Fraser Mansion
Encyclopedia
The Fraser Mansion is a building at 1701 20th Street NW, at the intersection of Connecticut Avenue, 20th Street, and R Street in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
Since its construction in 1890, the mansion
has served as a private residence
, a restaurant, a boarding house
, and most recently as home to the Founding Church of Scientology
. The building is currently the location of Scientology's National Affairs office.
The mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
in 1975.
and pink granite
with a colonnade
d entrance porch with balustraded
deck, and a tiled, hipped roof
. The interior was planned around a central open stair, with large, central halls on each floor. It was constructed in 1890 at a cost of $
75,000, more than ten times the cost of a typical Washington home at that time.
The building served as Fraser's residence until his death in 1896. In 1901, Fraser's widow sold the mansion to Pennsylvania Congressman Joseph Earlston Thropp
, where he took up residence beginning on March 3, 1901. The Thropps made exterior alterations, enlarging dormer
windows and adding an oriel window
in 1901. In 1905, architects Totten and Rogers designed a terrace
with an entrance to the house near the oriel window, and also redesigned the garden wall.
The mansion remained in the ownership of Thropp and his wife, Miriam Scott-Thropp, until Scott-Thropp's death in 1930.
, with a boarding house located on the upper levels. In 1950, upon leasing to John Goldstein, the facility was converted to a restaurant
and renamed the Golden Parrot. The mansion was sold in 1974, and the restaurant was renamed the Golden Booeymonger. Later, the mansion became home to nightclub
s Larry Brown's and Sagittarius. The mansion was again sold in 1981 to Walter Sommer for $2 million. Following a $3 million renovation, the building opened in 1982 to house another restaurant, the Four Ways. The Four Ways served Continental Europe
an and American dishes under the leadership of chef Jacques Barre.
By 1988, Sommer had opened the patio-cafe Bermuda Bar and Grill in the mansion alongside the Four Ways. According to the Nation's Restaurant News
, the restaurant seated 40 people inside and 60 outside, and was modeled after restaurants and pubs
in Bermuda
. Among other things, the restaurant featured an all-you-can-eat salad bar
, an unlimited Sunday brunch
, and "traditional Bermuda drinks made with island rum and freshly squeezed fruit juices."
building in the parking lot behind the mansion. At the time, the property was zoned
residential, with variances
permitting a restaurant on the property. Then-owner Walter Sommer claimed that the variances restricted him unfairly, requiring him to go to the zoning board multiple times for changes to his business, in a process that he considered costly and time consuming. Additionally, Sommer claimed that without commercial zoning, he was unable to obtain a "realistic commercial loan
" to fund maintenance costs. Between 1982 and 1987, the D.C. Board of Zoning Appeals granted Sommer variances to expand the commercial use of the building above the first floor and permitting a business club to operate in the building.
While the proposed design for the building was approved by the D.C. Office of Planning and the Historic Preservation Review Board, and the Department of Public Works had determined that the plans, which would have included underground parking
for both the apartments and the restaurant, would not cause an increase in parking or traffic problems in the area, the community opposed the building's construction. Nearby resident Duff Gilfont described the proposed apartment building as "such a blight
to this area," and that "there would have been so many people inconvenienced by it." Several neighborhood associations opposed rezoning the building, expressing concern that the new building would be used as a hotel. Sommer denied that there were plans to use the building as a hotel
or an office
building.
Several covenants were proposed. One would require that the new building only be used for residential purposes. A second would have required that any future owners of the Fraser Mansion would be required to submit their plans for the building for review by the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board. A third proposed covenant would have split the zoning of the property, allowing only residential use of the building, but requiring variances for any changes in the parking for the restaurant or the apartment building.
Despite the proposed covenants, however, community groups
vowed to continue to fight the proposal.
Trying to pay creditors, Sommer attempted to sell the mansion. Sommer's initial asking price was $7 million, which he later reduced to $3 million. A number of embassies and chanceries looked at the mansion, but none purchased. According to real estate broker Stanley Holland, Sommer "thought it was worth more than it was."
on the building in 1993 from the FDIC
, which had assumed the loans after the 1990 failure of the National Bank of Washington. Following the purchase of the loans, Scientology foreclosed
on the building. In the subsequent foreclosure auction, Scientology purchased the building for $2.7 million.
Following $1 million in renovations, the building was dedicated as the new Founding Church of Scientology on October 21, 1995 by Religious Technology Center
chairman David Miscavige
.
The Founding Church of Scientology relocated from the Fraser Mansion to the nearby Embassy Building on 16th Street NW
on October 31, 2009. Fraser Mansion now serves as the National Affairs office for the Church of Scientology.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
Since its construction in 1890, the mansion
Mansion
A mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. real estate brokers define a mansion as a dwelling of over . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms...
has served as a private residence
Home
A home is a place of residence or refuge. When it refers to a building, it is usually a place in which an individual or a family can rest and store personal property. Most modern-day households contain sanitary facilities and a means of preparing food. Animals have their own homes as well, either...
, a restaurant, a boarding house
Boarding house
A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...
