Woodley Mansion - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Federal architecture

Federal-style architecture is the name for the classicizing architecture built in the United States between c. 1780 and 1830, and particularly from 1785 to 1815. This style shares its name with its era, the Federal Period. The name Federal style is also used in association with furniture design...

hilltop house in Washington, D.C.

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....

, constructed in 1801. It has served as the home to influential leaders, such as Grover Cleveland

Grover Cleveland

Stephen Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Cleveland is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms and therefore is the only individual to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents...

, Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren was the eighth President of the United States . Before his presidency, he was the eighth Vice President and the tenth Secretary of State, under Andrew Jackson ....

, and Henry L. Stimson

Henry L. Stimson

Henry Lewis Stimson was an American statesman, lawyer and Republican Party politician and spokesman on foreign policy. He twice served as Secretary of War 1911–1913 under Republican William Howard Taft and 1940–1945, under Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the latter role he was a leading hawk...

, and is now the home of the Maret School

Maret School

Maret School was founded by Marthe Maret in 1911 as a French primary school. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, three French sisters, Mlles Marthe, Louise, and Jeanne Maret, left their home in Geneva, Switzerland to teach. Louise taught in Russia, Jeanne in the Philippines, and Marthe, who...

. When originally built, it was based on the Woodley Lodge in Reading, England. Coincidentally, given the mansion's original site, the word "Woodley" means "clearing in the woods." A Maret School-based organization called the Woodley Society was created in 1994 to study its history. Since then, it has become an association of students, faculty, and alumni, which has conducted significant research in a number of archives and libraries in the Greater Metropolitan Washington area and beyond. In 2008, the head of the group, Historian Allerton Kilborne, a very well respected longtime Maret teacher, published a book about Woodley.

History of Woodley Mansion

In 1801, Woodley was built by Phillip Barton Key, the uncle of the author of "The Star Spangled Banner," Francis Scott Key

Francis Scott Key

Francis Scott Key was an American lawyer, author, and amateur poet, from Georgetown, who wrote the lyrics to the United States' national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner".-Life:...

. In 1797, Key bought the 250 acre wooded estate that Woodley would be built upon. Before the land was sold to Phillip Barton Key, it was owned by Colonel Ninian Beall and Benjamin Stoddert. Once the magnificent Federal-style house was built, it was home to multiple well- known residents, including: Phillip Barton Key, President Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren was the eighth President of the United States . Before his presidency, he was the eighth Vice President and the tenth Secretary of State, under Andrew Jackson ....

, Lorenzo Thomas

Lorenzo Thomas

Lorenzo Thomas was a career United States Army officer who was Adjutant General of the Army at the beginning of the American Civil War. After the war, he was appointed temporary Secretary of War by President Andrew Johnson, precipitating Johnson's impeachment.-Early life:Thomas was born in New...

, the slave Lucy Berry, Robert J. Walker, Francis Newlands, President Grover Cleveland

Grover Cleveland

, William " Billy " Phillips, Sallie Long Ellis, George Patton, Henry Stimson and Adolf Berle. In fact, previous to any of these ownerships, this land was occupied by the Algonqiuan and Nacotchtank Indians. Henry Stimson left Woodley in his will to his alma mater Phillips Academy, Andover, which in turn sold most of it to the Maret School, founded by the three late Swiss Maret sisters, Marthe, Louise and Jeanne. Maret purchased the campus in 1950, after previously being housed in a 1923 building at 2118 Kalorama Road, N.W. Ever since 1950, the Maret School

Maret School

has owned most of the land, while still taking great care of the well-known mansion. Currently, around 650 students attend the top-tier private school. During Maret's tenure, it has been used to house a learning center, a library, a business office, admissions office, as well as the head of school's office.

Colonel Ninian Beall

Ninian Beall was an immigrant from Scotland who started his life in America as an indentured servant and ended up as a major landowner and merchant.. He bought the site of the future Woodley as part of the 795-acre tract to which he gave the name "The Rock of Dumbarton." It was on the Potomac River

Potomac River

The Potomac River flows into the Chesapeake Bay, located along the mid-Atlantic coast of the United States. The river is approximately long, with a drainage area of about 14,700 square miles...

, where Georgetown would eventually be established, that he built a tobacco warehouse, a gristmill, and an iron foundry.

