was one of those quirky architectural touches that can make urban architecture interesting. So today when going over to the Safeway, I was shocked to see that it was gone. The whole building is being renovated. It’s possible the developers removed it temporarily but that seems unlikely. It’s a shame that it is gone, but this leads me to my question: Why was that little “palace” there to begin with? How did it get there and why?
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That funky feature — imagine a miniature house perched at the corner of a bigger house — was apparently original to the 1896 building, which is the work of architect B. Stanley Simmons.
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The building is one of five contiguous rowhouses constructed at the same time, all of which Simmons designed just one year after the University of Maryland undergrad had finished architecture school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Steve Callcott of the District’s office of historic preservation/planning.
“Their exuberant Romanesque character — which seems to me clearly influenced by Louis Sullivan — is quite unusual for his work, which is pretty uniformly Beaux-Art and classical in inspiration,” Callcott wrote in an email to Answer Man.
Until 2019, the building housed Cobalt, a gay nightclub. It was purchased a year earlier by Massachusetts-based developer Marwick Associates to be transformed into an 18-unit residential building.
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Callcott said the R Street house is within the Dupont Circle Historic District and thus must remain relatively unmolested. That corner construction — it reminds Answer Man of a Victorian folly or a Buddhist stupa — was in pretty bad shape, Callcott said. It was removed and will be rebuilt and reinstalled. Two other long-missing turrets — one conical, one pyramidal — have already been reconstructed.
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“The turret had the same pressed metal faux stonework, roof tiling and detailing as elsewhere on the building, so I have no reason to think that it wasn't original,” Callcott wrote.
He isn’t sure what purpose it served — if any — or whether the inside was accessible. No one at Marwick Associates returned any of Answer Man’s calls.
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“I think it was just a highly idiosyncratic decorative feature intended to memorably punctuate the corner — a folly, as you say — from an era when exoticism (Moorish, Japanese, Chinese) was a popular influence,” Callcott wrote.
Architect Simmons died in 1931. Among his other District buildings are the Metropolitan National Bank (only the facade of which survives, as part of Metropolitan Square), the Jewish Community Center on 16th Street NW and the Barr Building, a fetching 1927 skyscraper at 910 17th St. NW.
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David M. Lea, a Richmond native and Virginia Military Institute graduate, was the original owner of 1641 R St. NW. Answer Man suspects he built it to sell or rent, one of 500 homes Lea built in Washington. In 1897, the 10-room house — described in an ad as featuring “hardwood floors; ceilings handsomely decorated; exquisite chandeliers” — was for rent for $80 a month.
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Lea’s 1932 obituary in the Evening Star noted that he founded an insurance company, co-founded the Washington Canoe Club and advocated for a high-pressure water system to protect downtown against fire damage. It did not mention Lea’s arrest in Richmond in 1893. At the time, Lea was an editor of a society newspaper called Beaumonde, which printed a story critical of another young society man named Edmond Woodbridge who had allegedly “made a remark in the presence of a lady.”
One can only imagine what sort of remark it was, but it prompted Lea, Woodbridge and two other men to arrange a duel. Authorities stepped in before that could take place.
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Read more from John Kelly.