National Register Listing

Page, Thomas Nelson, House

1759 R St., NW., Washington, DC

The Joint Committee on Landmarks has designated the Thomas Nelson Page House a Category II Landmark of Importance which contributes significantly to the cultural heritage and visual beauty of the District of Columbia. Built in 1896, it was designed for writer Thomas Nelson Page and his second wife, Florence Lathrop Field Page by architect Stanford White of McKim, Mead, and White of New York. It is a notable and early example of Georgian Revival architecture as introduced by this major American architectural firm in the 1880s and 1890s.

Its design is characterized by a knowledgeable adaptation of the vocabulary of 18th-century English-American residential architecture to late 19th-century considerations of space, scale, and function. It was executed at about the same time as White's work at the University of Virginia. In Washington, the Page House is a harbinger of the architectural style based on English-American Colonial precedent which was to gain much prominence in succeeding decades. As the home of one of the most noted postbellum literary figures in the South, the Thomas Nelson Page House was a center of Washington's literary life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With the exception of alterations made by Stanford White in 1902, the house is largely intact.

Stanford White (November 9, 1853-June 25, 1906) received his architectural training in the office of H.H. Richardson (Gambrill and Richardson). In 1877, together with the principals of the firm McKim, Mead and Bigelow, he toured the Massachusetts coast studying and making measured drawings of colonial and federal architecture. In 1880 this firm was reorganized as McKim, Mead, and White. In 1885-86, McKim, Mead, and White designed their first Georgian Revival house--the Taylor House at Newport, Rhode Island. By 1896 they had designed several houses in this style, including the Bryan Lathrop House in Chicago for Mrs. Page's brother. This year also, Stanford White was placed in charge of the restoration of the recently burned Rotunda at the University of Virginia and the design of several new buildings there in the Georgian Revival style. It is interesting to note that the owner of the Page House was the great great grandson of Mann Page I who in 1726 built Rosewell in Gloucester County, Virginia. Rosewell has been called the largest and finest of American houses of the colonial period." Other works by Stanford White in Washington Include the Washington Club (Patterson House) erected at 15 Dupont Circle in 1902, a Category II Landmark listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and alterations to the White House made under President Theodore Roosevelt, also in 1902.

Thomas Nelson Page (April 23, 1853-November 1, 1922) belonged to an aristocratic Virginia family which numbered Carters, Lees, and Randolphs among its kin. He grew up in his family place, "Oakland," in Hanover County, Virginia, experiencing at firsthand the turmoil of the Civil War and Reconstruction. He studied law at the University of Virginia, entering private practice in Richmond in 1874. By 1884, he had begun publishing his stories of the old South. Within a few years, he had established a considerable reputation as a writer and spokesman for the aristocratic South.

After his marriage in 1893 to Florence Lathrop Field, he abandoned the practice of law and moved to Washington. Here he devoted himself entirely to his writing. His home at 1759 R Street, N.W., became a center of Washington's literary life. Page and his wife entertained lavishly, their home becoming "the chief literary-social center of the South." In 1913, President Wilson appointed Page Ambassador to Italy, a post he held until 1919 when he returned here to resume his literary career just three years before his death.
Florence Lathrop Field Page was the daughter of Jediah H. Lathrop of Washington and the widow of Henry Field of Chicago. Field, a merchandiser who died in 1890, had been associated with his older brother Marshall in Field, Leiter, and Co.--the Chicago department store which became Marshall Field and Co. Mrs. Page's brother, Bryan Lathrop, was a prominent real estate man who served as president of the Chicago Symphony Orchestral Assn., trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago, and commissioner of Lincoln Park. His residence at 120 East Bellevue Place in Chicago was designed by his good friend Charles F. McKim of McKim, Mead, and White in 1892 while the latter was in Chicago in connection with his work for the Columbian Exposition of 1893. The Bryan Lathrop House, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, was one of the earliest and most sumptuous of McKim, Mead, and White's Georgian Revival residences. The design of the Thomas Nelson Page House in Washington is similar in feeling and closely related to that of the Lathrop House. The Thomas Nelson Page House has been used as the French legation since 1944.

In the Thomas Nelson Page House, the vocabulary of 18th Century EnglishAmerican architecture has been exuberantly adapted for use in a spatially sophisticated late 19th-century townhouse. Limestone and white painted detail contrasts with rough red Harvard brick walls laid in Flemish bond with random glazed headers and thick joints. A bilaterally symmetrical entrance front graces a building whose street facades form an obtuse angle. Horizontality is stressed. Neo-Georgian details include double-hung sash windows from 3/6 to 9/12 lights, modified classical cornice, keystone lintels, rustication of the base, and corner pilaster detail. Late nineteenth-century design influence is evident in the pairing of bays, the large scale of the cornice, the loggias, wrought iron balconies, commodious portico, and what one might almost call the arcade motif of the principal story.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1975.