Benjamin Stoddert

Benjamin Stoddert was a successful merchant and veteran of the Revolution who went on to become the first Secretary of the Navy. The appointment came during the "Quasi-War " with France in 1798, when French ships were seizing American vessels on the high seas.Under Stoddert's direction, the American navy not only grew exponentially, but also won the undeclared naval war against France. Earlier in the decade, at the request of George Washington, he had formed a partnership with Uriah Forrest and purchased the site of Woodley and its environs to prevent the land from being bought up by speculators who would then have sold it to the government for huge prices.

Philip Barton Key

Philip Barton Key was a Representative from the third district of Maryland, and later a United States federal judge. Unusually for a politician in the early United States, Key had been a Loyalist in the American Revolution.Born in Charleston, Cecil County, Maryland, Key pursued an academic course...

, the man who built the famed Woodley, spent his life in the vortex of the emerging United States. Born into a prominent family of Maryland planters, he sacrificed a considerable inheritance to fight for a Loyalist regiment in the American Revolution. Eventually, he was captured, paroled and sent to England, where he studied law at the Middle Temple of the Inns at Court.In 1789, he returned to Maryland, married the beautiful, rich Ann Plater and went on to become the only Loyalist to resurrect his reputation and rise to prominence. Before his death in 1816, he served as both a Federal Judge and a Congressman. During Key's schooling in England, he visited Prime Minister Henry Addington at the Woodley Lodge. When Key returned to Washington, DC, he modeled his own home after the original lodge in England.

Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren was the eighth President of the United States . Before his presidency, he was the eighth Vice President and the tenth Secretary of State, under Andrew Jackson ....

served as a Senator from New York and later as Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...

's Vice President before ascending to the Presidency in 1837. He was a consummate politician who, in the words of one contemporary, "rowed to his objectives with muffled oars." Unfortunately, when he came into office in 1837, the country was plunged into its first depression so he could not do what all his predecessors had done: move away from the heat of Washington during the summer. Instead he rented Woodley because it was on cooler heights above the city and because it was considerably cheaper to run.

Lorenzo Thomas

was a Union general who played a number of significant roles during the Civil War era. He was serving as Adjutant General when he stood beside General Ulysses S. Grant aboard the ironclad U.S.S. Magnolia and watched the siege of Vicksburg. Later in the war, he served in Mississippi, where he raised 21,000 black troops. During an assignment in the West, it is believed, he rented Woodley to ex-President James Buchanan. After the war, Thomas served briefly as Secretary of War and was a key player in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson.In April of 1862, Thomas freed the last of the Woodley slaves-- Lucy Berry and her two small sons, George and Lorenzo. It is not known for sure whether or not Lorenzo Thomas fathered these two sons; indeed one son's name was Lorenzo.

Lucy Berry

Lucy Berry, the last of the Woodley slaves, was born in Charles County, Maryland in 1822 on a tobacco plantation called Equality. In 1853, she was bought by Lorenzo Thomas and installed in Woodley as his cook and laundress. In April of 1862, Lucy Berry and her two small sons were freed by the District Emancipation Act. Four years later, she was reunited with her husband Denis and her four older children, and the entire Berry family were living together in their own house in East Georgetown. After the end of Reconstruction and the death of Denis Berry, Lucy moved to the Government Hospital of the Insane (now St. Elizabeth's), where she worked as a laundress until her death.

Robert J. Walker

Robert John Walker was an American economist and statesman.- Early life and education :Born in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, the son of a judge. He lived in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania from 1806 to 1814, where his father was presiding judge of the judicial district. Walker was educated at the...

was once described as " a mere whiffet of a man."Despite his small size, he cast a very long shadow. He was a successful Mississippi cotton planter, a Congressman, and a Senator before 1844, when he helped to engineer the election of James K. Polk, the first dark horse candidate elected president. Polk appointed him Secretary of the Treasury, a post where he served with extraordinary distinction. In 1867, he helped persuade Secretary of State William Seward to purchase Alaska from Russia. To keep negotiations on track, the Czar paid Walker a $20,000 bribe, some of which went into the 1867 renovation of Woodley when a third floor was added.

