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Dupont Circle
Diverse Visions | One Neighborhood
Fire Fact | January 1, 1891
Box 319 sounded at 11:35 am for a fire in the residence of Hon. James G. Blaine, who had been defeated by Grover Cleveland for the presidency in 1884. Nearly the entire DC Fire Department soon arrived to defeat the blaze that threatened the Blaine Mansion at 2000 Massachusetts Ave.
Development in the neighborhood got its first start in 1871 when the Board of Public Works, under the leadership of Alexander "Boss" Robey Sheperd, installed sewers, paved roads, extended gas pipes and planted trees here and throughout other neighborhoods. Speculators bought up land, and the bold began to build.
At 2000 Massachusetts Ave., note the red Victorian mansion built in 1881 by the perennial GOP presidential candidate James G. Blaine and later owned by George Westinghouse, inventor of the airbrake. At 2020 Massachusetts Ave. (left) stands the one of the most expensive private houses ever built in DC, the Thomas Walsh mansion – since 1954 the Indonesian Embassy. Walsh, a miner, struck gold in Colorado. His daughter Evalyn married into the McLean family, owners of the Washington Post; a colorful, generous lady, Evalyn is remembered as the last private owner of the Hope Diamond, now in the Smithsonian Institution.
The dignified Beaux-Arts mansion at 2009 Massachusetts Ave. was home to Nicholas Longworth, speaker of the House (1926-1931), until his death in 1931, and to his wife Alice Roosevelt Longworth until her death in 1980
Artist | Jody Eric Kammer
Fire Alarm Boxes such as this one (originally painted red) were installed in the District after the Civil War. Telegraphs transmitted the box number (top) to a fire alarm center. This system was used until the 1970s when the boxes were converted to a telephone system. By the 1990s, the callbox system had been replaced by the 911 system and was abandoned. |