Benjamin Ogle Tayloe House on Lafayette Square

The Benjamin Ogle Tayloe house, located on the east side of Lafayette Square at 21 Madison Place, was built in 1828 by Benjamin Ogle Tayloe and remains to this day.  

The Tayloe house today.  Wikimedia Commons

Benjamin Ogle Tayloe was born in Annapolis and was the son of Colonel John Tayloe III (builder of the nearby Octagon House, and a grandson of Governor Benjamin Ogle of Maryland.  In 1824, Benjamin married Julia Maria Dickinson from Troy, New York. Together, they had six children: John, Edward Thornton, Estelle, Anna, Eugenie Phoebe, and Julia. 

With the death of Col. Tayloe in 1828, the Octagon house passed on to Benjamin's mother who remained there until 1855.  Benjamin, preferring his country estate life over city living, would have lost his foothold in Washington society.  But, at his wife Julia’s urging, who claimed to be more comfortable in the city, Tayloe appeased her and built the house on Madison Place.

Benjamin Ogle Tayloe

 Tayloe built a brick, Federal-style, free-standing house flanked by tall exterior twin chimneys on either side, with two roof dormers in between.  A later added triple window in the center of the house marks the location of the original entrance.  Unlike the original Cutts-Madison house that had a third floor added later, the Tayloe house was a full three stories. 

Tayloe was a businessman and an influential political activist in Washington, D.C., and the house became a noted meeting place for many of the leading political figures of early 19th-century American politics. 

Julia Tayloe died in 1846 leaving Tayloe to raise six children on his own for the next ten years.  In 1856 he married Eugenia Phoebe Warren, who like Julia, was also from Troy, NY. Later, Phoebe’s grandnephew, George Warren, Jr. would also marry the Tayloe daughter Eugenie.

It was probably around this time of his marriage to Phoebe that Tayloe undertook updates to the house.  Wilkes had acquired the Cutts-Madison house around 1850 and subsequently made some significant alterations to the house, including opening up the first floor windows facing Lafayette Square down to the floor and adding transoms above and installing the wrought-iron porch in front.  The same modifications were done to the exterior of the Tayloe, but on the second floor, giving both houses the then vogue Italianate villa-style look and creating an impression of a piano nobile "noble level.  A protruding vestibule was also added to the front entrance.

It is no coincidence that both houses adopted aspects of the Italianate villa style at this time.  Andrew Jackson Downing landscaped Lafayette Square in 1851 just across from the two houses, and along with Calvert Vaux also designed the twin Italian villa-style Frances and Robert Dodge houses in Georgetown in the early 1850s.

Benjamin Ogle Tayloe circa 1855.

When Benjamin Tayloe died in 1868, his wife Phoebe inherited the house.  She also inherited the neighboring Cutts-Madison house from her nephew, George B. Warren, when he died in 1880.  Warren had acquired the house in 1870 after a series of owners since Charles Wilkes.

At this point in her life, Phoebe owned two houses on Lafayette Square, but apparently she did not have much money.  When her step son Edward Thornton Tayloe died in 1882, his will provided for an annuity of $2,000 to be paid to Phoebe for the rest of her life.

When Phoebe died in 1884, the Tayloe house passed on to Tayloe’s children.  The Cutts-Madison house passed on to Eugenie (Tayloe) Warren to hold in trust for her nephew Edward Tayloe Perry (the son of Estelle (Tayloe) Perry) and grandchild of Benjamin Ogle Tayloe who was still a minor at the time.  In 1886, Eugenie Warren sold the Cutts-Madison house to the Cosmos Club.  Its new owners built out a full third floor and expanded the house significantly to the south and east at the first floor level to create large assembly rooms.  Further additions were made to the east along H Street in 1894.

The Tayloe house in 1886 before Don Cameron expanded the ell to create a new main entrance.  Author's collection.

In 1887, James Donald (“Don”) Cameron, a senator from Pennsylvania purchased the Tayloe house. Cameron served as Secretary of War under President Ulysses S. Grant and in the United States Senate for nearly twenty years.  Cameron significantly modified the house, almost entirely rebuilding its interior.  On the exterior, a recessed ell on the north of the house was built out flush to the front of house to house a new main entrance set within a two-story rounded bay with a Palladian window above.

Donald Cameron.  Library of Congress

Cameron did not stand for reelection to the senate in 1896 and returned to his home in Lancaster County, PA. From 1897 to 1899, he leased the house to Garret Hobart, who served as vice president under William McKinley.  During Hobart’s tenure in the house, it was nicknamed the "Historic Corner" due to the large number of politically important visitors and meetings he held there, and the "Cream White House" because of its painted brickwork. 

From 1900 to 1902, the house became referred to as the “Little White House” when Cameron rented it to Senator Mark (“Boss”) Hanna of Ohio, one of the most powerful men in Washington in his day.  Hanna was known for his power breakfasts of corned beef hash and pancakes that which McKinley often attended. 

View down Madison Place sometime before 1909 showing (from left to right) the Cutts-Madison house, the soon-to-be-demolished Ingersoll and Windom houses, and the Tayloe house.  Postcard - John DeFerrari.

The Commercial Club rented the Tayloe house from 1909 to 1913.  In 1915, Cameron let the house to the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage.  They used the building as its headquarters and as a congregating point and lookout post for picketers’ who would wait for Wilson to return the White House then rush his car.  But in 1917, offering no explanation, the Camerons ordered the militant suffragettes to vacate the house.  One can only imagine that these were not the type of neighbors the old “cave dwellers” wanted around their Lafayette Square homes and may have complained to the absentee landlord.

Suffragettes congregating at the Cameron house.  Library of Congress.

The Cosmos Club had gradually been acquiring the block in a southward direction, starting with the Cutts-Madison house in 1886, then purchasing the townhouses at 23 and 25 Madison Place (the Ingersoll and Windom houses) and razing them in 1909 to make way for their new five-story club house.  In 1917, the Cosmos Club purchased the Tayloe house.  Now, the two houses that were once joined together by family were now also physically joined.  The Cosmos Club remained on Lafayette Square until 1952, when it moved to the Townsend mansion on Massachusetts Avenune, NW. 

Both the Cutts-Madison and Tayloe houses along with the Cosmo Club building are still standing today, thanks to the efforts in the 1960s of the Committee of 100 on the Federal City, Jacqueline Kennedy, architect John Carl Warnecke, and many others. 

Article originally appeared in the InTowner Newspaper, Dec. 2013