, and most recently as home to the Founding Church of Scientology
Church of Scientology
The Church of Scientology is an organization devoted to the practice and the promotion of the Scientology belief system. The Church of Scientology International is the Church of Scientology's parent organization, and is responsible for the overall ecclesiastical management, dissemination and...
. The building is currently the location of Scientology's National Affairs office.
The mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 1975.
Design, construction, and early use
The mansion was designed by the architectural firm of Hornblower and Marshall in an early eclectic beaux arts style to serve as the home of New York merchant George S. Fraser. The building is three stories tall with two basement levels and an attic. It is constructed of red brickBrick
A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:...
and pink granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
with a colonnade
Colonnade
In classical architecture, a colonnade denotes a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, or part of a building....
d entrance porch with balustraded
Baluster
A baluster is a moulded shaft, square or of lathe-turned form, one of various forms of spindle in woodwork, made of stone or wood and sometimes of metal, standing on a unifying footing, and supporting the coping of a parapet or the handrail of a staircase. Multiplied in this way, they form a...
deck, and a tiled, hipped roof
Hip roof
A hip roof, or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope. Thus it is a house with no gables or other vertical sides to the roof. A square hip roof is shaped like a pyramid. Hip roofs on the houses could have two triangular side...
. The interior was planned around a central open stair, with large, central halls on each floor. It was constructed in 1890 at a cost of $
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
75,000, more than ten times the cost of a typical Washington home at that time.
The building served as Fraser's residence until his death in 1896. In 1901, Fraser's widow sold the mansion to Pennsylvania Congressman Joseph Earlston Thropp
Joseph Earlston Thropp
Joseph Earlston Thropp was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.-Life:...
, where he took up residence beginning on March 3, 1901. The Thropps made exterior alterations, enlarging dormer
Dormer
A dormer is a structural element of a building that protrudes from the plane of a sloping roof surface. Dormers are used, either in original construction or as later additions, to create usable space in the roof of a building by adding headroom and usually also by enabling addition of windows.Often...
windows and adding an oriel window
Oriel window
Oriel windows are a form of bay window commonly found in Gothic architecture, which project from the main wall of the building but do not reach to the ground. Corbels or brackets are often used to support this kind of window. They are seen in combination with the Tudor arch. This type of window was...
in 1901. In 1905, architects Totten and Rogers designed a terrace
Terrace (building)
A terrace is an outdoor, occupiable extension of a building above ground level. Although its physical characteristics may vary to a great degree, a terrace will generally be larger than a balcony and will have an "open-top" facing the sky...
with an entrance to the house near the oriel window, and also redesigned the garden wall.
The mansion remained in the ownership of Thropp and his wife, Miriam Scott-Thropp, until Scott-Thropp's death in 1930.
Restaurant
In 1932, the lower floor of the mansion began operation as the Parrot Tea Room, a tea houseTea house
A tea house or tearoom is a venue centered on drinking tea. Its function varies widely depending on the culture, and some cultures have a variety of distinct tea-centered houses or parlors that all qualify under the English language term "tea house" or "tea room."-Asia:In Central Asia this term...
, with a boarding house located on the upper levels. In 1950, upon leasing to John Goldstein, the facility was converted to a restaurant
Restaurant
A restaurant is an establishment which prepares and serves food and drink to customers in return for money. Meals are generally served and eaten on premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services...
and renamed the Golden Parrot. The mansion was sold in 1974, and the restaurant was renamed the Golden Booeymonger. Later, the mansion became home to nightclub
Nightclub
A nightclub is an entertainment venue which usually operates late into the night...
s Larry Brown's and Sagittarius. The mansion was again sold in 1981 to Walter Sommer for $2 million. Following a $3 million renovation, the building opened in 1982 to house another restaurant, the Four Ways. The Four Ways served Continental Europe
Continental Europe
Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands....
an and American dishes under the leadership of chef Jacques Barre.
By 1988, Sommer had opened the patio-cafe Bermuda Bar and Grill in the mansion alongside the Four Ways. According to the Nation's Restaurant News
Nation's Restaurant News
Nation's Restaurant News is an American trade publication, founded in 1967, that covers the foodservice industry, including restaurants, restaurant chains, operations, marketing, and events. It is owned by Penton Media, who purchased it from founding company Lebhar-Friedman in December 2010...
, the restaurant seated 40 people inside and 60 outside, and was modeled after restaurants and pubs
Public house
A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...
in Bermuda
Bermuda
Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...
. Among other things, the restaurant featured an all-you-can-eat salad bar
Salad bar
A salad bar is a buffet-style table or counter at a restaurant or food market on which salad components are provided for customers to assemble their own salad plates...
, an unlimited Sunday brunch
Brunch
Brunch is a meal eaten between breakfast and lunch. The word is a portmanteau of breakfast and lunch.-Origin of the word:The 1896 supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary cites Punch magazine which wrote that the term was coined in Britain in 1895 to describe a Sunday meal for "Saturday-night...
, and "traditional Bermuda drinks made with island rum and freshly squeezed fruit juices."