Francis Newlands

Francis Newlands, a beneficiary of the Comstock Silver Mine, was both a prominent politician and a real estate tycoon. As Senator from Nevada, he championed the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1901, which culminated in the irrigation of huge sections of the West. At the local level, he developed Chevy Chase and put in Connecticut Avenue so that the owners of his new development could reach downtown Washington by streetcar. He further enhanced the value of his real estate holdings by helping to create Rock Creek Park. After renting Woodley to the Clevelands in 1893, he added a block of rooms on the east side of the building and moved in himself (circa 1900).

Grover Cleveland

was the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms, neither of which came close to fully addressing the problems of the Gilded Age. Nevertheless, his devotion to his lovely young wife and small daughter won him points with the population at large. When he lost the election of 1888, he sold his dream house on the corner of Newark and 36th streets. Therefore, when he won back the Presidency in 1892, he needed a new summer house within striking distance of the White House. His choice was Woodley, which had just been extensively modernized with electricity and state-of-the-art heating and plumbing systems.<

William Phillips

Billy Phillips was a career diplomat and a lifelong friend of Franklin Roosevelt. When he and his wife Caroline rented Woodley (1915-1919), he was Assistant Secretary of State and also the host of numerous dinners attended by the Roosevelts. The Phillipses' attachment to Woodley was particularly deep because both of their sons were born there. Phillips went on to an extraordinarily distinguished career as ambassador to Belgium, Canada and Italy, where for six years, he tried to keep Mussolini's monomaniacal ambitions in check. In vain, he continued to serve in many vital overseas assignments under his old friend Franklin Roosevelt until his official retirement in 1944.

Sallie Long Ellis

Sallie Long Ellis bought Woodley in 1921. Her husband Captain Hayne Ellis had seen action in the Spanish American War, the Philippine Insurrection and the Boxer Rebellion. He would later become Commander of the Atlantic Squadron. Among the most welcome of the myriad guests who visited Woodley during those years was General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary force in World War I. Among the least welcome was a ghost that was seen regularly in Mrs. Ellis' bedroom, now Head of Maret School Marjo Talbott's office. In fact, Mrs. Ellis was so frightened by the ghost that she slept with a loaded pistol under her pillow.

George Patton

General George S. Patton

George S. Patton

George Smith Patton, Jr. was a United States Army officer best known for his leadership while commanding corps and armies as a general during World War II. He was also well known for his eccentricity and controversial outspokenness.Patton was commissioned in the U.S. Army after his graduation from...

was certainly the most controversial and arguably the most brilliant general officer in the Second World War. His spit-polished boots, his set of matched ivory-handled revolvers, and the saltiness of his profanity were all trademarks of his style as an officer. He commanded the Third Army that repulsed the German offensive at the Battle of the Bulge and then drove on into the heart of Germany, helping to win the war in Europe.

Henry Stimson

Henry Stimson, the owner of Woodley from 1929-1946, was a statesman admired on both sides of the aisle. During the Hoover administration, he was the Secretary of State that pushed Hoover towards preparedness, and during the Roosevelt-Truman administrations, he served as Secretary of War, presiding over, among other matters, the development of the atomic bomb. When Stimson and his wife Mabel bought Woodley in 1929, they added cloakrooms (now little offices) on either side of the portico. On December 7, 1941, Stimson was sitting at lunch in the Woodley dining room when the phone rang. It was President Roosevelt who asked in a rather excited voice, "Have you heard the news?" That news was, of course, that Pearl Harbor had just been bombed.

Adolf Berle

Adolf Berle, one of the brilliant young architects of the New Deal, rented Woodley from Stimson in 1939. Once again, Woodley became the place of high drama. On the evening of September 1, Whittaker Chambers

Whittaker Chambers

Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...

arrived at Woodley to tell Berle that Alger Hiss

Alger Hiss

Alger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...

, a highly respected member of the State Department, was passing top-secret documents to the Soviets. That accusation would eventually culminate in the trial of Hiss.(He was found guilty of perjury and went to prison.) Among the many guests at Woodley during the Berle year was Secretary of State Cordell Hull

Cordell Hull

Cordell Hull was an American politician from the U.S. state of Tennessee. He is best known as the longest-serving Secretary of State, holding the position for 11 years in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during much of World War II...

, who would sneak away during afternoons to play croquet on the Woodley croquet

Croquet

Croquet is a lawn game, played both as a recreational pastime and as a competitive sport. It involves hitting plastic or wooden balls with a mallet through hoops embedded into the grass playing court.-History:...

lawn, and Albert Einstein, who came to a Woodley reception.

External links

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