The Secret of the Cosmos

The early mansionization of Dupont Circle… and how one "palace builder" avoided a gypsy’s curse

By Donna Evers

In the late 1800’s at the advent of Washington’s Gilded Age, a group of developers got together and began buying land around what is now Dupont Circle, for the bargain price of 60 cents a foot. At the time the area was a marshy wasteland nicknamed "The Slashes" after foul-smelling Slash Creek, which ran through the area and served as a general dumping ground. This California Syndicate" of wealthy investors became interested upon hearing that Boss Shepherd, head of the Board of Public Works, planned to build roads, streets, and infrastructure there. Over the next 20 years, the area went from mud flats in the middle of nowhere to the social center of the city, as the Western gentlemen who followed Shepherd’s lead settled in to build their dream houses.

Curtis Hillyer was one of the group who built his opulent home at 2121 Massachusetts Avenue. NW This street became known as the "street of palace builders, "as famous families from all over the country were drawn to the area hiring the most prominent architects and using these new homes to wine and dine each other and the powerful people who ran the country and gave funds and favor to whichever regions and companies seemed most deserving.

Mary Scott Townsend and her husband, Richard were palace builders. The couple, both of whom possessed huge railroad fortunes, decided to build a home that would make a statement. In a move that could be described as "early mansionization," they purchased the Hillyer House and its acre of land and hired renowned architectural firm of Carrere and Hastings to tear it down and start over.

John Merven Carrere and Thomas Hastings were "rock stars" of architecture in the early 1900s. They built everything from the New York Public Library to the Cannon House Office Building on Capital Hill to the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Va.

Tearing down the house would have been a simple job, except for a particular requirement of Mrs. Townsend. Because Mary Scott had been warned by a gypsy fortuneteller that evil would visit her home and "she would die under a new roof," she wanted some of foundation and walls of the old house kept under the new structure. As the house took shape Carrere and Hastings hired landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., to design the grounds. The magnificent home the emerged was a copy of the Petit Trianon at Versailles.

In her heyday, Mary Townsend gave one fabulous, record – breaking party after another in her grand villa. Perhaps because of her special construction precautions, she lived a long life and died of natural causes in 1931. Her daughter Mathilde inherited the house and was soon offered $1 million (about $10 million today) by the French government, but she wasn’t in the mood to sell. When she finally sold the property to the Cosmos Club in 1950, it went for just under $365,000!

The illustrious Cosmos Club, whose members included the most accomplished leaders of the government, science, and the arts, was founded in 1887 by the larger – than – life adventurer, John Wesley Powell. Although he lost an arm in the Civil War, Powell went on to become a scientist, philosopher, and explorer. He was the first to explore and map many parts of the Wild West, including the Grand Canyon, where he experienced death- defying adventures that would have put Indiana Jones to shame. It’s fitting that the club he founded 110 years ago can claim, among its many honors, to have been the birthplace of the National Geographic Society.

On the other end of the spectrum, the most unusual society spawned by Cosmos Club members was the Society for Psychic Research, a group that focused on their own brand of psychology and anthropology, and blended this with then – popular trends in spiritualism and psychic phenomenon. Their meetings featured séances with deceased family members and visits to haunted houses.

This quirky society would have been in complete sympathy with Mrs. Townsend’s respect for the occult. It could even be a comfort to present day Cosmos Club members to know that under their building’s tons of stone and plaster ornamentation is a supernatural insurance policy: the remains of the old house. It might not be a bad idea, just in case the gypsy was right.