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Stately Houses and Gardens
Hidden behind the grand houses of N Street — and many others large and small — are tranquil walled gardens with brick terraces, old shade trees, lily ponds, swimming pools, and a tennis court or two.
Behind you stands the Edes Home, established in the early 1900s as a home for aged and indigent widows of Georgetown, who were allowed to move in with no more than one trunk and a sewing machine. Behind it, the Colonial Apartments at 1311 30th served as Miss English's Seminary for Young Ladies from 1820 to 1861, and during the Civil War as a Union Army hospital. An ardent secessionist, Miss English despised seeing the U.S. flag flying from the building, so she moved her school around the corner and out of sight. Two of Georgetown's narrowest houses, at 1239 30th and 3047 N, are but eleven feet wide — hardly stately. They are called "spite houses" since they were built mainly to block the neighbor's light.
The stately mansion at 3014 N was built in 1799 by wealthy tobacco merchant, James Laird, whose family kept a cow and pigs in the backyard. Laird's descendants sold it to Robert Todd Lincoln, eldest son of President Abraham Lincoln.
Built in 1794-1796 (when its magnificent magnolia trees were planted), 3017 N was briefly the home of Jacqueline Kennedy and her two children after the 1964 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Just ten months later, Mrs. Kennedy moved the family to New York to escape the throngs of people hoping to glimpse the glamorous widow. After her husband's death, Mrs. Kennedy was first offered a haven in the 3038 N Street home of Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, a former Governor of New York. Built in 1805, the house was a political gathering spot for Democrats in the 1980s as Pamela Harriman played hostess to legions of the famous and powerful. She later served as U.S. ambassador to France. |