Proposed apartment building
In 1987, a proposal was made to construct a seven-story, 29-unit apartmentApartment
An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...
building in the parking lot behind the mansion. At the time, the property was zoned
Zoning
Zoning is a device of land use planning used by local governments in most developed countries. The word is derived from the practice of designating permitted uses of land based on mapped zones which separate one set of land uses from another...
residential, with variances
Variance (land use)
A variance is the process by which an applicant can request deviation from the set of rules a municipality applies to land use and land development, typically a zoning ordinance, building code or municipal code. The manner in which variances are employed can differ greatly depending on the...
permitting a restaurant on the property. Then-owner Walter Sommer claimed that the variances restricted him unfairly, requiring him to go to the zoning board multiple times for changes to his business, in a process that he considered costly and time consuming. Additionally, Sommer claimed that without commercial zoning, he was unable to obtain a "realistic commercial loan
Loan
A loan is a type of debt. Like all debt instruments, a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets over time, between the lender and the borrower....
" to fund maintenance costs. Between 1982 and 1987, the D.C. Board of Zoning Appeals granted Sommer variances to expand the commercial use of the building above the first floor and permitting a business club to operate in the building.
While the proposed design for the building was approved by the D.C. Office of Planning and the Historic Preservation Review Board, and the Department of Public Works had determined that the plans, which would have included underground parking
Multi-storey car park
A multi-storey car-park is a building designed specifically to be for car parking and where there are a number of floors or levels on which parking takes place...
for both the apartments and the restaurant, would not cause an increase in parking or traffic problems in the area, the community opposed the building's construction. Nearby resident Duff Gilfont described the proposed apartment building as "such a blight
Urban decay
Urban decay is the process whereby a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude...
to this area," and that "there would have been so many people inconvenienced by it." Several neighborhood associations opposed rezoning the building, expressing concern that the new building would be used as a hotel. Sommer denied that there were plans to use the building as a hotel
Hotel
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms...
or an office
Office
An office is generally a room or other area in which people work, but may also denote a position within an organization with specific duties attached to it ; the latter is in fact an earlier usage, office as place originally referring to the location of one's duty. When used as an adjective, the...
building.
Several covenants were proposed. One would require that the new building only be used for residential purposes. A second would have required that any future owners of the Fraser Mansion would be required to submit their plans for the building for review by the D.C. Historic Preservation Review Board. A third proposed covenant would have split the zoning of the property, allowing only residential use of the building, but requiring variances for any changes in the parking for the restaurant or the apartment building.
Despite the proposed covenants, however, community groups
Community organizing
Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest. A core goal of community organizing is to generate durable power for an organization representing the community, allowing it to influence...
vowed to continue to fight the proposal.
Bankruptcy and attempted sale
During the fight over the building's zoning, Sommer claimed that he would go bankrupt if he was unable to develop the property. Four Ways filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1989, and by October 1989, the Four Ways restaurant had closed.Trying to pay creditors, Sommer attempted to sell the mansion. Sommer's initial asking price was $7 million, which he later reduced to $3 million. A number of embassies and chanceries looked at the mansion, but none purchased. According to real estate broker Stanley Holland, Sommer "thought it was worth more than it was."
Church of Scientology
In 1994, the Church of Scientology purchased the property with the intention of using the building as a church facility. In purchasing the building, Scientology first purchased mortgagesMortgage loan
A mortgage loan is a loan secured by real property through the use of a mortgage note which evidences the existence of the loan and the encumbrance of that realty through the granting of a mortgage which secures the loan...
on the building in 1993 from the FDIC
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is a United States government corporation created by the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933. It provides deposit insurance, which guarantees the safety of deposits in member banks, currently up to $250,000 per depositor per bank. , the FDIC insures deposits at...
, which had assumed the loans after the 1990 failure of the National Bank of Washington. Following the purchase of the loans, Scientology foreclosed
Foreclosure
Foreclosure is the legal process by which a mortgage lender , or other lien holder, obtains a termination of a mortgage borrower 's equitable right of redemption, either by court order or by operation of law...
on the building. In the subsequent foreclosure auction, Scientology purchased the building for $2.7 million.
Following $1 million in renovations, the building was dedicated as the new Founding Church of Scientology on October 21, 1995 by Religious Technology Center
Religious Technology Center
The Religious Technology Center is a Californian non-profit corporation. RTC was founded in 1982 by the Church of Scientology in order to control and oversee the use of all of the trademarks, symbols and texts of Scientology and Dianetics, including the copyrighted works of Scientology founder and...
chairman David Miscavige
David Miscavige
David Miscavige is the leader of the Church of Scientology and affiliated organizations. His title is Chairman of the Board of Religious Technology Center , a corporation that controls the trademarked names and symbols of Dianetics and Scientology. Miscavige was an assistant to Hubbard while a...
.
The Founding Church of Scientology relocated from the Fraser Mansion to the nearby Embassy Building on 16th Street NW
16th Street Northwest (Washington, D.C.)
16th Street Northwest is a prominent north-south thoroughfare in the northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C.Part of Pierre L'Enfant's design for the city, 16th Street begins just north of the White House across Lafayette Park at H Street and continues due north in a straight line passing K Street,...
on October 31, 2009. Fraser Mansion now serves as the National Affairs office for the Church of Scientology.